Seth Kahan - Getting Innovation Right: How Leaders Leverage Inflection Points to Drive Success

With Getting Innovation Right, Seth has delivered a guide for leaders everywhere to help accelerate their team's innovation through real-world examples and pragmatic insight.

Kevin Parker; president, CEO, and chairman of the board, Deltek, Inc.

As a client of Seth's I am happy he has written a book that spells out the successes he has had with a number of organizations. There are great lessons here. He took on tough challenges and turned them into success stories. Getting Innovation Right will resonate far beyond the industries his book covers. We can all learn from others success when it comes to innovation.

Ralph Nappi, president, The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies

Seth is a boundless strategic thinker and motivator. Getting Innovation Right can propel your organization's next move upward. Finding that elusive formula is the key to achieving sustainable, profitable revenue growth, and Seth gets the job done in an entertaining way.

Mike Panaggio, chairman, DME Holdings, LLC

Seth does it again with his latest book, Getting Innovation Right, by providing a simple approach to attacking innovation. It is having the courage to innovate that will differentiate us from all the rest and is what we all strive for. After reading this book, you will not only have an approach to utilize, but the tools to help you make things happen quickly and succeed.

Michaela Oliver, senior vice president of human resources, Rosetta Stone, Inc.

Getting Innovation Right emphasizes a maturity that all business executives should develop. I highly recommend this book, as it captures both basic business fundamentals and a dynamic approach for executives to rethink processes and strategy on an ongoing basis.

Anthony J. Cancelosi, K.M., president and CEO, Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind

In this massively disruptive and mostly distracting business environment, you have but one choice: innovate, or evaporate. But you must get it right, which isn't easy. Enter Seth Kahan's Getting Innovation Right.

Matthew E. May, author, The Laws of Subtraction and The Shibumi Strategy

Cover concept by Faceout Studio

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Portions of this book are taken from posts that appeared in Leading Change, the authors column at fastcompany.com, and are copyright Mansueto Ventures, LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kahan, Seth.

Getting innovation right : how leaders leverage inflection points to drive success / Seth Kahan. -- First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-37833-5 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-46144-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-46143-3 (ebk.);

ISBN 978-1-118-46142-6 (ebk.)

1. Strategic planning. 2. Technological innovations--Management. 3. Diffusion of innovations.

4. New products. 5. Leadership. I. Title.

HD30.28.K335 2013

658.4063- dc23

2012048517

For visionary leaders of all kinds: may these tools and techniques help you innovate successfully for the benefit of all life.

Introduction

Innovation is about success. It is not innovation if you come up with something new and it cripples or kills you. If you pour in your effort and are only marginally better off than when you started, you have not achieved innovation.

Innovation is the successful introduction of a market offering that profits everybody involved, both you and your customers. Innovation happens when a new product or service creates a return in the market that far exceeds the time and money it takes to develop and execute. When a new offering is accepted and embraced, generating the resources that make it possible to support and grow its place in the marketthat is innovation. That's a positive inflection point. That is what you must aim for.

I once worked on an initiative that was destined for greatness. My team at the World Bank was building a cutting edge internal network and our timing could not have been better. We called it