Fearless Innovation

Alex Goryachev’s latest book teaches you how to go beyond the buzzword of innovation to continuously drive growth, improve your bottom line and enact change. The book, published in January 2020, is, Fearless Innovation.

It’s a down-to-earth guide that provides advice and actionable steps on how to:

Get teams to embrace innovation beyond empty slogans.
Focus on execution of innovation to showcase ROI.
Break down organization silos by empowering effective, diverse, and inclusive teams.
Communicate the value of innovation.

“Innovation isn’t a thing, it’s a mindset and attitude made up of clear principles that help individuals, organizations, and societies adapt to change, survive and grow, and prosper,” explains Goryachev. “Innovation is more art than science, but its principles can easily be put into practice.”

Alex Goryachev

Goryachev recommends you continually:

Pay attention to current social, economic, and technological transformations that may be affecting your organization and understand their implications.

And, he suggests you create a workplace where your employees can answer, “Yes,” to these three questions:

Do you have meaningful opportunities to share your ideas with leadership and receive feedback?
Do you feel your immediate leadership cares about your ideas?
Do you have opportunities and resources to implement your ideas?

Additionally, Goryachev explains that opportunities rarely occur within four walls alone—as the world become more connected, embracing the ecosystem is essential to success. To do so, he recommends you consider these four action steps:

Discover and engage with the local startup community.
Partner with companies, large and small, to create new value.
Look at ways to co-innovate with customers.
Work with cities, academia, and nonprofits to solve problems that are bigger than one’s industry’s alone.

One of the book’s most important parting thoughts is that:

Once innovation is woven into the fabric of an organization’s culture, it becomes so intuitive, so ever present and unidentifiable, that it needs no name at all.

Goryachev is managing director of Cisco’s global Co-Innovation Centers.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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