Corporate Innovator: A Guide Through the Labyrinth

Innovation is a top priority for all kinds of organizations, of all sizes and shapes, throughout the world. But innovation doesn’t happen only at the executive level. People within an organization come up with great ideas that can propel the company forward. All too often, however, would-be innovators find that the organization is unreceptive to their new ideas. They are stymied by bureaucracy, power dynamics, or countless other barriers to innovation. They find themselves lost in a labyrinth that blocks them everywhere they turn.

William Duggan--a leading expert on innovation and strategic thinking--offers a guide to navigating the maze from idea to implementation. He provides practical advice on communicating new ideas effectively, getting buy-in from others, winning allies, and overcoming resistance or outright opposition to innovation. Duggan focuses on the strategy and tactics of building support within the organization, exploring the crucial takeaways from research in psychology about how people react to new ideas. This book includes a series of interviews with successful corporate innovators as well as analysis of historical cases that combine lively storytelling with actionable insights. For anyone in an organization who has been frustrated with the lack of innovation, Corporate Innovator delivers an essential roadmap for going from idea to action.

William Duggan teaches innovation at Columbia Business School in graduate and executive courses. His previous Columbia University Press books include Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012) and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2017). Duggan has given talks and workshops to thousands of executives from companies around the world and has twenty years of experience as a strategy advisor and consultant.