Jeff DeGraff

Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved

In today’s frenetic, uncertain world, the “same old, same old” routines are perfect ways to go nowhere fast. What has worked for you before—professionally or personally—no longer gets results. Whether you’ve been downsized, reached the end of a long relationship, or found yourself questioning where you are in life, it’s clear you need to change. To innovate. Make it new. Make yourself new. Now, in this invaluable book, the world-renowned “Dean of Innovation,” Jeff DeGraff, shares his tried-and-true techniques on how to reinvent yourself—creatively and with maximum impact.

Innovation You reveals DeGraff’s unique four-step program to bolster your ingenuity and remake your life. From forging ahead in a new career to losing weight to finally pursuing that long-held dream, DeGraff’s strategies are effective and easy to follow. Inside you will learn to:

• Rethink Innovation: Find ways to think outside the box, seek out diverse opinions, and pay attention to the next great trend.
• Rethink Your Approach: Use the Competing Values Framework to identify your natural innovation profile—do you compete, collaborate, create, or control?—and then deliberately draw from the other styles to augment your usual tactics.
• Rethink Your Methods: Put your reinvention plan in motion—set specific, realistic, and meaningful targets, cultivate relationships with relevant mentors and experts, and try alternate methods to achieve your goals.
• Rethink the Journey: Understand that innovation is a process and that progress comes in cycles rather than a quick straight line. Accept uncertainty, question assumptions, and acknowledge areas where you can improve.

Full of invigorating ideas, engaging anecdotes, practical wisdom, and inspiring success stories, Innovation You is your personal road map to reach your highest potential—and experience a bold new way of living.

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Leading Innovation: How to Jump Start Your Organization′s Growth Engine / Edition 1

Leading Innovation presents a unique, holistic approach to creating innovation at all levels of your organization. Authors Jeff DeGraff and Shawn Quinn have created a real-world, how-to playbook of integrated creativity tools and techniques for understanding where innovation comes from and harnessing its power to create a culture where real growth happens on a constant basis.

Based on DeGraff′s proven methods-which he teaches in his innovation program at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and has applied at Fortune 500 companies around the world-this breakthrough guide focuses on systematically integrating business practices and connecting them to the value propositions they produce. You′ll discover how to diagnose obstacles to innovation, realistically assess your options, and develop an integrated program of action that can be adjusted to meet the needs of any group, department, or business unit throughout your organization.

You′ll learn the 7 key steps to double-digit growth, sparking innovation in your:

• Leadership-teams, development, and behavior
• Strategic planning-identifying emerging opportunities
• Organizational culture and competency development
• Performance management processes-resource allocation, portfolio management
• Innovation incubation processes-stage-gate development processes, innovation networks
• Human resource management-staffing, team building, organizational learning

Throughout, insightful case studies demonstrate how these results-driven methods are supported by senior leadership at GE, Reuters, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Eaton, and other leading innovators.

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Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen / Edition 1

Although many leaders acknowledge and invest in creativity, we seldom see it hold a credible place in the business development process. Creativity at Work takes a practical approach to creativity, showing how to select practices to produce results and add value. The authors explain how to:

• Understand the creative preferences of organizations, departments, work groups, and individuals
• Identify and compare the different creativity profiles that describe specific purposes, practices, and people
• Produce the desired results by developing the right practices
• Blend creativity practices to meet the complex needs that characterize most work situations o Develop required creative abilities in a team and in oneself

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