Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Conventional business wisdom tells us that entrepreneurs are society's main source of innovation. Young founders leave college with a big idea, get to work in a garage, and build something that changes the world. Typical corporate employees, strangled by slow-moving bureaucracy, are blocked from making transformative discoveries.

In Driving Innovation from Within , strategist and advisor Kaihan Krippendorff disproves one of today's biggest business myths to highlight lessons for innovators and leaders. He reveals how many of the modern world's most impactful creations were invented by passionate employee innovators. If it were left up to go-it-alone entrepreneurs, we would not have mobile phones, personal computers, or e-mail. Distilling more than 150 interviews with internal innovators and leading experts along with insights from the latest research and today's most successful companies, from Tencent and Amazon to Mastercard and Starbucks, Krippendorff lays out a step-by-step playbook to unlock innovation from the inside. He maps the barriers that frustrate efforts to disrupt from within and provides tools to remove them, detailing how visionary leaders can create islands of freedom inside an organization to activate existing employees' potential and beat startups at their own game. Driving Innovation from Within is a practical and inspiring guide to leadership from all levels for those who want the fulfillment of changing the world without leaving their job in order to do it.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. xi)
• Introduction What My Clients Taught Me (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 The Real Innovators Among Us (p. 5)
• Chapter 2 Six Attributes and Seven Barriers (p. 23)
• Chapter 3 Intent: Choosing to See and Seize Opportunities (p. 35)
• Chapter 4 Need: Knowing Where to Look (p. 48)
• Chapter 5 Options: How to Generate Disruptive Ideas (p. 70)
• Chapter 6 Value Blockers: Neutralizing "Corporate Antibodies" (p. 83)
• Chapter 7 Act: Getting Permission to Experiment (p. 109)
• Chapter 8 Team: Building an Agile Team (p. 128)
• Chapter 9 Environment: Creating Islands of Freedom (p. 150)
• Chapter 10 For Leaders: How to Unleash Internal Innovation (p. 169)
• Appendix A Are Entrepreneurs the Innovators? (p. 191)
• Appendix B Value Blockers Checklist (p. 195)
• Appendix C Team Frameworks (p. 199)
• Appendix D Innovative Outperformers (p. 203)
• Acknowledgments (p. 205)
• Notes (p. 207)
• Bibliography (p. 221)
• Index (p. 233)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Driving Innovation from Within posits that in an environment of constant innovation and renewal--i.e., the present environment--the most innovative ideas are likely to come from the employees of the company, not the executives at the top. A book that takes this bottom-up approach to internal innovation, as distinguished from a top-down approach that expects executives to initiate such innovation, is rare indeed. Krippendorff (well known as a business strategist and professional speaker) eschews the opacity that characterizes professional discussion of innovation and instead deploys an avuncular style that engages the reader without sacrificing tightly researched sourcing of his findings and recommendations. He offers an unusual combination of scholarly insight and practical application wrapped in clear, lucid, and engaging prose that encourages thoughtful action on the part of the reader. This clarion call is all the more effective because of its finely nuanced presentation and clear action plan. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Stuart A. Schulman, CUNY Baruch College