The Innovation Show

Building a business requires more than just a good product and talented people; it requires you to take a hard look at how you show up as a leader. Open, Honest, and Direct helps you dive into the heart of your business and your people, identifying changes you can make to transform the way you and your managers lead. Part business book, part personal-development guide, this is a how-to full of practical ways to not only build and lead a high-performance team but also bring out the best in your people. Being a successful manager is less about staying constantly on top of your team and more about providing clarity and context for people. Levy's method for creating open, honest, and direct leaders within an organization provides you with tactical tools you can put to use right away. This is a toolkit for designing a culture that supports employee performance and future-proofs your business. Many managers are promoted because they are great at what they do, but that doesn't necessarily translate into their ability to manage a team and get the most out of their people. In today's business environment where the competition for top talent is intense, it's integral to not only keep your top talent but also be able to coach all of your people and unlock their full potential. Open, Honest, and Direct is a field guide and powerful movement for leading that will give your organization the competitive edge it needs.

Great ideas don't just happen. Innovation springs from creative thinking—a method of the human mind that we can study and learn. In The Art of Ideas, our guest brings together business concepts with stories of creativity in art, politics, and history to provide a visual and accessible guide to the art and science of new and useful ideas. He details how to spark your own ideas and what to do while waiting for inspiration to strike. He shows that regardless of the field, innovations happen in the same way: examples from history, presence of mind, creative combination, and resolution to action. The Art of Ideas features case studies and exercises that explain how to break down problems, search for precedents, and creatively combine past models to form new ideas. It showcases how Picasso developed his painting style, how Gandhi became the man we know today, and how Netflix came to disrupt the movie-rental business.

What separates your mind from the mind of an animal? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future - all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the pre-eminent species on Earth. But in recent decades, claims of human superiority have been eroded by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools, or how elephants can classify humans by age, gender, and language. Take Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who demonstrates his species' exceptional photographic memory. Based on research on a range of animals, including crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and, of course, chimpanzees and bonobos, our guest today explores the scope and depth of animal intelligence, revealing how we have grossly underestimated non-human brains. He overturns the view of animals as stimulus-response beings and opens our eyes to their complex and intricate minds. With astonishing stories of animal cognition, his work challenges everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence. We welcome author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Frans de Waal. More about Frans: https://www.facebook.com/franspublic/

Our guest today argues that everything is changing fast, apart from how we behave. Our ways of thinking and making decisions have changed little, with the traditional wisdom being that improvements are best done incrementally, just as big, established corporations will increase profits incrementally and governments will change laws incrementally. But the problems we now need to solve require a revolution in thinking and behavior in order to avoid disaster. He lays out the reality of the dangerous situation we find ourselves in and suggests solutions that empower everyone, including business people, politicians, diplomats, and teachers, to repair the damage we have already done, and prepare for the dramatic changes to come. Over a 30-year period our guest founded and bought 20 companies in nine countries. He is an Emmy Award winner and author of the WSJ best-selling book: "Total Rethink: Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries" we welcome David McCourt to the show

Rob Fitzpatrick is author of "The Mom Test, How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you" His book shows us how customer conversations go wrong and how we can do better. They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little. As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. Win one of 2 copies by signing up to the show here: www.theinnovationshow.io and find Rob on ww.robfitz.com

The world around us is changing rapidly. There is now more pressure on established companies to innovate. The challenge most companies face is how to develop new products for new markets, while managing their core business at the same time. The principles and practices outlined in this book provide companies with a blueprint of how to manage innovation while they execute on their core business. The Corporate Startup provides frameworks, visualisations, templates, tools and methods that can be easily applied to develop new products and business models. We welcome author of The Corporate Startup: How established companies can create successful innovation ecosystems, Dan Toma

More agility. More energy. More genius. Why do some companies always seem to have the best ideas, the most engaged people and the most profitable growth? Based on 10 years of research, today's book goes behind the scenes of some of the world's most innovative companies and decodes the tools, hacks and approaches that help their managers systematically spark ingenuity, agility, and profitable creativity at scale. It presents a pragmatic 'how-to' guide for any team or organisation that needs to adapt its culture, processes, leadership and decision-making for an age of increasingly unpredictable and rapid change. We welcome author of "Be Less Zombie How great companies create dynamic innovation, fearless leadership and passionate people" Elvin Turner www.elvinturner.com

We've reached a point in time when everyone wants innovation, but most people don't know how to actually attain it. It's not easy, which is why there are so many failed brands and companies. In our era of AI, rapid change, disruption, and possibility, there are so many great opportunities within our grasp. However, smart, successful people consistently miss out. Their capabilities are limited by seven traps, and they rely on and repeat past decisions. They miss out on the potential of what could have been. If we could remove these traps, what could we accomplish? How much more successful could we be? Today's book teaches us how to think disruptively, providing specific steps to create real innovation and change. It combines our guests high energy provocative thinking with tactics that have been battle tested through projects with leading innovators like Disney, Starbucks, Amex, IBM, Adidas, Google, and NASA. We welcome CEO of Trendhunter and author Create the Future and the Innovation Handbook: Tactics for Disruptive Thinking, Jeremy Gutsche

Being awarded a leadership role within an organization may feel like an amazing accomplishment, but that is only half the battle. The second, and arguably most important half, lies in building and maintaining a highly effective team. However, according to a recent survey conducted on UK workers, managers are failing miserably at this task, and are instead fostering feelings of hate and resentment among their workers. The survey states that while 22% of the UK public say they hate their boss, a staggering 52% identify their boss as their primary source of job dissatisfaction. So, where is it that managers are going wrong, and what can they do to improve their employees' perception of them? Interesting research during the 1970s–found that managerial failure had little to do with IQ or personal attractiveness. Rather, it was linked directly to interpersonal competence. And, since personality is at the core of interpersonal competence, our guest today developed one of the globe's leading personality assessments to identify the 11 personality scales that cause leaders to fail time and time again. We welcome creator of The Hogan Assessments, Dr Robert Hogan

As a business leader, you need to make decisions that set your company up for success, now and in the future. The challenge is In this fast-changing world, the rules of strategy are being rewritten and the go-to solutions you once relied on are no longer enough. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. As emerging technologies like AI and blockchain become ubiquitous, they will unleash unprecedented levels of disruption. Drawing on his broad global experience, our guest delivers the essential guide to strategy for this new era. His CLEVER Framework will help you understand the deep strategic drivers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, reflect on how they affect you and your business, and respond effectively. If you're ready to fulfil your potential as a leader and create a future-ready business, it's time to get Clever. We welcome Alessandro Lanteri, the author of CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution