BOOK TOPICS
Products
Corporate Innovation
Positive
Turbulence : Developing Climates for
Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal , By Stanley S. Gryskiewicz
(Jossey-Bass Publishers, July 1999)
As an expert on corporate change and advisor to leading organizations
around the world, author Stanley Gryskiewicz has spent nearly thirty
years observing and evaluating a variety of corporate cultures. Those
that are most effective, he’s found, are invariably those in which
creativity and innovation are allowed to flourish. Over the years, Gryskiewicz
has witnessed and often helped devise the many strategies and processes
companies have employed to deliberately establish energetic, creative
cultures. An now he’s distilled the most successful of those approaches
into a dynamic process of cultural change he calls Positive Turbulence.
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Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies,
By James C. Collins & Jerry I. Porras (Harperbusiness, 1997)
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Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually
Happen, Alan G. Robinson & Sam Stern (Berrett Koehler,
1997)
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Reviewed By: Erica Myers, Baxter Healthcare Corp.
Erica is also enrolled in the 1998 Innovation University Best Practices
Fellowship program.
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Key Learnings:
According to authors Robinson and Stern, companies can dramatically
increase their creative performance if they recognize the true nature
of creativity and learn how to promote unanticipated creative acts.
Most creative acts, as they now occur in companies, are not planned
for and come from where they are least expected. It is impossible to
predict what they will be, who will be involved in them, and when and
how they will happen.
Corporate Celebration: Play, Purpose, and Profit at Work,
Terrence E. Deal & M.K. Key (Berrett Koehler, 1998)
Deal and Key suggest that celebration, especially transition rituals
and ceremonies, are vital to businesses' ability to adjust to changing
circumstances.
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Innovate or Evaporate : Test & Improve Your Organization's
IQ: Its Innovation Quotient by James M. Higgins (New Management
Pub Co)
Used as the criteria for selection for the Global Innovation Award,
this book features questionnaires that allow firms to test their current
levels of innovation in the areas of product, process, marketing and
management. It includes lengthy and numerous descriptions of the 49
characteristics of innovative organizations.
Examine your organizational structure and purposes with a critical eye to evaluating its potential for innovation and change with the help of a fine handbook. From analyses of innovation versus imitation processes to strategies and alternatives to traditional business approaches, this is packed with original information. --Midwest Book Review
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Awakening Corporate Soul: Four Paths to Unleash the Power of People
at Work by Eric Klein (Four Winds Press).
Small Business and Entrepreneurship Editor's Recommended Book,
03/15/98: Advocates the use of ancient concepts to improve both employee
satisfaction and workplace yield. Eric Klein and John Izzo, a yogi and
a minister, who are also business consultants, mix Eastern and Western
ideas to suggest new ways to develop a more motivated and committed
workforce. They maintain that creativity, productivity, innovation and
inspiration each stimulate different facets of a company's "soul,"
and show how leaders can help those around them attain fulfillment while
simultaneously positioning their firms for increased success.
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Creativity
in Business by Michael Ray & Rochelle Myersl (Doubleday,
1986).
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Transformation
Thinking by Joyce Wycoff
(Paperback / Published 1995).
From the author of Mindmapping comes a powerful resource for managers
and leaders which reveals innovative techniques to promote creativity
and problem-solving in any organization. Readers will learn how to transform
the way they make decisions, set goals, inspire teamwork, encourage
communication, and more.
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Beyond Corporate Transformation : A Whole Systems Approach to
Creating and Sustaining High Performance by Christopher W.
Head (Productivity Press).
When do your employees resist change? They resist change when they don't
understand the changes that are taking place, they see little or no
perceived benefit of doing things differently, or they do not feel involved.
Which is why employees who will be affected by a transformation must
effect the changes. Realizing that anything short of total employee
involvement in the change process jeopardizes success, this book emphasizes
that it is the responsibility of every employee to act as a change agent.
Learn how to go beyond piece meal incremental changes, beyond reengineering,
beyond the limited idea of change to encompass a whole systems approach
to creating and sustaining a competitive advantage. Through a revolutionary,
integrated, employee-oriented leadership philosophy, this book illustrates
how to transform an organization by tapping into the full potential
of every employee.
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