Based on rigorous research of twenty-three real companies—and the unique practices they are using to encourage innovation and spur growth—DRIVING GROWTH THROUGH INNOVATION by bestselling author Robert Tucker (Managing the Future — over 75,000 copies sold) offers a practical but comprehensive approach for designing and implementing an enterprise-wide innovation strategy.You’ve read creativity books before, but innovation, as bestselling author Robert B. Tucker explains in this groundbreaking book, is much, much more: it is bringing new ideas to life—to drive growth, profitiablity and competitive advantage. Innovation is fast becoming the critical business skill of the 21st century. Driving Growth Through Innovation will take you behind the scenes to learn the winning methods behind some of the most exciting breakthroughs of our time. You will find out how innovators at Colgate-Palmolive brainstormed a product—Colgate Total—that unseated Crest to become the world’s leading toothpaste brand. Learn how Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services company, has used its global innovation initiative to generate fifteen to twenty percent of their revenue from products that have been introduced in the previous two years. Witness a highly unconventional, even controversial, focus group that Daimler Chrysler used to design the breakthrough PT Cruiser. Get the true story of how developers at Maytag used their experiences with designing the revolutionary Neptune washer to jumpstart growth in a mature market. And how Dana Corporation consistently elicits two ideas per month per employee with a stunning eighty percent implementation rate. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout and includes a self-assessment instrument so that readers can evaluate the innovation culture and practices of their organizations, as well as a discussion of the newly emerging position of chief innovation officer.

• Winner of the 2004 Publishers Marketing Association Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Business Book
• By the bestselling author of Managers As Mentors-over 100,000 copies sold
• Reveals the seven "magnetic service" secrets that work for cult-like brands such as Starbucks, Harley-Davidson, and Ritz-Carlton
• Provides tools, techniques, and tips for fostering customer devotion

Magnetic Service provides a provocative yet practical blueprint for going beyond mere customer loyalty to create and sustain customer devotion. Devoted customers not only forgive you when you err but actually help you correct what caused the mistake. They don't just recommend you; they assertively insist that their friends do business with you.

Authors Chip and Bilijack Bell made an intensive study of companies that inspire this kind of cult-like devotion-companies as diverse as Starbucks, Jack Daniels, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, GE, eBay, Chick-fil-A, Harley-Davidson, and many others. They found that these companies created customer experiences so captivating that they bound their customers to them-they provided "magnetic service." Chip and Bilijack identify the seven secrets of magnetic service, and use dozens of real-life examples to illustrate the secrets in action. And they show precisely what leaders can do to create a culture of magnetic service in any unit or organization.

• Winner of the 2004 Publishers Marketing Association Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Business Book
• By the bestselling author of Managers As Mentors-over 100,000 copies sold
• Reveals the seven "magnetic service" secrets that work for cult-like brands such as Starbucks, Harley-Davidson, and Ritz-Carlton
• Provides tools, techniques, and tips for fostering customer devotion

Bestselling author Margaret Wheatley and long-time Berkana Institute collaborator Deborah Frieze take readers on a learning journey into seven diverse communities that have walked out of limiting beliefs and practices and walked on to something new. From Brazil to Ohio, they demonstrate how each of these communities made a conscious choice to develop a healthier, more resilient world based on the idea to “create with what we have.”At a time when most communities’ resources are stretched past the breaking point, how is it possible to deal with the enormous challenges that families, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations face today? This inspiring book takes readers to seven communities around the world where the people have walked out of limiting beliefs and practices that precluded solutions to major social problems, and walked on to discover bold new ways to meet their needs. This book is a true learning journey, filled with intimate stories and portraits of the people and places the authors came to know through years of working together to transform their communities. The journey begins in Mexico, then moves to Brazil, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Greece and the U.S. The authors’ lives and ways of thinking have been transformed by these experiences and relationships – an experience they hope to recreate for the reader through vivid prose and photos. The reader will experience first hand how a change of beliefs about people results in new capacities and the possibility of a more healthy future.

For over 25 years, Michael Ray taught the celebrated Personal Creativity in Business course, mainly at Stanford University but also in non-academic settings. Over the years, Ray began to realize that the course was having a more profound impact on graduates than he'd ever intended. It went way beyond helping them in their careers. People who'd been through the course seemed to blossom-to have access to some secret source of energy and inspiration. They found new ways to contribute to their organizations. They thrived on diversity, fought gracefully, treated others with compassion, acceptance, appreciation, and respect. As one graduate put it, "This is transformation that works and lasts." What was going on? Ray came to realize that his creativity course was helping people discover what he calls their "highest goal." Your highest goal is what gives real meaning to your life-it is what speaks to the very core of your being. It's what makes you feel connected to something higher than yourself, whatever you call it-God, Truth, Spirit, Being. It's what truly motivates and sustains you, although you may not be able to put it into words, or even be consciously aware of it. It has nothing to do with worldly success or achievement, but Ray found that all of the successful people who had been through his course had a sustained connection to it. In fact, it was what they ultimately attributed their success to. In The Highest Goal, Michael Ray shares what he learned through decades of teaching his creativity course to help you discover, and live by, your highest goal. Throughout the book, Ray offers exercises, stories, and reflections that will help you get in touch with your highest goal, follow a path in tune with it, and let it inform every aspect of your life. Your highest goal is a source of power and wisdom that can vastly improve not only your own life, but the lives of everyone around you. Ray shows us how to open this inner font of creativity, compassion, and courage.

• Dubbed "the most creative man in Silicon Valley" by Fast Company magazine, Ray is the author of the bestselling Creativity in Business (more than 100,000 copies sold and selected as one of the nine "Greatest Business Books Ever Written" by Inc. magazine)
• Based on Stanford University's famed Personal Creativity in Business course-created and taught by the author for over a quarter century
• Reveals what truly drives the most successful alumni of the Creativity in Business course, and how you can harness the secret yourself
• Foreword by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

Effective performance communication is critical to business success. It supports customer relations, quick response, and productive work. It leads to faster management of change and the creation of a work climate that can support performance. It also links individuals to business goals and each other. On-the-Level spells out proven methods for success which are based on the authors' 45 years of work and management consulting in organizations around the world. This best-selling book has been thouroughly revised and updated, incorporating the newest developments in the field of performance appraisal.

The term "on-the-level communication" refers to direct, shared responsibility, output-focused communication in the workplace. It is communication that is open, above board, honest, respectful, and deliberate. On-the-Level focuses on planned discussions between employees and managers, team members, and suppliers and customers. It provides guidelines, ideas, and examples to help readers improve the quality, skill, and honesty of their communication when discussing goals, feedback, tough issues, and development on the job. The authors stress four central principles of on-the-level communication:
o Directness,
o Respect,
o Shared Responsibility, and
o Purpose.

On-the-Level is designed to help everyone in and around the workplace to plan and execute more effective and less fearful face-to-face communication. It shows how and why face-to-face, spontaneous discussions are key to continuous improvement and business success. The approach described in the book is effective in goal-setting, feedback and performance review, and development planning situations.

This book is for anyone who needs to communicate about performance issues. It provides tips and action steps for people who have difficulty talking about issues. Those who are already skilled and confident will gain new insight and practical tools.

• Emphasizes four central principles of "on-the-level" communication: directness, respect, shared responsibility, and purpose
• A handbook that can be kept on your desk and consulted as day-to-day performance issues arise

" We need our neighbors and community to stay healthy, produce jobs, raise our children, and care for those on the margin. Institutions and professional services have reached their limit of their ability to help us. The consumer society tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We have become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. John McKnight and Peter Block show that we have the capacity to find real and sustainable satisfaction right in our neighborhood and community. This book reports on voluntary, self-organizing structures that focus on gifts and value hospitality, the welcoming of strangers. It shows how to reweave our social fabric, especially in our neighborhoods. In this way we collectively have enough to create a future that works for all. "