Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire: A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose [Hardcover]

Braden Kelley (Author), Rowan Gibson (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0470621672 | ISBN-13: 978-0470621677 | Edition: 1

Essential strategies to transform your organization and boost your profits

Want to recapture your organization's original innovative spirit? Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire helps you remove the obstacles that have crippled the innovation superpowers that made your organization successful in the first place.

• Helps you identify the blockages hindering innovation within your organization
• Reveals the fundamental changes that will help your business rebuild its hidden or lost innovation capabilities
• Explores leading innovation theories you can apply right away-without expensive consultants

Get the strategies you need to remove innovation barriers, increase profits-and change the way you do business.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kelley may have become an online media personality, but he's probably more well-known within the innovation community as author of the book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, published October 2010 by John Wiley & Sons. I wanted to provide a book that helps people identify and remove barriers to innovation and is an innovation primer for people who are looking to get started," (Seattle Times, 4 September 2011)

From the Inside Flap

Every successful organization began as a nimble, innovative start-up with the ability to course-correct and quickly adapt to the needs of its customers. But along the way, success and growth may have caused changes in the structure, the culture, and sometimes even the vision of the business.

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire equips your organization to identify and remove those barriers to innovation that have prevented it from achieving sustainable growth and change. Braden Kelley shares the profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that have helped countless organizations get back their innovative spirit and leverage the collective wisdom and passion of their employees.

Filled with case studies and proven guidance, this book evolves leading innovation theories into coherent, practical applications that you can implement in reinvigorating your own organization—without expensive consultants. You'll find world-class guidance on overcoming your business's blockages in the areas of:

• Vision

• Strategy

• Goals

• Insight

• Idea generation and evaluation

• Idea commercialization

• Organizational psychology

• Information and structure

• Sustainability

In today's fast-paced marketplace, those unwilling to change are often left behind. With an interactive Web site including health checks and an innovation audit, as well as video and text interviews, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire provides you with the tools you need to reframe your business's innovation strategy and goals and successfully supply the marketplace with revolutionary solutions to your customers' issues. Knock down your barriers to innovation. Create a healthy cooperation with the need for operational excellence. Let your corporate brilliance shine. Get the fire started with Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 188 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470621672
• ISBN-13: 978-0470621677
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.8 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter) is a popular Innovation and Social Business Speaker, and has been advising companies on how to increase their revenue and cut their costs since 1996. He has maximized profits for companies while living and working in the UK, Germany, and the United States. Braden earned his MBA from London Business School.

Braden works with global clients to create comprehensive innovation training for their organization, or to address specific innovation strategy, marketing strategy, or other business improvement needs. Braden specializes in the use of social media and other collaboration tools to attract and engage customers, partners, and employees to help organizations achieve their goals.

Braden has worked with a variety of industries including: financial services, healthcare, marketing, technology, retail, online services, mobile telecommunications, and more.

Braden is also a co-founder of the popular InnovationExcellence.com. He is passionate about innovation and social business, and has been commissioned by companies (including Innocentive) to write white papers and case studies, but has also written 650+ articles for publications including The Washington Post, iSix Sigma magazine, Texas Enterprise, American Express OPEN Forum, and more.

His international clients include Microsoft, Misys, HomeAway.com, Roche Diagnostics, Millicom International Cellular, Wunderman, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire - Must Read September 28, 2010

By Deb Mills-Scofield

Format:Hardcover

With the plethora of books coming out on innovation, Braden Kelley's "Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire" is one you must get, read, mark up, and share. It is easy for anyone, from layman to expert, to read and understand, adopt and adapt.

Braden provides readers with a toobox for innovation. The book provides practical, usable, adaptable tools for creating a (more) innovative culture in your own organization, regardless of size, shape and scope. There are guides, checklists, and real world examples from many industries. The approach is holistic, detailing the changes innovation makes to and for your customers, employees, suppliers, distribution system, marketing, sales and operations. Not many books provide such a thorough value-chain analysis.

But more than that, Braden addresses the harder issues around innovation - the `soft' stuff. Very few books give the time and attention to the people and culture issues which are the hardest and most critical to success. The book has several sections about culture - how to get people engaged and stay engaged, how important trust is, how innovation is a social activity and even how your policies and procedures need to change to encourage innovation, with concrete examples instead of theory.

If you're interested in really making innovation an integral part of your organization, then "Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire" is a must have that you will use over and over again and will remain a constant source of reference.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire April 17, 2012

By Rolf Dobelli HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Business strategist Braden Kelley says innovation starts with a vision, a strategy and a goal. A new idea by itself does not constitute an innovation; innovation is how you implement the idea to generate value. Readers familiar with the subject will see that few of Kelley's ideas are brand new, but they'll appreciate his accessible synthesis, which is immediately applicable and easy to follow. getAbstract recommends Kelley's brief book to anyone interested in innovation and especially to those who are new to the field or skeptical about their ability to generate positive change.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars You need to be aware of these dangers, and ask these questions March 17, 2011

By Andrew Webster - Canada

Format:Hardcover

Of the many thoughts, lessons, and tools I've taken from the book, I value the illumination of dangers and asking of necessary questions the most. Kelley considers innovation from the cultural stage-setting, to the selection and grooming of optimal solutions, through to sustainability of innovation. Each chapter helpfully outlines impediments to be aware of in the given context. Importantly, questions are also asked, which we can honestly answer ourselves as readers, and will ultimately challenge us to identify our innovation blind spots.

One important aspect of the general message of the book is the emphasis placed upon the uncovering of insights in the innovation process - a key point that is often forgotten or trivialized by placing excess emphasis on idea generation. The simple (>1 page) case studies do a great job of illustrating why insights are so critical, as well as other concepts throughout.