Peter Boatwright

Nearly all innovation is done by teams. And while there are many books about the innovation process, and also many about managing teams, the management of innovation teams has gone unaddressed. This matters, because innovation teams are not like other teams. Most teams and their managers know where they are headed. They've probably been there and done it previously, more than once. Innovation is different. The problem objective has been outlined, but the journey and the destination are full of unknowns and untrieds. The team is tasked with going where none have gone before-with scaling a mountain whose height, form, and hidden passes are unknown, and doing so before a rival team from the other side of the mountain finds the summit. There's no simple formula to enable innovation team managers to accomplish this daunting task. But Jonathan Cagan and Peter Boatwright-Carnegie Mellon professors and practitioners with a combined 50+ years of experience in research, consulting, and hands-on innovation-have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. In Managing the Unmanageable, they offer 13 tips that can greatly improve the odds for success for any innovation team. Filled with eye-opening real-world examples, bolstered by groundbreaking research studies, and enlivened with illustrations by artist Kurt Hess, it's a quick, fascinating read that any manager with a mandate to innovate will find irresistible-and essential.

Nearly all innovation is done by teams. And while there are many books about the innovation process, and also many about managing teams, the management of innovation teams has gone unaddressed. This matters, because innovation teams are not like other teams. Most teams and their managers know where they are headed. They've probably been there and done it previously, more than once. Innovation is different. The problem objective has been outlined, but the journey and the destination are full of unknowns and untrieds. The team is tasked with going where none have gone before-with scaling a mountain whose height, form, and hidden passes are unknown, and doing so before a rival team from the other side of the mountain finds the summit. There's no simple formula to enable innovation team managers to accomplish this daunting task. But Jonathan Cagan and Peter Boatwright-Carnegie Mellon professors and practitioners with a combined 50+ years of experience in research, consulting, and hands-on innovation-have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. In Managing the Unmanageable, they offer 13 tips that can greatly improve the odds for success for any innovation team. Filled with eye-opening real-world examples, bolstered by groundbreaking research studies, and enlivened with illustrations by artist Kurt Hess, it's a quick, fascinating read that any manager with a mandate to innovate will find irresistible-and essential.

Built to Love is a practical how-to guide for companies, detailing steps to create products that illicit emotions that provide value to customers, regardless of whether the products are physical products, services, technologies, software, systems, or brands. Using a combination of industry-based research and laboratory experiments, the authors demonstrate that customers will richly pay for products that authentically provide emotional fulfillment. They uncover the science behind successful products that create an avid and loyal following, and they present evidence that product emotions increase a product's success in the marketplace as well as a firm's success in the stock market (even when the economy is down!). Then, using analytical and practical tools, the authors show how to analyze customers' emotional needs and translate those needs into features that galvanize those customers. Throughout, the book uses revealing case studies that show how to energize customers in both consumer and business-to-business worlds.