Top 5 Books For Successful Innovation
With the new year just days away, it is a natural time for reflection of the past year and the goals we hope to achieve in the year to come. During this time of reflection, I decided to combine a list of the top 5 books that helped me launch my business this year and come up with innovative methods of doing so. Set your 2019 up for success by checking out the following 5 books.
By the way, all except for one are available, for free through the Brampton Library.
Book #1
Title: Blue Ocean Strategy
General notes: “Blue ocean strategy is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand. It is about creating and capturing uncontested market space, thereby making the competition irrelevant. It is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not a given and can be reconstructed by the actions and beliefs of industry players.” – https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/
How this book helped me: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the real-world examples used to highlight the many elements within a market space that can be shifted, opens your mind and allows you to view your own business/Startup/idea and the market you are in, through a new light. The perspective I gained through this book allowed me to identify a potential gap within the marketing support market space, this gap consists of the evolving needs of clients, market shift involving accessibility of new technology and the existing solutions providers’ lack of adaptation. This also enabled me to structure my business and services in a unique way that would allow me to fill the gap and set myself apart in a market space that traditionally has been viewed as oversaturated.
Who might benefit from this book: whether you are developing or validating an idea for a new business, in the starting phases of launching your Startup or within an established organization and are looking to innovate, gain market share at a low cost, or generate uncontested demand, this book is while worth your time.
How to get your hands on it: hard copy, ebook, and audiobook versions are available for this title, free of charge through the Brampton Library, view them here.
Also available to purchase through Chapters, & Amazon.
Book #2
Title: Blue Ocean Shift
General notes: “Blue Ocean Shift is a roadmap to move you, your team, and your organization to new heights of confidence, market creation and growth.
Whether you are a cash-strapped start-up or large, established company, non-profit or national government, you can SHIFT from cutthroat markets – red oceans – to wide-open new markets – or blue oceans of uncontested market space – by following a simple five-step process that brings your people along so they own and drive the process.” – https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-shift/
How this book helped me: As a solopreneur in my first year of business I currently do not have any internal staff that I needed to guide through the shift in my organization, instead this book helped me outline my process and develop support materials to help my clients and prospects to move with me in this shift. Allowing them to understand the value such a shift would hold for their business, and aiding me in maintaining a customer-centric perspective while structuring my business.
Who might benefit from this book: If you or your organization have a set vision in mind and are developing the plan to achieve this transformation, this book will provide you with the process and leadership insights that will enable you to inspire your people through the change and empower them to drive the process.
How to get your hands on it: hard copy, ebook and audiobook versions are available for this title, free of charge through the Brampton Library, view them here
Also available to purchase through Chapters, & Amazon.
Additional information: you can find more information about the Blue Ocean Strategy, Blue Ocean shift and other topics centered around these concepts through the website: https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com
Bonus: Blue ocean leadership (https://hbr.org/2014/05/blue-ocean-leadership) & avoiding red ocean traps (https://hbr.org/2015/03/red-ocean-traps)
Book #3
Title: Brand Seduction: How Neuroscience Can Help Marketers Build Memorable Brands
General notes: “For many marketing professionals, “science” is a four-letter word. They see brand-building as an unteachable art guided by their intuition and experience. But at its core, marketing aims to seed ideas into people’s minds, make them feel a certain way, and, ultimately, get them to act.
In Brand Seduction, Daryl reveals the latest psychological and neuroscientific discoveries about how our minds process brand information and make decisions, and the important roles our emotions and unconscious play in our selections.
Welcome to the new world of neuromarketing.” – https://books.google.ca/books/about/Brand_Seduction.html
How this book helped me: during the market research and analysis stage of launching my business, I identified the need for strong branding that would differentiate my business from my competitors in the eyes of my prospects. I also identified the need for my branding to invoke feelings of aspiration, empowerment, and achievement in my prospects and clients, as they attempt to tackle the evolving field of marketing. This book explores how different elements that make up a brand are interpreted by people, subconsciously and consciously and includes real-world examples of how organizations of all sizes achieved branding and business success. This book helped me build a brand that sets my business apart and through the hands-on exercise outlined in the book, I was able to craft a brand fantasy that met my business’s structural needs and its goals. The exercises also provided me with a process of taking something that is primarily conceptual and developing it into a tangible element. The finished branding document after completing the exercises, also makes it easier when developing marketing and sales collateral, websites and social media materials as well as the brand’s story and voice when interacting with prospects and clients and can go along way should you need to engage the support of an external graphic artist or a design agency.
Who might benefit from this book: If you or your organization is striving for innovation or making a shift to attain a long-term vision, your brand and identity will need to evolve along the way. The concepts and exercises outlined in this book will provide you with a method to take the key goals from your vision and craft them into a brand that evokes the desired perception from your targeted audience. Through this book, you can understand how the minds of your prospects work and ensure that your organization is communicating in a way that aligns with achieving your long-term vision.
How to get your hands on it: this is the only book on my top 5 list for achieving innovation that is not currently available through the Brampton library, you can purchase it online or in most chapters locations.
Book #4
Title: Growth Hacker Marketing
General notes: “A new generation of megabrands like Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Twitter haven’t spent a dime on traditional marketing. No press releases, no TV commercials, no billboards. Instead, they rely on a new strategy—growth hacking—to reach many more people despite modest marketing budgets. Growth hackers have thrown out the old playbook and replaced it with tools that are testable, trackable, and scalable. They believe that products and businesses should be modified repeatedly until they’re primed to generate explosive reactions.
Bestselling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you’re responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.” – https://books.google.ca/books/about/Growth_Hacker_Marketing.html
How this book helped me: similar to Blue Ocean Strategy and Brand Seduction, this book includes real-world examples of how organizations of all sizes achieved extreme growth through no or low-cost initiatives, by analyzing their processes and capitalizing on points where growth is most likely to occur. This was through acts such as client referrals or sharing promotions, for example, the extra free storage space you receive from Dropbox when you sign someone up, or the embedded footer Hotmail used on the free email accounts, that let all of your contacts know that the email(s) they were receiving was from a free account, which they could have as well. They pinpointed the moments within their processes where growth was mostly to occur and they structured their businesses around these opportunities. The insight I gained from this book, allowed me to flesh out my idea of a marketing automation live demo series, which demonstrates marketing strategies and technology in action, live and on-demand while communication with my prospects in a manner that will allow them to envision this working for their business. My business launch strategy which included no advertising budget but landed several clients also came to me after reading this book.
Who might benefit from this book: honestly, everyone who is running a business, in the process of launching a business, is looking to start a business, or is part of an established organization and oversees or works closely with the marketing, sales or customer service department(s) should read this book. At only 176 pages it is a quick read and even if it only inspires one new initiative to experiment with, it is easily worth the investment of your time.
How to get your hands on it: hard copy is available for this title, free of charge through the Brampton Library, view them here.
Hard copy and audiobooks are also available to purchase through Chapters, & Amazon.
Book #5
Title: The subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck :
General notes: “In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be “positive” all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.
Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—”not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault.” Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.” – https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062457714/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-fck/
How this book helped me: You might be wondering why there is a “self-help” book on this list and perhaps you are even thinking that this post just took a turn for the worst – bear with me, there is a method to this madness. The reason I feel this book is a beneficial addition to my top 5 books for achieving innovation is this; the ability to adjust and align your standard or metric of measuring personal & organizational success.
This book helped me analysis, re-evaluate and set new standards and metrics to measure my success by. When you are looking to innovate it is important that you have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve and ensure your values and the metrics you measure success align with this new vision.
Who might benefit from this book: those who are striving for innovation whether it is within an established organization or if they are building their own business from the ground up, will find helpful and insightful truths within this book.
How to get your hands on it: hard copy and audio book versions are available for this title, free of charge through the Brampton Library, view them here.
Also available to purchase through Chapters, & Amazon.
Don’t forget to sign up for your free Brampton Library account & happy reading!!!
