Praise for Making Innovation Work, First Edition
“This is the book I wish I had read thirty years ago. Making Innovation Work is an important resource for leaders who are trying to improve innovation in their organizations. It’s crammed with examples and practical ideas that can trigger improvements in innovation, starting tomorrow!”
—Lew Platt, Chairman of Boeing, former Chairman and CEO of HP, and former CEO of Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates
“Davila, Epstein, and Shelton remind us that even if the end product is rocket science, the process need not be. To the contrary, tried-and-true practices of management, process, metrics, and incentives are all that it takes to let innovation happen consistently.”
—Andrew Beebe, President, EnergyInnovations
“Making Innovation Work is a fresh approach to systematically managing innovation. It integrates the innovation management literature in a way that is insightful, creative, as well as pragmatic. Davila, Epstein, and Shelton have particularly fresh insights on learning, culture, leadership, and executing change. This book will be of great help to those managers leading innovation and change.”
—Michael Tushman, Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration, Graduate School of Business, Harvard University, and author of Managing Strategic Innovation and Change and Winning through Innovation
“This impressive book offers specific techniques for driving systematic, repeatable, and managed innovation at all levels in your company. It will help you build a balanced portfolio that integrates both incremental and radical innovations—so you can sustain growth indefinitely, instead of flaming out.”
—Guerrino de Luca, President and CEO, Logitech
“Making Innovation Work provides an excellent roadmap to innovation: its various facets, why each facet matters, and how they can be enhanced—separately and collectively—in any organization. It also debunks a few tenacious myths, starting with the oft-heard excuse that innovation is an inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable process. Based on their vast research and consulting expertise, Davila, Epstein, and Shelton convincingly argue that innovation performance is indeed controllable and improvable, and they provide a powerful framework to do so. If you’re interested in improving your organization’s innovation performance and potential, this book will tell you how. If you’re not, it will tell you why you should be!”
—Jean-François Manzoni, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development, IMD (The International Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, Switzerland)
“Making Innovation Work is an informative and practical overview of the managerial side of innovation, showing that payoffs come when innovation projects are carefully conceived and measured.”
—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School, author of Confidence
“Making Innovation Work explains why companies lose their ability to innovate and how they can get it back. And though most organizations aren’t ‘wired’ for innovation, the authors make it clear that sustained innovation is not a ‘nice to have’—it’s mandatory for survival. Effective execution of innovation is one of the major determinants between winners and the losers and of who survives and who disappears from the scene. This book picks up where other books on the subject fall short; it shows you how to make it happen.”
—Ladd Greeno, President and CEO, AgION Technologies
“An excellent overview on the importance of innovation and how to manage it successfully; must-reading for executives who wish to break out of the commodity trap.”
—Robert S. Kaplan, Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School and co-developer of the balanced scorecard
“Making Innovation Work is a must-read for would-be innovators at all levels. The seven practical Innovation Rules lay out the things you need to know and show you how to put them to use in your organization, no matter what the industry. Even self-diagnosed ‘good’ innovators will learn how to take their companies to the next level.”
—Howie Rosen, VP, Commercial Strategy, Gilead Sciences, Inc., former CEO, Alza
“Any startup that cannot effectively manage what the authors describe as the natural tension between creativity and delivering value from creativity is not likely to survive. Making Innovation Work shows how to manage creativity and value creation together without compromising either one. It’s must-reading.”
—Arthur L. Chait, President and CEO, EoPlex Technologies
“Making Innovation Work will help you think about innovation in new and extremely productive ways. From the seven ‘innovation rules’ at the beginning of this book to the powerful execution advice for leaders at the end, this book is replete with ideas you’ll actually use. If you’re ready to get past the clichés and conventional wisdom about innovation, read it—the sooner, the better.”
—Alex Vieux, CEO of Red Herring