Best Innovation Books

Based on our “creating a culture of innovation” project conducting interviews with over 100 innovation leaders at a variety of large organizations, the following books on this list were recommended frequently as the top innovation books that are helpful for innovating, being innovative, and specifically, practicing innovation or design thinking in an organization. These books include new practices, methods, tips, and techniques. The innovation leaders read the books for the purpose of finding and learning about new innovation methods…and then they applied them putting them into action with their team and for their own innovation and design thinking projects.

The top innovation books innovator leaders at large organizations are using, learning from, teaching, and applying methods from:

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean Series)

Disruptive Innovation: The Christensen Collection (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, The Innovator’s DNA, and Harvard Business Review … “How Will You Measure Your Life?”) (4 Items)

Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization

Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Also search Amazon for IDEO to find other design thinking books from IDEO leaders like Tom Kelley, David Kelley etc.

Popular tools or methods that the innovators I interviewed used in their innovation work included design thinking, user experience (UX), lean startup, agile, business case or value proposition development, and the business model canvas or lean canvas. Most of these methods can be learned from a book, but to be translated into a skill you need to apply what you read in the book.

Your Best Innovation Books

What are some of the top innovation or design thinking books that you have read? Is there a method, process, system, tool or technique that you’ve found in a book that you’ve applied to help you innovate? Please let us know in the comments and let us know what insights you’ve gained from any of the books in our innovation book list.