The FutureLab Library

We are always exploring new topics related to the future of business. Here are a few of our books that we hope you will find of interest.

 

Blockchain Design Sprint

At the leading edge of the next tsunami of change is the blockchain. This book is a navigational guide to the undiscovered territories of the blockchain revolution. This workshop offers a practical approach to “learning by doing”, combining the best techniques of Agile Innovation design sprints with a laser focus on the blockchain market..

Effective innovation doesn’t happen by accident – it is achieved by design. The principles and methodology contained in this workbook provide a proven and comprehensive system for radical innovation in the blockchain arena. This workbook starts with a tutorial to learn a new vocabulary around blockchains and decentralized consensus. The next chapter show show blockchains might impact your business, business model or industry. After that, you take a quantum leap into this wave of the digital age.

Readers, at the same time they explore the possibilities of blockchain design, will learn how to implement an Agile innovation design sprint, to create better ideas, develop them efficiently, and work with a team to create breakthroughs.

Learn how to:

  • Accelerate innovation by applying the best design sprint methods and tools.
  • Learn a new way to invent radically new business models and engage in business model warfare
  • Integrate agility principles into strategic innovation
  • Explore the differences between first, second and third generation blockchain applications

This book is also a practical guide for fostering a culture of innovation, nurturing creativity, and efficiently developing the ideas that drive strategic growth. Blaze your own path to the next level of innovativeness and organizational agility by learning from the expert guidance and practical, actionable advice offered in this workbook.

About the Author:

Moses Ma is a technology visionary praised in Time Magazine and the New York Times. He is the managing partner of FutureLab Consulting, and in this capacity as an innovation consultant, he has worked with senior executives at Fortune 500 companies and organizations all over the world. He also runs a boutique venture incubator. Over the years—he was a legendary games designer who created two of the world’s best-selling computer games, including the world’s first commercially successful Internet game; he took an uncapitalized software start-up and built it into one of the most profitable in the country; and he helped invent the concept of e-markets in business-to-business e-commerce. 

Get your copy today from Amazon!


 

Agile Innovation

Agile Innovation is a field guide to designing and implementing more effective innovation strategies by empowering classical innovation methodology with Agile process. By facilitating Agile collaborative processes, people can form self-organizing and self-optimizing teams to better solve complex problems and create disruptive innovations.

Readers will learn how to generate better ideas, execute more efficiently, and work together more effectively to create breakthroughs that can measurably improve company profitability. Topics covered include: opportunities and risks inherent in innovation, tools that reinforce Agile collaboration, and a discussion of leadership skills and practices that create a productive, high-performing team environment.

Agile Innovation describes how to foster that kind of culture of innovation, to nurture creativity and effectively develop ideas that better align with strategic directions.

  • Create a culture of innovation where increased collaboration can decrease risk
  • Implement productive, collaborative innovation, from leadership to operations
  • Integrate agility principles into strategic planning for sustained improvement

Effective innovation doesn’t happen by accident – it happens by design. The companies on the cutting edge of business, technology, and strategy aren’t just lucky. Agile Innovation is a practical guide, with expert guidance and actionable advice, that can show you how to advance your organization to the next level of innovativeness and agility.

Here are a few of the over 50 critical raves and advance testimonials for the book:

"This thought-provoking and inspirational book is a must read for anyone seeking to master the art and science of innovation…" —Jack Canfield, bestselling author of The Success Principles
 
"Agile Innovation promises to profoundly transform businesses and institutions. This must-read book is a strategic imperative for anybody aiming to successfully deliver new products or services in a brutally competitive, digitally-accelerated business world…" —Errol Arkilic, CEO of M34 Capital and co-creator of the Innovation Corps.
 
"Agile Innovation is a tremendous leap forward in innovation thought leadership. This book is an absolute gem." —Jacob Hsu, CEO, Symbio.com
 
"Today’s corporate leaders must build a culture of agile innovation and this book is the perfect manual for business today." — Harry W. Kellogg, Vice Chairman, SVB Silicon Valley Bank
 
"More universities around the globe should be offering courses centered on this book’s valuable content." —Dr. Dixon R Doll, Cofounder, DCM Venture Capital, Past Chairman, US National Venture Capital Association
 
"Agile Innovation is a rare and exceptional book. It has the potential to move the entire field forward, through the clarity of its writing and the importance of its message. If you are going to read any book on innovation this year, make it this one." —Pascal Baudry, PhD, Founder, WDHB Consulting Group
 
This book was released in September 2014, by Wiley & Sons. More information can be found at: http://agileinnovationbook.com

About the Authors:

Langdon Morris is a leading innovation consultant, and focuses on helping organizations implement the world’s best innovation methods and tools to solve very complex problems. Moses Ma is a technology thought leader, an innovation consultant and manages a boutique, high-tech venture incubator. Po Chi Wu spent 30 years as a high-tech venture capitalist and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and is now Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, teaching innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Get your copy today from Amazon!


 

Soulful Branding

SOULFUL BRANDING offers practical, expert guidance and actionable advice to achieve higher levels of business success.  This is a brand field guide for scanning, discovering and implementing more effective and innovative branding strategies by empowering new brand development tools, philosophy and process.  This book presents a business problem-solving framework, tied to new perspectives to positively influence product design, services, brands and companies looking for more sustainable and defensible differentiation. 

Here's what the experts say...

"In today's new business environment if your brand does not have a soul it's dead ! Soulful Branding is visionary and lays out the future of branding for any business that plans to be relevant." -  Deepak Chopra, Author, Soul of Leadership
 
"Rebellion is what lies at the heart of innovation.'  Soulful Branding is a book which continually prods its' readers to reject the status quo and think differently about how to evoke consumers to connect emotionally with their brand and products.  Executives in any discipline will benefit greatly by, not just reading, but absorbing the messages in this book." -Tom Clarke, President of Innovation, Nike, Inc.
 
"The future of the music industry is in turning performing artists and groups into soulful, iconic brands.  To achieve this end the projection of the right sound, look, meaning and persona is key. Soulful Branding provides a glimpse into the serious and entertaining side of brand character development." – Jim Caparro,  Chairman & CEO of Warner Elektra Atlantic at Warner Music Group 
 
"Soulful Branding is a brilliantly crafted combination of business acumen and psychology, mythology, and detective work. Conlon and his co-authors have put together a compelling argument for reframing our concept of who we are and what we represent as a company. Soulful Branding is a game changer!" - Kathleen Jacoby, Author, Vision of the Grail
 
Readers will learn how to recognize business blind spots and tunnel vision, scan their brand fields using multi-visioning techniques, be more fully present with consumers and engage consumers in depth workshops, become more aware of hidden solutions to improve product design, marketing communications and brand character. 
 
SOULFUL BRANDING describes how to foster a culture of brand innovation, it will show you how to: 
• Detect and solve difficult marketing problems 
• Strengthen and harmonize your internal company culture 
• Enhance your internal creative process for strengthening the brand 
• Create breakthroughs in strengthening customer relationships 
 
Soulful Branding reveals how you can employ a new set of tools to take your brand and company to the next level.     
 
About the Authors:  Jerome Conlon is a leading brand and business development consultant, focused on helping companies and brands implement innovative, soulful and iconic branding strategies and plans.  Moses Ma is a technology thought leader, an innovation consultant and manages a high-tech venture incubator.  Langdon Morris is a leading innovation consultant, and focuses on helping organization implement the world’s best innovation methods and tools to solve very complex problems. 
 

 

The Agile Innovation Master Plan

Innovation is vitally important, and as everyone knows, all organizations must innovate to survive in these times of rapid change. Nevertheless, it remains very difficult for most organizations to achieve innovation on a consistent basis.  We only have to look at the recent history of global businesses to see the impact of innovation – new and innovative companies are achieving great successes, while companies and even nations that do not innovate often fail and fall behind.

Hence, the purpose of this book is to convey the principles of innovation so you can work more effectively, productively and consistently as an innovator, and thereby contribute to a successful future for your organization. And it does so all within and Agile Innovation process!

In practice, it is obvious that a significant part of the innovation process depends upon the creative capacity of people to come up with new and compelling ideas, while another aspect of success at innovation has to do with how we organize and conduct the innovation process from a technical and managerial perspective. The intent of this book is to address all of these aspects, with particular focus on the principles, tools, and methods necessary to a systematic and rigorous business process that can achieve meaningful and sustainable innovation outcomes. 

We call this an “innovation system,” and we have named it “the Agile innovation master plan.”

To justify calling it a “system,” it must be complete and comprehensive, providing valid solutions for senior leaders, middle managers, and front line workers who will work together to evoke, manage, and produce innovative results.  Hence, these materials present a complete set of principles, concepts, methods, and tools which can be applied in any organization. 

While innovation is a challenge for most organizations to achieve, it is also fun, fascinating, and very rewarding.  There are few accomplishments as satisfying as seeing new ideas and decisions making a positive difference in the organization you work for. As you learn the details of the framework described in The Innovation Master Plan, we hope that you will develop a love for innovation, and that you will then share this love enthusiastically with others so that they, too, may experience the joys and benefits of success at innovation.

The Innovation Master Planis based on the concept that a comprehensive or systems thinking approach to innovation must address all six of the critical questions:  Why, What, How, Who, Where, and When

Get your copy today from Amazon! 


 

Permanent Innovation

Innovation is the process of creating new ideas and transforming them into new business and social concepts. 

Permanent Innovation describes the process of doing it continuously, as a matter of strategy, method, and habit.  It occurs in organizations that embrace innovation as a core value, practice innovation as a core methodology, and produce innovation as a consistent output.  Permanent innovation is thus a strategic and human process much more than a technological one, and we achieve excellence at it through thoughtful repetition of the appropriate methods.

The notion of permanent innovation may at first be startling, and it may even seem to be a contradiction.  The concept of permanence implies stability and the absence of change, while the concept of innovation implies constancy of change and novelty.  Combining these two, however, yields an important synthesis: the practice of innovation not as an occasional occurrence, but as a repeating process of value creation and organizational adaptation.

Innovation on a permanent basis thus contrasts with random, intermittent, or one-shot innovation processes, none of which are sufficient for today’s markets, and none of which are the basis for the excellence we aspire to.  In these times of accelerating change and increasing competition, Permanent Innovation, with a focus on the human dimensions of innovation, is an absolute necessity.  Its principles are contributing significantly to the success of leading companies around the world.

This book is about how to achieve it.

Get your copy today from Amazon! 


 

Business Model Warfare

by Langdon Morris

While organizations must allocate their innovation investments among the four types of innovation, business model innovation has clearly supplanted incremental innovation, breakthrough innovation, and new venture innovation as the highest performing approach.  Why?

  • As the purpose of incremental innovations is simply to maintain market share, they rarely confer a competitive advantage.  While they are necessary, they are by no means sufficient to support adequate revenue and profit growth.
  • The search for breakthroughs offers a shot at stardom, but breakthroughs are very rare, and pursuing them is properly understood to be a high risk strategy. 
  • Successful new venture innovations may position a company for the long term, but they are also high risk and capital intensive, and for good reasons they are rarely attempted.
  • Hence, in today’s business environment business model innovation has emerged as the most cost-effective form of innovation, and for the firms that master it, it’s also the most promising route to success.  The list mentioned above, from Amazon to Apple to Wal-Mart to Zara, could be expanded to include a dozen or more additional companies that are also widely admired for their accomplishments; they constitute some of the most successful and most admired companies of the last twenty years, and are all distinguished by their business models.  This would include IBM, GE, Charles Schwab, P&G, and Home Depot. 

BUSINESS MODEL WARFARE  provides the most detailed explanation yet written of the importance of business model innovation, and helps readers understand the value of innovation what it is, why it is different, and how to achieve it themselves. Coming soon. Contact us for details!


 

Business Panorama

The BUSINESS PANORAMA is a visual story-telling tool that can effectively articulate the essence of your business. Story-telling is a skill essential for all businesses to survive! It is especially important during innovation efforts, when the desired outcomes may not be completely clear until success/failure is realized. The Story acts like a compass, guiding the direction in which the energy of the company will flow constructively.

One of the most valuable ways to use the Panorama is as a tool to align your team, partners, and stakeholders. The Panorama, which is based on the business canvas concept, is especially suited for describing innovative businesses in a way that investors can easily comprehend.
 
The system is packaged in a complete toolkit, including tutorials, instructional video and templates for Powerpoint, Excel and InDesign, and is priced at $250, which includes one pass to a Panorama instructional webinar, valued at $75. Available now. Contact us for purchase details!