The Innovative Leader: How to Inspire Your Team and Drive Creativity

  • 2h 19m
  • Paul Sloane
  • Kogan Page
  • 2007

The Innovative Leader stresses the importance of innovation and creativity in modern business to help organizations secure competitive advantage over rivals. It shows how to apply methods of innovation and creativity to the individual, to business peers, and to the organization. Author Pual Sloane demonstrates the importance of setting out your vision clearly and emphasizes the need for continual evaluation of the process. Numerous international examples illustrate how organizations such as Virgin, Body Shop, Disney, and 3M have benefited from this approach, encouraging excellence and entrepreneurship through challenging goals that keep employees motivated and engaged.

About the Author

Paul Sloane is an entertaining, thought-provoking, motivational speaker and a recognized expert on innovation, lateral thinking and leadership. He is the author of 17 books on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving and lateral leadership. Over 2 million copies of his books have been sold. He was described in the Independent as the ‘King of lateral thinking puzzles’. He is the founder of Destination-Innovation (destination-innovation.com),a consultancy that helps organizations improve innovation.

He facilitates meetings, leads workshops and gives after-dinner talks and keynote addresses. His talks offer a unique blend of puzzling challenges, humour and hard-hitting business messages. His workshops provide practical techniques to improve leadership and innovation. Clients include AA, American Express, ARM, BT, Cendant, DWP, HMRC, Home Office, Lloyds of London, OGC, Shell and 3M.

Paul took a first in Engineering at Cambridge. He joined IBM, where he came top of Sales School. He was part of the team that launched the IBM PC in the UK. He went on to be MD of the database leaders Ashton-Tate. He became VP International for MathSoft Inc. and CEO of Monactive Ltd.

In his book The Leader’s Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills (2003), also published by Kogan Page, Paul explains how you can use the principles of lateral leadership to inspire your people to achieve breakthrough solutions and radical innovations. His articles on innovation and leadership have appeared in leading business publications. His inspirational talks on innovation, creative thinking and leadership, described as ‘rocket fuel for the business brain’, have proved popular with conference audiences in Europe, the United States, South Africa and Asia.

In this Book

  • Have a Vision for Change
  • Issue a Declaration of Innovation
  • Set Drastic Expectations
  • Fight the Fear of Change
  • Tell Stories
  • Set Goals for Innovation
  • Get Rid of the Cynics
  • Throw Down a Challenge
  • Encourage Dissent
  • Be an Arsonist and a Fire Fighter
  • Think Like a Venture Capitalist
  • Break Down Internal Barriers
  • Destroy the Hierarchy
  • Have Your Best People Working on Innovation
  • Be Passionate
  • Diagnose the Current Situation
  • Analyse Problems
  • Ask ‘Why, Why?’
  • Use Six Serving Men
  • Redefine the Problem
  • Ask ‘What Business Are We in?’
  • Have a Suggestions Scheme
  • Run Ideas Events
  • Allow Line Manager Bypass
  • Plan Your Brainstorm Meetings
  • Brainstorm Meetings – Generate Great Ideas
  • Brainstorm Meetings – Evaluate the Ideas
  • Juice Up Your Brainstorm Meetings
  • Bring in Unrelated Experts
  • Use a Facilitator
  • Break the Rules
  • Define Your Ideal Competitor
  • Try Weird Combinations
  • Go for Quantity
  • Try a Different Environment
  • Conceive a Different Business Model
  • Ask ‘Who Killed Our Business?’
  • Look for New Ways to Reach the Customer
  • Anticipate the Wave
  • Innovate by Subtraction
  • Look for the Solution within the Problem
  • Ask ‘What If…?’
  • Pass the Parcel
  • Look for a Distant Relation
  • Idealize the Answer
  • Be Careful What and How You Reject
  • Wear Six Thinking Hats
  • Allocate Time and Resources for Innovation
  • Give Everyone Two Jobs
  • Identify the Need for Replacement
  • Borrow with Pride
  • Train for Innovation
  • Measure Progress
  • Broadcast Success
  • Reward Success
  • Track the Astonishing
  • Be Cool or Outsource Cool
  • Collaborate
  • Observe Customers
  • Co-Create
  • Create a Community
  • Crowdsource
  • Gate the Process
  • Appoint Innovation Champions
  • Run an Innovation Incubator
  • Employ an Ideas Searcher
  • Streamline Your Approval Process
  • Kill the Losers
  • Build Prototypes
  • Implement
  • Overcome Customer Resistance
  • Don’t Tell, Ask
  • Praise the Innovators
  • Focus on What Went Right
  • Make it Fun
  • Welcome Failure
  • Fear Success
  • Set Puzzles
  • Use the Right Language
  • Make Your Own Products Obsolete
  • Trust
  • Empower Employees
  • Check Assumptions
  • Ask Questions
  • Move Out of Your Comfort Zone
  • Simplify Things
  • Look at Things from a Different Angle
  • Trust Your Intuition
  • Incubate
  • Don’t Take the First Answer
  • Develop Your Personal Creativity
  • Become an Evangelist
  • Simplify Your Life
  • Be Disconnected
  • Visualize with Mind Maps
  • Keep Fit
  • Be Lucky
  • References and Further Reading
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