Multiple Authors

Inside the Minds: Innovation Unleashed is written by a community of top-level leaders from some of the world’s leading Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations firms. It’s an enjoyable book on the intricacies within, the power around and the impact of the creative element in marketing communications.

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of the role of the creative in developing successful, innovative campaigns. From conceptualizing and evaluating ideas, turning them into effective communication vehicles and revamping a tired brand into one with true staying power, authors articulate the finer points around building brand loyalty and expressing creative freedom now, and what will hold true into the future.

The different niches represented and the breadth of perspectives presented enable readers to get inside the truly great creative minds of today, as experts from all sides offer up their thought around the keys to success within this fascinating realm of the communications industry.

By Rob Salkowitz

Trends like the retirement of the Baby Boomers, the arrival of the Millennials, and the impact of Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise creates a complexity for employers and workers. Organizations looking to solve the puzzle of productivity across the technology age gap should start with Generation Blend.

This book explores how generational attitudes toward technology affect issues as diverse as recruitment and retention, employee training, management decision-making, collab-oration, knowledge sharing, work/life balance, and ordinary workday activities. How can your organization promote the continuity of knowl-edge and culture in the face of the coming demographic transition? What hidden factors put new technology deployments at risk? How can IT departments manage the growing demand for social and collaborative software while maintaining governance and security? What initiatives can you launch to bridge the divide in work styles and tech-savvy that separates veterans and newcomers in the workforce?

Author Rob Salkowitz connects the dots of sociology, technology, and management, and trace a roadmap for decision-makers. Generation Blend is rich with research and includes two original in-depth case studies from organizations that have developed unique approaches to bridging the technology age gap: Microsoft’s Board of the Future project, which assembles college-age students from around the world to discuss a wide range of workplace issues, and Older Adults Technology Services, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to intergenerational technology training and reciprocal mentoring programs. Organizations of all types and sizes can profit from their methods.

By Michael A. Gollin

Driving Innovation reveals the dynamics of intellectual property (IP) as it drives the innovation cycle and shapes global society. The author presents fundamental IP concepts and practical legal and business strategies that apply broadly to all innovation communities, including industry, nonprofit institutions, and developing countries.

Topics include biotechnology, information technology, and entertainment. The book gives general readers and practitioners a global perspective on how the IP system balances exclusivity and public access to innovations, how it changes over time, and how it encourages, channels, and sometimes stifles innovation.

 By Sara J. Moulton Reger

This is the book for people who never get past page two of a management book—it is as close as the genre comes to being a compulsive page-turner. Its main thesis is built on at least three big ideas that are individually persuasive and cumulatively compelling. They naturally fit into an alignment tool that is applied to the range of day-to-day and exceptional challenges all enterprises face, including the Holy Grail of transformational change.

 Sara Moulton Reger is one of the premier organizational design consultants in the country, and this book reflects her in-depth knowledge of and experience with the subject matter. This book is essential reading for those striving to achieve greater results from ongoing change initiatives. Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? contains a broad range of concepts, examples, and specific steps culled from Moulton Reger’s direct experience. Such a complete presentation of strategic and tactical advice makes Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? a mandatory addition to every manager’s bookshelf.

 Their use of Outcome Narratives, Right vs Right, and other powerful tools, all clearly described, are very helpful for getting people focused on desired ends and agreed ways of achieving them. With these tools, people can avoid having the ‘violent agreements’ that we have found so often in our work while treating culture clashes.

 Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? is a business book that takes culture seriously and isn’t intimidated by it. The method described can be used with practically any type of business problem in any industry, and the book does an excellent job of drawing on research and theory while keeping the focus practical. The three elements of Outcome Narratives, Right vs. Right, and Business Practices are significant ideas in their own right—each is a unique insight. All three ideas have been around in various guises for several years, but have not been as well crystallized or as focused on complex business problems as they are in this book.

 by Constance L. Hays

 In The Real Thing, New York Times reporter Constance L. Hays examines a century of Coca-Cola history through deft portraits of the charismatic, driven men who used luck, spin, and the open door of enterprise to turn a beverage with no nutritional value into a remedy, a refreshment, and the world’s best-known brand. By examining relationships at all levels of the company, The Real Thing reveals the psyche of a great American corporation–and also tells a larger story about business and this nation’s culture.

 This is as much a story about America as it is the tale of a great American product, one recognized all over the world. Under the leadership of Roberto Goizueta and Doug Ivester, Coca-Cola reinvented itself for investors, spearheading trends such as lavish executive salaries and the wooing of Wall Street, but when Coke’s great global ambitions ran into trouble, it had difficulty getting back on track.

 Hays, a reporter who followed Coca-Cola for five years, tells the story of the soft drink company that has come to be viewed throughout the world as an American icon. The corporate giant had a modest start in 1886, serving its distinctive product only at soda fountains. The emergence of independent bottlers changed the business–and the world–forever as bottles and bright red dispensing machines made their way around the globe, from urban centers to dusty villages. Hays offers engaging profiles of the different powerful personalities who have run the company, also covering its spectacular successes and failures (the marketing debacle of New Coke is particularly noteworthy). But although this corporate history is very interesting, many will question the book’s objectivity: Coca-Cola is a master of public relations, and the book was written with the blessing of the company’s management. Mary Whaley

 The Real Thing brings the story of one of America’s oldest commercial and cultural icons up to date—a tale of power, ego, and money inside one of the world’s largest companies. With a journalist’s investigative skills and a strong narrative voice, Constance Hays puts the reader inside the minds of Coca-Cola’s top executives and fanatic consumers, showing how the modern, ever-changing global business world works through the simplest of products. Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, taking you through incredible triumphs and massive blunders, The Real Thing is a fascinating read.

By Robin Karol, Ph.D., NPDP and Beebe Nelson, Ed.D., NPDP

 Looking to improve your product development process? Author Robin Karol brings you a practical, behind-the-scenes guide that provides the edge you need to develop and launch new products or services. No matter your size or type of business, you get tips for generating winning ideas, satisfying your customers, planning a blockbuster launch, and increasing your chances of market success.

Written for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking for an inside track on new product development, New Product Development for Dummies offers you a unique opportunity to learn from two consummate insiders the secrets of successfully developing, marketing and making a bundle from a new product or service. You learn proven techniques for sizing up market potential and divining customer needs. You get tested-in-the-trenches strategies for launching a new product or service. And you get a frank, in-depth appraisal of the most challenging issues facing new product developers today, including the need to collaborate with global partners, optimizing technology development for a 21st century marketplace, getting start-up capital in an increasingly competitive environment, and much more.

 Whether you are new to the game or a seasoned professional, the logical organization of this book offers an easy-to-follow “how-to” of new product development and incorporates the latest thinking and methodologies for easy implementation. Students will benefit from the real-life examples, and experienced practitioners will be shown problem solving in a new light, finding that there are almost always alternate ways of viewing the same challenge with drastically different results. Regardless of your experience level, industry, or base knowledge of product development, New Product Development For Dummies is a must-have for your business-learning library, and should be revisited often for fresh ideas.

By Ed Cohen

Business leaders in today’s borderless global marketplace face unprecedented challenges. The emergence of the knowledge economy has demanded that business leaders become global leaders. Successful global leaders are those with strategies for guiding and empowering a diversified workforce operating in different countries, cultures, and time zones so that they can maximize the returns from trading in a worldwide market with distinct local needs.

Leadership Without Borders poses the question: What advice do successful global leaders have for future and current global leaders? Part 1 distills the practical insights provided by a large number of global business leaders into five key areas:

• The personal characteristics required to ensure success as a global leader.
• The business acumen needed to thrive as a global leader.
• Methods for expanding global awareness – or “worldview”.
• The people leadership skills and attributes needed to succeed in any environment.
• Business leadership skills and attributes that will enhance global leadership ability.

Leadership Without Borders presents the results of his detailed Global Leadership Survey (consisting of interviews with more than 50 leaders who have lived and worked in more than 60 different countries), Cohen identifies the new global competencies and groups them into a cohesive set of guidelines—illuminating a comprehensive and clear view of successful, world-focused management.

The practical suggestions in business acumen, worldview, people leadership skills, and business leadership will equip the readers to become leaders in the new borderless marketplace. Each chapter ends with a summary of the global leadership viewpoints presented, to assist you in building your own checklist of global leadership knowledge, skills, and behaviors that you can start to use right away.

HOW SMART COMPANIES USE ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGY TO INNOVATE, CREATE VALUE AND BUILD COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

By Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston

This book has been called the essential guide for forward-thinking business leaders who see the Green Wave coming and want to profit from it. For those who want to manage the environmental challenges facing society and business, I highly recommend this book. It’s based on the authors’ experience as well as hundreds of interviews with corporate leaders who have generated lasting value by cutting costs, reducing risks, increasing revenues and creating strong brands through a green-focused business strategy.

The book contains examples from companies like BP, Toyota, IKEA, GE and Nike, and how those leaders are establishing an “eco-advantage” in the marketplace as traditional elements of competitive differentiation fade in importance.

by Jeff Mauzy and Richard A. Harriman

I recommend this book for executives of all ages and disciplines who want to take their individual, departmental, and corporate performances to levels they never thought possible. The authors give us practical insights on how to build an organization that embeds creativity and innovation in its core activities.

This book gives a hands-on approach to the hallmark of the individuated successful corporation, by creating the kind of learning environment that allows employees to grow and specialize in a particular field of expertise.

Creativity, Inc. will jar loose your fixed patterns of thinking and help you to create new, more profitable connections. This pragmatic book explains how and why innovation works and shows exactly what you and your team can do to enable the force of creativity to re-energize your business.

…AND RELEASE THE POWER OF INNOVATION
by Georg von Krogh, Kazuo Ichijo and Ikujiro Nonaka

Enabling Knowledge Creation introduces knowledge enabling and demonstrates its power to transform your organization’s knowledge into value-creating actions. The authors describe five key “knowledge enablers” and outline what it takes to instill a knowledge vision, manage conversations, mobilize knowledge activists, create the right context for knowledge creation and globalize local knowledge.

Each of us in an organization has a vital role to play in caring, supporting, nurturing, and encouraging micro-communities of innovation and fun. The book shows us how to design a shared space where knowledge is created, exchanged, and used for sustained, competitive advantage.

Enabling Knowledge Creation is not only an interesting read, it is very practical and action-oriented. This works puts practical tools into the hands of managers and executives who are struggling to unleash the power of knowledge in their organization.