The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation

  • 8h 13m
  • Peter J. Denning, Robert Dunham
  • The MIT Press
  • 2010

Innovation is the ruling buzzword in business today. Technology companies invest billions in developing new gadgets; business leaders see innovation as the key to a competitive edge; policymakers craft regulations to foster a climate of innovation. And yet businesses report a success rate of only four percent for innovation initiatives. Can we significantly increase our odds of success? In The Innovator's Way, innovation experts Peter Denning and Robert Dunham reply with an emphatic yes. Innovation, they write, is not simply an invention, a policy, or a process to be managed. It is a personal skill that can be learned, developed through practice, and extended into organizations. Denning and Dunham identify and describe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform: sensing, envisioning, offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading, and embodying. Together, these practices can boost a fledgling innovator to success. Weakness in any of these practices, they show, blocks innovation. Denning and Dunham chart the path to innovation mastery, from individual practices to teams and social networks.

About the Authors

Peter J. Denning is Distinguished Professor, Chair of the Computer Science Department, and Director of the Cebrowski Institute for Information Innovation and Superiority at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is the author of The Invisible Future, Talking Back to the Machine, Beyond Calculation, and other books.

Robert Dunham founded the Institute for Generative Leadership and the consulting company Enterprise Performance.

John Seely Brown is Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp and former director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and co-author of The Social Life of Information.

In this Book

  • Invention is Not Enough
  • Generative Innovators in Action
  • Frames of Mind
  • Observing
  • Practice One: Sensing
  • Practice Two: Envisioning
  • Practice Three: Offering
  • Practice Four: Adopting
  • Practice Five: Sustaining
  • Practice Six: Executing
  • Practice Seven: Leading
  • Practice Eight: Embodying
  • Building a Culture of Innovation
  • Mastering the Mess
  • Social Networking and Innovation
  • Dispositions of the Masters
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