Description

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Four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia come together to reveal the secret of uncovering authentic demand to build successful innovations.

Books on innovation mostly focus on how to nurture innovative cultures and brainstorm ideas. The Heart of Innovation is the first popular book to concretely delve into what innovations really are and how to create them. Many attempts at innovation fail because customers turn out to be indifferent. The key to success is to uncover unmet authentic demand; what customers cannot be indifferent to. Through fresh case studies, ranging from how SoulCycle revolutionized the fitness industry, to how IBM built an $8 billion business on the Web, to a single mother ending abuse in a slum in Africa, The Heart of Innovation explores how authentic demand is often hidden or taken for granted.

The first half of the book explores cases where people accidentally found their way to meeting an unmet authentic demand—or failed to. The second half of the book provides a field guide to methodically identifying and building products, services, and businesses around authentic demand.

At Georgia Tech, IBM, and elsewhere, the authors have worked with scores of startups and large companies, developing a unique methodology that unpacks the “black box” of authentic demand and shows innovators how to search for it, recognize it, and create situations for their customers that catalyze it. They explore the differences, and different challenges, to the three types of innovation—incremental improvement, company transformation, and radical “formative” innovation.

Authors Chanoff, Furst, Sabbah, and Wegman take innovators and people who work with them on a new journey through innovation. Their fresh case studies, from IBM’s entry to the Web, to a single mother in a slum in Kenya, make The Heart of Innovation as obsessively readable as it is informative.

If customers are already pulling your innovation from your hands, you don’t need this book. Otherwise, reach for The Heart of Innovation.

About the Author

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Matt Chanoff is a San Francisco-based angel investor and co-founder with Merrick of the startup studio Flashpoint.  He has served on the boards of early stage companies in logistics and cyber security, and currently sits on eight nonprofit boards in the areas of poverty, media, and education.He has a Master’s of Arts degree in International Economics and Politics from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Dr. Merrick Furst is a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation at Georgia Tech. He founded Flashpoint@GT, a first-of-its-kind startup engineering studio that developed formative leaders and exceptional technology startups. Merrick was the president of the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, and before that was a professor and dean at Carnegie Mellon.
Dr. Mark Wegman is an IBM fellow, IBM’s highest technical honor with more than 100 publications and over 16,000 citations, primarily in algorithms, information theory, compilers and software engineering.  He is also an ACM and IEEE Fellow, a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Distinguished Alumnus of UC Berkeley.
Dr. Daniel Sabbah was the CTO and General Manager, Next Generation Platform, at IBM Corp. He was responsible for creating IBM's Cloud platform and aligning IBM's direction for Cloud and Mobility. He holds an MA and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and and MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Praise For…

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“Heart of Innovation blew my mind. I've been involved with 100s of startups. I wish someone had traveled back in time and given me this book before my first startup. It would've saved me a lot of grief and heartache." 
—James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself and The Big Book of Crypto
 
“If you can't do what I did and learn deliberate innovation directly from Matt and Merrick, this is the book you need."
—Joy Buolamwini, founder, The Algorithmic Justice League
 
"This book will help you unlock your blockers and inspire you to look meaningfully at how changing behavior creates results.  Actionable and relatable, a worthwhile read."
—Elizabeth Cutler, cofounder, SoulCycle and Peoplehood
 
“Provides unique insight into the process of innovation and the difference between ‘innovation’ and ‘invention’.  The authors give a new way to think about successful products and services as well as strategies for disrupting the status quo.  More than just a book for businessmen and entrepreneurs, it is a compelling narrative with lessons for anyone who wants to create change.”
—Richard Rashid, founder, Microsoft Research
 
“The Heart of Innovation will find a place on the bookshelves of entrepreneurs everywhere who compulsively read books on innovation, hoping to learn how dressing right, shooting for the stars, and being persistent when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles will lead them to stumble into founding the next Google.  It’s a book filled with good advice and compelling stories that may accidentally help hard-to-launch start-ups get unstuck. 

But that’s not the goal of this entirely unique book on how to snap out of the “waking dream” of biases and behaviors that come pre-packaged in human psychology, ready to sabotage creative acts and innovation in all aspects of life.  This book will attract those who would never buy a business book about start-ups.  Most people, in other words.  It is a book about the difference between accidental success and deliberate success.  Its primary message rings as true for students, scientists, educators, and professionals from all walks of life as it does those steeped in the start-up culture of  Silicon Valley because it is grounded in the science of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his extensive network of collaborators who established the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and decision-making forty years ago.  It is the science and practice of identifying and measuring authentic demand--that is, demand that, once recognized, cannot not be satisfied. 

The curious logic of “not not” that occupies much of this engaging text is just one of the narratives that makes this book hard to put down.  The authors masterfully weave these themes into the compelling story of the difference between accidental and deliberate innovation. In their world, accidental success is sheer luck, but deliberate innovation requires study, preparation, and repetition.  It might be hard to square that mindset with the quick-hit culture of tech startups, but it is sure to appeal to most others who--seeking to unlock their full creative potential—are willing to be deliberate in achieving success in today's rapidly-changing world.  A collaboration between celebrated academics, seasoned industrial innovators, and  high-risk investors, The Heart of Innovation will become an indispensable guide to unlocking the power of creativity.”
—Rich DeMillo, Former CTO, Hewlett Packard, CEO Telcordia, Bellcore, Dean, Georgia Tech College of Computing

 
“An insightful and though-provoking book that highlights the importance of creating products and services that solve a problem or tension in consumers lives and are free from internal biases.  It offers practical guidance and real-world examples that will inspire entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators to put consumers in the center of product development. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in innovation and business success.”
—Virginia Weil, Global President of Innovation Ipsos