Leapfrogging: Harness the Power of Surprise for Business Breakthroughs [Hardcover]

Soren Kaplan (Author), Marshall Goldsmith (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: August 6, 2012

Today’s business climate demands breakthroughs, not incremental improvements. What makes one leader or company thrive while others languish in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing marketplace? There’s no doubt hard work is involved, but Soren Kaplan shows you can’t do it by simply creating a big vision and implementing a set plan. In his trailblazing debut, Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they’re taught to avoid: embrace surprise—the new key to business breakthroughs.

Instead of fighting against uncertainty, Kaplan reveals how to use it to break down limiting mindsets and barriers to change the game. By highlighting specific ways to transform both good and bad surprises into unique opportunities, Kaplan encourages leaders to compete by embracing counterintuitive ideas, managing paradoxes, and even welcoming failure. This is the key to “leapfrogging”—creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward.

Leapfrogging connects new research, unconventional strategies, and practical tools for navigating the “messy” and elusive process of achieving business breakthroughs. Filled with real-world examples from innovators such as Gatorade, Intuit, Philips, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, OpenTable, and Etsy, Kaplan shows that any organization or business function can leapfrog. Using his LEAPS process (Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize), leaders learn to seek out, recognize, and respond to surprising experiences and events as a way to create solutions that leap beyond the current expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition.

Kaplan’s writing style makes his compelling findings fun to read, simple to understand, and easy to implement. Leapfrogging is the new handbook for the modern leader.

Winner of the Bronze Axiom Award in the category of Leadership.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Leapfrogging challenges its readers to break out of conventional thinking by employing a few simple notions: know who you are, stay true to your purpose, and enjoy the journey along the way. By showcasing examples of challenging conventional thinking, embracing surprise, and welcoming failure as a learning exercise, Kaplan invites readers to learn from the stories of others. Leapfrogging shows that leaders who look inward to challenge the status quo will be on track to truly change the game.”
—Sarah Robb O’Hagan, President, Gatorade

“Breakthroughs in business don’t follow set formulas. We must continually explore options, test, and modify our assumptions based on results and feedback. Then, we can adapt to what we experience and learn. Leapfrogging delivers new principles and tools that readers can apply to their business, whether they’re just starting out or leading an established organization. It is the new guide for entrepreneurs and leaders in today’s environment.”
—Glenn Allen, cofounder, OpenTable

“We as business leaders are always talking about, but rarely find, the key to lasting breakthroughs in the organizations we lead. We push and persist and still get incremental results. Leapfrogging is an extremely useful and insightful handbook for managers on how to finally break the cycle of incremental innovation.”
—Dr. Ric Roi, Senior Vice President, Global Center of Excellence; Head, Consulting Practice Leader, Asia Pacific Right Management/Manpower Group

“Superbly crafted, powerful in its simplicity, offering smart, actionable learning… Finally, a simple, holistic model that allows for breakthrough thinking and living.”
—Mary Beth Robles, Vice President, Innovation Capabilities and Knowledge Systems, Colgate-Palmolive

“Creating breakthroughs requires new approaches to how we engage in learning as leaders ourselves and as organizations. Leapfrogging reveals strategies for engaging people in the type of experiential learning that challenges assumptions and leads to breakthroughs.”
—Anne Blouin, CAE, Chief Learning Officer, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership

About the Author

Soren Kaplan has worked within large corporations, founded and advises start-ups, consults to global companies, and educates students and executives about the art and discipline of strategic thinking, innovation, and leadership for business breakthroughs. His unique ability to uncover surprises that are "hidden in plain sight" helps leaders shift their mindsets to rethink and reinvent their organizations.

As a Managing Principal of InnovationPoint, Soren leads strategic initiatives and provides leadership development for organizations including Cisco, Colgate-Palmolive, Disney, Medtronic, Philips, Visa, and numerous other firms. He is an Adjunct Professor within the Imagineering Academy at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. He has a Ph.D. degree in Organizational Psychology and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two daughters, and hypo-allergenic cat.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (August 6, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1609944941
• ISBN-13: 978-1609944940
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Strategy & Competition

More About the Author

Soren is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book Leapfrogging. He helps innovative leaders disrupt mindsets and markets, and works with organizations including Disney, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, Medtronic, Philips, PepsiCo, and numerous other start-ups and nonprofits. Soren previously led the internal strategy and innovation group at Hewlett-Packard (HP) during the roaring 1990's in Silicon Valley and was a co-founder of iCohere, one of the first web collaboration platforms for online learning and communities of practice. He is an Adjunct Professor within the Imagineering Academy at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. He has been quoted, published, and interviewed by FastCompany, Forbes, CNBC, National Public Radio, the American Management Association, USA Today, Strategy & Leadership, and The International Handbook on Innovation, among many others. He holds Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Organizational Psychology and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two daughters, and hypo-allergenic cat.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Leapfrogging Makes Sense!!! August 6, 2012

By Micy

Format:Kindle Edition

Leapfrogging provides an in depth look at how to create new products, services, business models or
processes that are "breakthroughs" or that "change the game" in some way. The author makes the case
that anyone who wants to do something big and important will have to wrestle with uncertainty and
respond to unforeseen "surprises" during the process.

Overall the premise makes sense, and many detailed examples from organizations like Apple, Four
Seasons, and OpenTable back it up. The diversity of stories is good since a number of small lesser-
known companies and even nonprofits are profiled that have done some very innovative things. The
book also does a nice job of applying the concepts to specific business functions (there's an interesting
case from DuPont's legal department for example).

A model called "LEAPS" delves into the phases of creating breakthroughs. The five LEAPS phases are
all about the leadership and organizational experiences that occur during the process of creating
breakthroughs, most of which address the social and psychological issues that are at play and typically
go unspoken in most organizations. Examples include how uncertainty and fear of failure lead to
risk-aversion -- which in turn leads people to retrench into behavior that worked in the past but
that undermines the future. Other examples talk about how to overcome the deer-in-the-headlights
syndrome by minimizing risk through defining the smallest steps possible to test your highest potential
opportunities and biggest assumptions. This approach results in "optimistic persistence" which comes
from a feeling of progress tied to learning about what works (and what doesn't work), which then helps
inspire more forward action.

The big theme is about "the power of surprise" and how it can be used on two different levels. The first
is how anything we do that is a "game changer" should challenge assumptions, add value to others,
and basically create a feeling of surprise when people first see or experience it. The meat of the book,
however, is about how to apply the LEAPS steps to create breakthroughs that use both good and bad
surprises that will inevitably arise during the journey.

I liked the original spin on the topics of leadership and innovation. The book shows how both positive
and negative surprises are natural parts of life, and therefore business. It also shows that within our
unexpected events and experiences reside "guideposts" to help inform whatever we're doing if we open
ourselves up to them. Each chapter ends with various discussion questions and tools to help make things
practical. For anyone looking for a Six Sigma type "toolkit" for product development or business model
innovation, you may be better served by going with a book like Business Model Generation since this
book will likely fall a bit short. But then again, a key principle of Leapfrogging is that we shouldn't rely
on cookie-cutter approaches.

For anyone looking for a fresh spin on a pretty well saturated topic, with a particular emphasis
on the "deeper" things that leaders need to think and do to take things to the next level, I would
recommend this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The power and value of serendipity on the other side of complexity August 7, 2012

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

As I began to read this book, I was reminded of an observation by Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I wouldn't give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity." This is what Soren Kaplan has in mind when suggesting that the single most important factor in fostering true game changers in innovation is "the way leaders and organizations handle the discomfort, the disorientation, and the thrill (and pain) of living with uncertainty, finding clarity from ambiguity, and being surprised." Very few business leaders and their organizations are both willing and able to work heir way through the complexity of what I view as "the fog of innovation" until, finally, there is a business breakthrough.

In Leading Change, James O'Toole suggests that many change initiatives fail because of cultural resistance that results from what he so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Kaplan duly acknowledges that leapfrogging - "the process of overcoming limiting mindsets and barriers to create business breakthroughs - is almost never easy. On the contrary, the status quo always has staunch defenders and many of them reside in the C-suite. More often than not, the current status quo is one they created by the same process of transformation to which Kaplan refers. That is, in response to what was then the status quo, they and their associates "delivered exactly what groundbreaking innovations always deliver: something new, something powerfully effective, and - most important - something [begin italics] unexpected [end italics]." Now the target is on their backs. Moreover, the greatest threat the organization now faces is not from a competitor. Rather, it is internal: an obsolete mindset among its leaders who cannot respond effectively to "an age of wrenching change and hyper competition."

Kaplan inserts real-world examples of business executives in dozens of quite different organizations (e.g. DuPont, Four Seasons, Google, Kimberly-Clark, KIPP, PepsiCo, and Unilever) who struggle - with mixed results - to "harness the power of surprise for business breakthroughs." These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye:

o Breakthroughs Can Come from Anywhere (Pages 17-22)
o Big Surprises Can Come in Small Doses (41-45)
o New Mindsets Are the Missing Link (52-54)
o The LEAPS Model (58)
o Liberating the Brain Delivers the Big Picture (64-69)
o "Leapfrogging Tools" (77-79)

Note: Kaplan adds to his reader's "tool box" with other "tools" on Pages 98-103, 121-125, 150-153, and 176-180.

o New Insights Come from Pushing Beyond Comfort Zones (87-91)
o Small Steps Can Lead to Big Things (107-110)
o External Criticism Is Rooted in Old Assumptions (161-166)
o Humility Opens Us Up to Seeing Surprise [and Being Surprised] (161-166)
o The Paradox of Surprise (188-189)

Readers will also appreciate Kaplan's strategic insertion of "Questions to Consider" sections within - rather than one at the conclusion of -- Chapters 1-8 that will facilitate, indeed expedite review of key points and issues later. Moreover, of equal importance, the questions enable the reader to interact with the material by thinking about how best to apply appropriate portions of it within the reader's own organization.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out three others: Peter Sims's Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, Jason Jennings' Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive, and Paul Schoemaker's Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Break on Through to Innovation January 27, 2013

By Nick McCormick

Format:Hardcover

Innovation is the buzzword of the day. In Leapfrogging, Author Soren Kaplan, provides a template for discovering and fostering business breakthroughs. He distills his strategy into the acronym, LEAPS - Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize.

The key, though, as indicated in the subtitle, is surprise - to open yourself up to surprises, embrace them, learn from them, and act upon them. In most cases, surprises are not huge game changers. They can be little things. Kaplan calls them guideposts that can lead us on the journey of breakthroughs.

This reviewer was impressed with the time spent on the importance of the "A" and "P" in LEAPS - acting (taking small steps), and persisting in order to overcome the fear of failure and continue to move forward, learning from mistakes.

Kaplan provides sound advice and many real life examples to support his strategy. Follow up questions and exercises are also provided to stimulate thought and propel the reader further on the breakthrough journey. Anyone can harness the power of surprise and achieve business breakthroughs. Pick up a copy of the book and start leapfrogging today.

Nick McCormick, Author, "Acting Up Brings Everyone Down: The Impacts of Childish Behavior in the Workplace"