Tag Archives: Books

Latest Radio Interview with The Health Maven

Leave a reply

LeAnna J Carey - The Health MavenI’m proud to share with you the link to my latest radio interview. This time I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with LeAnna J. Carey (@LeannaJCarey), host of the popular radio program The Health Maven – Innovation Talk.

We spend the 30 minutes talking about The Nine Innovation Roles and how organizations around the world are increasingly utilizing The Nine Innovation Roles to help them build more effective innovation teams. Curious which ones I think LeAnna fills or that I see myself typically filling?

Tune into the broadcast to find out! 🙂

Click here to listen to a recording of the interview


Build a common language of innovation on your team

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Renting ‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’

1 Reply

I noticed something new on the Amazon page for my book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire today when I popped onto their web site.

What was it?

Amazon has introduced a rental option for textbooks.

It makes sense that my book is part of the program because Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is being used as a text book as part of innovation courses at Creighton and other fine institutions.

Professors can get evaluation copies here from my publisher John Wiley & Sons.

Here is a screenshot:

Rent 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire'

BUT, one thing that doesn’t make sense is that the rental price of $22.22 is only slightly less than the discounted sale price of $22.53 that Amazon charges for a new copy of my book. Which is a pretty good discount off the retail price of $34.95.

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire makes a great bulk book buy for organizations seeking to establish a common language of innovation or to identify and remove one or more barriers to innovation they might be struggling against.

I believe in the content so much that I’ve made a downloadable free sample chapter available for everyone.

If you are in the United States and interested in making a bulk purchase of this five-star book, please contact Hooks Book Events – an independent minority women-owned business in Washington D.C.

If you are outside the United States, you might want to check out 800-CEO-Read or you can get FREE shipping to 90 countries is available from Book Depository.

And what better way to get the most value out of a bulk purchase of my book than to invite me to come deliver an innovation keynote or workshop? 🙂


Build a common language of innovation on your team

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Did you like Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire?

Leave a reply

Did you like Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire?My book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire has gotten a lot of great reviews on Amazon already, and several likes, and an increasing number of companies are buying it in bulk to help set a common language of innovation in their organization.

I am constantly humbled by the support that people show for my writing, most recently in a post on the Harvard Business Review Blog by Scott D Anthony titled The Making of an Innovation Master.

If you would like to show support for my writing endeavors, please click the ‘like’ button on Amazon (the international flavors have like buttons too).

If you have already read the book, please let others know what you found useful or valuable about it by writing a short review on your favorite book site. Don’t forget to grab your free stuff here.

And if you would like to build a common language of innovation in your organization, I can help organize a bulk order at up to 35% off the list price for USA deliveries (usually with no shipping and no tax) through a bookseller I’ve had great success with – just contact me. 800-CEO-READ also does a great job with bulk orders and can do some customizations.

Thank you very much for showing your support for Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

Happy Innovating!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011

Leave a reply

Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011Do you have a favorite innovation video?

We asked you the global innovation community, to suggest videos for the Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011.

Many people did, and they had the chance to win some of the $3,650 worth of prizes up for grabs.

Here are the Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011 based on the submissions:

  1. Where Good Ideas Come From


  2. Innovation Acceleration


  3. Do Schools Kill Creativity?


  4. ABC Niteline – IDEO Shopping Cart


  5. Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy – First Followers


  6. Interview with Dean Kamen


  7. Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment


  8. The Myths of Innovation


  9. Two Similar Visions of the Future

    10. Here are two very similar visions of the future, the first is Microsoft’s vision for the year 2020:


    The second is Corning’s vision of the future dominated by specialty glass:

  10. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Happy innovating!

Before you go…

What are your favorite innovation videos?
(make your suggestions in the comments)

Special Bonus

Download 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' sample chapterIf you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Seth Godin and Amazon – The Domino Project

7 Replies

Will the Innovation Dominoes Fall and Disrupt the Book Publishing Industry?

Seth Godin and Amazon - The Domino Project“The enemy is not piracy, the enemy is obscurity.” – Tim O’Reilly

I came across a TechCrunch TV interview with Seth Godin today about his future publishing plans.

I’ve been wondering what Seth meant when he told me last year at the World Innovation Forum that he would never publish another traditional book. Here is the video:

Now, he has made it clear what he meant, and just what his future plans are in the below video from Tech Crunch. His plans have a name, The Domino Project, and it is a publishing house venture he is undertaking with Amazon and it starts with a simple question:

How do you make a book spreadable?

Right now books work very hard against being spreadable, and in Amazon’s continuing quest to evolve the book business beyond just selling ebooks and blogs on Kindle, they apparently approached Seth Godin, gave him a blank sheet of paper to envision a new way of approaching book publishing. He described this collaboration with Amazon – The Domino Project – through a series of questions:

What happens if we allowed you to buy a 5-pack for only slightly more than one book? Wouldn’t you then give four of them away to people who would be interested in reading them?

What happens if we allowed people to share a Kindle book for free for a certain period of time and then try to figure out how to make money from it?

Can you dream big enough?

Can you do something that is worth doing, or will you hold back and play it safe?

Amazon will be working directly with authors – including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Godin’s new book will of course be included (and will be on initiative). He also mentioned that the trend of these new books will be towards the spectrum of manifestos. Traditional book publishers can’t do 96 page books, but The Domino Project can. Godin says that the success of the effort will be measured on whether or not the first 10,000 people who get the book, actually share it.

So, what was the most depressing part of the interview?

“The average American buys one book a year.”

Will The Domino Project successfully disintermediate the traditional publishing houses and transform how authors go about publishing book? Is there anything here that is actually new? What do you think?

Here’s the video interview if you would like to watch it for yourself:

Seth Godin’s new book Poke the Box will be The Domino Project’s first title and it will come as a limited edition, a hardcover, a Kindle ebook, an audiobook, a 5-pack, and a 52-pack.

Oh, and if you don’t have my a copy of my book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire already, it’s available on Amazon as a hardcover or a Kindle eBook, or from other great physical and online booksellers:

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on Twitter

1 Reply

#innochat this Thursday with author Braden Kelley

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on TwitterOn Thursday, November 18, 2010 at Noon EST I will be participating in a twitter chat at #innochat (6PM in Europe, 9AM on the west coast). One great way to follow along is to use this URL:

http://tweetchat.com/room/innochat

I will be discussing some of the topics in my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, especially the role and importance of innovation vision, strategy, and goals. The book is being very warmly received so far and the content of the book appears to be resonating with people, both in terms of the early reviews and interviews, but also through sold out events like the recent one in Toronto. The book is very accessible and is focused on helping organizations identify and remove barriers to innovation. To find out more about what we’ll be covering in the hour, please see:

http://innochat.com/innochats/date/2010-11-18/nov-18-innochat-stoking-your-innovation-bonfire-guest-braden-kelley

I’d like to invite you all to attend this session free of charge – and hope that you’ll enjoy the typically very informative, energetic and lively discussion and debate for which #innochat is known for.

If you’ve never attended one of these type of debates on twitter – the process is simple: At the prescribed time (#innochat meets every Thursday at Noon EST (-5:00 GMT) ) – login to your twitter application of choice (Tweetchat is popular), and do a search for posts with “#innochat” in them. By making sure that all posts have “#innochat” in their contributions, participants are able to have a mass live discussion on great topics like innovation.

I look forward to chatting with you about the book on Thursday!

Win a Signed Copy of ‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’

Download 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' sample chapterTo add a little fun to the mix, at the end of this chat I will give away a signed copy of my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire to the most interesting tweet during the #innochat. Everyone else interested can download a sample chapter from the book. I hope you enjoy it and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the hard work that goes into this blog.

Download the sample chapter

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’ on Kindle

1 Reply

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on KindleStoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose is now available for Amazon Kindle both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Enjoy the book on your iPad, Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac before it is widely available. If you buy the electronic version of the book from either Barnes & Noble or Amazon, you can download their readers for almost all of today’s major computing platforms.

The book will be available in hardcover October 5, 2010 from online retailers in the United States, and a week later it will be available in book stores and other electronic retailers outside the United States (UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and more).

If you’re curious about the book, you can look inside it on Amazon, or use Google Preview on the publisher’s web site, or watch on Monday, September 20, 2010 for a link to a free sample chapter from the book to be posted on http://innovationbonfire.com.

Getting a copy of the book is a great way to support the blog and keep it free.

Click here to pre-order the book

Build a Common Language of Innovation

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Don’t Believe the Innovation Hype

4 Replies

Don't Believe the Innovation HypeThere are some strange rumors circulating out there that I’ve written a book. Before these rumors spin out of control, I thought I should address you, the loyal and valued readers of Blogging Innovation, and set the record straight.

I have not written a novel, an autobiography, or a tell-all book. Let us be clear. Despite what some people might be saying, I have not written a book about how to fix the sorry state of the global economy, or anything that might even in a small part include tips about how to find the perfect job. I also do not, nor have I ever pretended to be able to give you a new look or make you fashionable, either by writing about fashion or by speaking any magic or even mildly interesting words about the subject.

But I must admit, that yes, I have written a book about innovation. Get your rotten tomatoes ready.

Now, some of you might be wondering, why on earth would I do this?

And, some of you might be wondering why I haven’t addressed these rumors before now.

Well, in regards to the timing, it didn’t feel right to say anything before now. It just felt too premature.

Stoking Your Innovation BonfireAnd, in regards to why I would write a book? Well, it’s not to become the next Julia Child or John Grisham. I’m not very good at cooking, and I couldn’t stomach being a lawyer. But, I can finally come clean and say that, yes, I am passionate about innovation. There, I’ve said it, and if you want to know what I think about the subject, you can now read the sordid details in the pages of this book.

Instead of fashion or fine cuisine, I’ve chosen to write about identifying and removing barriers to innovation. The full title of the book is Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose and it is available for pre-order wherever fine business books are sold. The book is being published by John Wiley & Sons, officially launches in October 2010, and features a foreword by Rowan Gibson.

With this all out in the open, I promise that my blogging game won’t go to hell in a hand basket, and I hope I won’t be missing the Postrank cut anytime soon. If you want to get the inside scoop and read more information about the book, please visit http://innovationbonfire.com.

Now that I am publicly humiliated and exposed as the author that I am, I might as well offer you the opportunity to be one of the first to preview the sample chapter from my new book. All you have to do is join our mailing list by August 31, 2010 and you will receive an electronic copy of the chapter on ‘Sustainable Innovation’ from Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on September 1, 2010. If you’re already receiving our monthly Innovation Insights newsletter, then you will automatically receive the free sample chapter.

I promise you won’t have to wait in any silly lines (queues for the Brits and Aussies among you) and I guarantee that you will still be able to read it no matter how you choose to hold your device. Finally, please don’t tell too many about this, I’m not sure I’m ready to face Maria Bartiromo quite yet.

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Book Review and Innovation Summary – “The Design of Business”

2 Replies

The Design of BusinessA few weeks ago I received “The Design of Business” by Roger Martin in the mail. “The Design of Business” is a relatively short, easy, and pleasant read.

The main premise of the book is that our organizations, and the business schools that fill out their top leadership ranks, are too focused on analytical thinking at the expense of intuitive thinking. This focus creates too much emphasis on reliability at the expense of validity.

“The most successful businesses in the years to come will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay that I call design thinking.” – Roger Martin

One of the key concepts of the book is the introduction of the Knowledge Funnel – a visual element that shows how knowledge progresses from mysteries to heuristics to algorithms. It all begins with a question at the top of the funnel, and at each stage transition, knowledge and execution can typically be transferred to lower cost labor (and possibly handled by a computer when they reach the algorithm level).

The Knowledge FunnelAt the same time, there are other tensions in our organizations that managers in the era of the creative economy will have to become attuned to, and these include managing an appropriate balance between exploitation and exploration and not falling victim to the false certainty of the past when making business development decisions.

Ultimately, the exploration of the mysteries at the top of the knowledge funnel and exploitation of the algrithms at the bottom of the funnel are equally important. Companies that focus too much on one, at the expense of the other, risk their very future.

Creating a design thinking organization is not easy, and several pages are devoted to describing the struggles of A.G. Lafley and Claudia Kotchka in transforming P&G;’s organizational culture to be more design-centric.

In addition to other examples of organizations pushing themselves more towards design thinking, there is also a great deal of focus in the book on the transformation of mysteries into heuristics and heuristics into algorithms.

Overall, the book is another way of looking at the challenge facing innovators everywhere who are looking to embed design or innovation (or both) into their organization.

So, are you ready to tackle the challenge of achieving a balance of analytical thinking with intuitive thinking in your organization?

My interview with “The Design of Business” author Roger Martin can be found here.

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.