Innovation is the ruling buzzword in business today. Technologycompanies invest billions in developing new gadgets; business leaders see innovation as the key to acompetitive edge; policymakers craft regulations to foster a climate of innovation. And yetbusinesses report a success rate of only four percent for innovation initiatives. Can wesignificantly increase our odds of success? In The Innovator's Way, innovationexperts Peter Denning and Robert Dunham reply with an emphatic yes. Innovation, they write, is notsimply an invention, a policy, or a process to be managed. It is a personal skill that can belearned, developed through practice, and extended into organizations. Denning and Dunham identifyand describe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform: sensing, envisioning,offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading, and embodying. Together, these practices canboost a fledgling innovator to success. Weakness in any of these practices, they show, blocksinnovation. Denning and Dunham chart the path to innovation mastery, from individual practices toteams and social networks.
Peter J. Denning is Distinguished Professor, Chair of the Computer Science Department, and Director of the Cebrowski Institute for Information Innovation and Superiority at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is the author of The Invisible Future, Talking Back to the Machine, Beyond Calculation, and other books.
Robert Dunham founded the Institute for Generative Leadership and the consulting company Enterprise Performance.
Robert P. Dunham founded the Institute for Generative Leadership and the consulting company Enterprise Performance.