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Catalog Higher Ed Business Practical Innovation

Practical Innovation

by Adegoke Oke

Strategies and frameworks to improve innovation performance in organizations

Print Version


Paperback Price: $68.57

ISBN: 978-1-59399-585-0

121 pages

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About the Book

Practical Innovation is a collection of strategies and frameworks gathered from the author's experience over many years of teaching executive development programs, graduate programs, and consulting with managers. It makes innovation practical by giving readers a set of tools they can use to improve innovation performance in their organizations. Straightforward steps and real life examples are used to show how to design a strategy that works for you and your organization.

About the Author

Professor Adegoke Oke holds a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria, a master's in Business Administration from Cardiff Business School, U.K., and a PhD in Operations Management from the Cranfield School of Management, U.K., where he was also a faculty member for six years. Currently at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, he teaches courses in technology and innovation management, operations management and global supply chain management. His research focuses on innovation management practices in manufacturing, service, and supply chain organizations. He is also interested in risk management and supply chain disruptions, particularly those emanating from developing country contexts. He has published over 35 academic articles and over 100 conference proceedings. He is currently an Associate Editor of International Journal of Operations and Production Management and serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Supply Chain Management and the Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management.

Before entering academia, Professor Oke was a project engineer and manager for more than eight years with Shell, Nigeria where he became a chartered engineer. Dr. Oke is a world authority on innovation management and has spoken at several international academic and practitioner conferences. He has consulted for or taught executive programs for several firms around the world, including Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited, AXA Insurance Company, Halifax Bank of Scotland, Royal and Sun Alliance, Cryovac, British American Tobacco and Fujitsu Ltd., all in the U.K.; Skanska, Boeing, Chevron, Chemonics and Avnet, all in the USA, and Masterstroke Packages Ltd., Nigeria.

Overview/Preface

Innovation is the lifeblood of organizations, as the cliche goes. While many organizations believe this cliche, and would like to stay abreast of innovations in their domain, many do not actually do anything about it. This may be due to the lack of will, or it may be that they do not know how to go about making innovation happen. Innovation is typically thought of as an abstract concept, the domain of blue-sky thinkers, nerdy engineers, the Einsteins, the Galileos, and the many geniuses that have, to their credit, invented multiple concepts and objects on which a lot of other new inventions and technologies are based. However, innovation need not be restricted to such domains and people. The primary goal of this book is to demystify the concept of innovation, to break it down and make it easy to understand and implementable so that everyday people will find that it may not be that onerous to innovate.

This book is about making innovation practical. It combines theory with practice. Other books are either too theoretical or too practical. This book attempts to operationalize concepts and theories, to make them practical for simple comprehension and applicability by the reader. It introduces many frameworks—the output of research—describing and explaining them in simple ways. More importantly, it explains in very practical ways how managers and practitioners can improve innovation performance in their organizations. Where appropriate, the book offers relevant examples. Thus, the reader will be equipped with and understand what specific tool to "pull" and for what purpose. The reader will be equipped like a technician who possesses a tool box with many different tools for different purposes. When the technician encounters any problem, he or she just searches from within the toolbox and pulls the right tool to handle
the job.

Practical Innovation is a collection of research ideas, gathered from the author's experience over many years of teaching executive development programs and graduate programs and consulting with managers. The book provides a plethora of tools and frameworks for handling innovation-related issues. It specifies what frameworks to use for what purpose, how to use them, and when.

The ideas are presented in an easy-to-read format with useful and practical examples and frameworks. This book is targeted at a wide variety of audience, including leaders and practicing managers in any industry or organizations that have a need for innovation, graduate students in management and business disciplines, and any individual or professional that is interested in understanding the topic of innovation.