Lean Innovation : Understanding What's Next in Today's Economy

Packed with cases, statistics, and anecdotes, this book guides business leaders through the process of lean innovation. It explains how to eliminate waste, allowing higher productivity and a smoother company presentation to customers. The author discusses how to achieve a company culture that relates to the processes of innovation in a healthy way, and the strategic timing and adoption of innovations; it discussed the relationship between innovation and creativity and refinement tactics; and it explains why economic fluctuation can be an opportunity rather than a liability to an innovative company. This book offers simple, straight-forward, actionable takeaways and solutions.

Do these comments sound familiar?

• We would love to be more innovative, but we don’t have the resources
• Innovation works in some companies; we just aren’t that creative
• We get some good ideas, but nothing ever happens with them

Unfortunately, they reflect the general perception and environment for innovation in many firms today. In Lean Innovation: Understanding What''s Next in Today''s Economy, Barry Cross explores how to use Lean to free up resources from within the organization to support and ‘fund’ innovation and inspire a culture of creativity. Easy to read and humorous, Cross’ stories resonate and his tactics are very applicable. He demonstrates that you likely have the people needed to drive innovation.

Based on Cross’s twenty-five years of experience, and filled with stories and anecdotes from a number of industries, the book presents a different look at innovation and how to recognize opportunities for moving past merely talking about innovation to action and making it a priority. The author examines roadblocks and how to use enablers like Lean to facilitate and focus the approach on driving the focus forward, to the place where creativity in our ranks is more important that responding to an email and where the organization isn’t afraid to make an existing product redundant in favor of a new opportunity.