PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

In the middle of 2010, I ran an experiment. I told the subjects of the experiment—my colleagues at Innosight, a professional-services firm that specializes in innovation—that my goal was to learn which innovation books they would recommend to colleagues. I asked them about ten books that I probably heretically called Innosight’s canon—five authored by Innosight’s cofounder Clayton Christensen, two authored by then–Innosight board member Richard Foster, and three authored by members of Innosight’s leadership team. For each book, survey takers could note that they had read the whole book, read most of the book, skimmed the book, or not read the book at all.

The three books that interested me the most were those that I assumed would be most pertinent to our staff—The Innovator’s Solution (the work that lays the theoretical grounding for most of Innosight’s work), The Innovator’s Guide to Growth (a step-by-step playbook that explains how we do our work), and Seizing the White Space (at the time Innosight’s latest work). Only half of the consultants—people who spend every day advising clients on issues of innovation and growth—reported reading most or all of these three books (clients, don’t fret—we have an apprenticeship model and excellent training programs to make sure our consultants deliver stellar service). This is not an uncommon result. One publisher told me her figures showed that 90 percent of business books that customers purchase are never read.

And that’s why I wrote this book. Innovation increasingly affects all of us. Decades of research and field work point the way to innovation success. My aim is to take this work and make it more accessible by sharing simple anecdotes that I’ve collected over the last decade. I hope this “black book” of innovation serves as an everyday reference that helps you make the changes that will allow you to succeed in your business or personal lives. I’ve seen how following the approaches here have helped big companies, entrepreneurs, and my friends and family members, and I hope what follows will help you, too.