“What are the best books about Innovation and Innovators?” We looked at 171 of the top Innovation books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 15 titles, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Innovation” book lists, are ranked below by how many lists they appear on. The remaining 150+ titles, as well as the lists we used are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 15 Books About Innovation and Innovators

15 .) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Lists It Appears On:

• Ka Scope
• Nest

In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, Blue Ocean Strategy, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”―untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

14 .) Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles between Vision and Reality written by Scott Belsky

Lists It Appears On:

• Hacker Earth
• Nest

How the world’s leading innovators push their ideas to fruition again and again Edison famously said that genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world’s problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. That’s why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills. Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of creative people and teams that are especially productive-the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again. After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as: •Generate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally •Prioritize through nagging •Encourage fighting within your team While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it’s better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

13 .) Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works written by Ash Maurya

Lists It Appears On:

• Hacker Earth
• Observer

We live in an age of unparalleled opportunity for innovation. We’re building more products than ever before, but most of them fail—not because we can’t complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product. What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That’s the promise of Running Lean. In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a “product/market fit” for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping. Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who’s interested in starting a business project.

12 .) The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape our Future

Lists It Appears On:

• Nest
• Small Biz Trends

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the twelve technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends— flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning — and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

11 .) The Invisible Advantage: How to Create a Culture of Innovation written by Soren Kaplan

Lists It Appears On:

• Hacker Earth
• Sun Scrapers

The Invisible Advantage shows how any organization can create a culture of innovation–an environment that promotes freethinking, an entrepreneurial spirit, and sustainable value creation at all levels and across all functions. This book isn’t just about the importance of an innovation culture, nor how to emulate the ”innovation untouchables” like Google and Apple.

10 .) The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It written by Scott D. Anthony

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Ka Scope

Innovation may be the hottest discipline around today—in business circles and beyond. And for good reason. Innovation transforms companies and markets. It’s the key to solving vexing social problems. And it makes or breaks professional careers. For all the enthusiasm the topic inspires, however, the practice of innovation remains stubbornly impenetrable. No longer. In The Little Black Book of Innovation, long-time innovation expert Scott D. Anthony draws on stories from his research and field work with companies like Procter & Gamble to demystify innovation. In his trademark conversational and lively style, Anthony presents a simple definition of innovation, breaks down the essential differences between types of innovation, and illuminates innovation’s vital role in organizational success and personal growth.

9 .) The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us about Innovation written by Frans Johansson

Lists It Appears On:

• Hacker Earth
• Nest

Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs. Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.

8 .) Where Good Ideas Come From The Natural History of Innovation

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Extra Slice

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery–these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

7 .) 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization written by Vijay Kumar

Lists It Appears On:

• Ka Scope
• Observer
• Sun Scrapers

Unlike other books on the subject, 101 Design Methods approaches the practice of creating new products, services, and customer experiences as a science, rather than an art, providing a practical set of collaborative tools and methods for planning and defining successful new offerings. Strategists, managers, designers, and researchers who undertake the challenge of innovation, despite a lack of established procedures and a high risk of failure, will find this an invaluable resource. Novices can learn from it; managers can plan with it; and practitioners of innovation can improve the quality of their work by referring to it.

6 .) Innovation and Entrepreneurship written by Peter Drucker

Lists It Appears On:

• Hacker Earth
• Nest
• Sun Scrapers

The first book to present innovation and entrepreneurship as a purposeful and systematic discipline, this classic business title explains and analyzes the challenges and opportunities of America’s entrepreneurial economy.

5 .) Innovation to the Core: A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates written by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Hacker Earth
• Idea Glow

In Innovation to the Core, Strategos CEO Peter Skarzynski and business strategist Rowan Gibson change all that. They share the accumulated wisdom from Strategos–the consulting firm Skarzynski co-founded with Gary Hamel that helps clients instill innovation into their very core. Drawing on a wealth of stories and examples, the book shows how companies of every stripe have overcome the barriers to successful, profitable innovation. You’ll find parts devoted to crucial topics–such as how to organize the discovery process, generate strategic insights, enlarge your innovation pipeline, and maximize your return on innovation. Frequent hands-on tools–frameworks, checklists, probing questions–help you put the book’s ideas into action.

4 .) The Ten Faces of Innovation written by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Hacker Earth
• Nest

The role of the devil’s advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation.

3 .) The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business written by Clayton M. Christensen

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Hacker Earth
• Ka Scope
• Nest

In this revolutionary bestseller, Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership — or worse, disappear completely. And he not only proves what he says, he tells others how to avoid a similar fate. Focusing on “disruptive technology” — the Honda Super Cub, Intel’s 8088 processor, or the hydraulic excavator, for example — Christensen shows why most companies miss “the next great wave.” Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Find out: When it is right “not” to listen to customers. When to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins. When to pursue small markets at the expense of seemingly larger and more lucrative ones. Sharp, cogent, and provocative, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is one of the most talked-about books of our time — and one no savvy manager or entrepreneur should be without.

2 .) The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses written by Eric Ries

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Hacker Earth
• Ka Scope
• Nest

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs – in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

1 .) The Myths of Innovation written by Scott Berkun

Lists It Appears On:

• Cult Bizz Tech
• Hacker Earth
• Nest
• Scott Berkun
• Sun Scrapers

How do we know if a hot new technology will succeed or fail? Most of us, even experts, get it wrong all the time. We depend more than we realize on wishful thinking and romanticized ideas of history. In the new paperback edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in The New York Times, bestselling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and suprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations — truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today. Through his entertaining and insightful explanations of the inherent patterns in how Einstein’s discovered E=mc2 or Tim Berner Lee’s developed the idea of the world wide web, you will see how to develop existing knowledge into new innovations. Each entertaining chapter centers on breaking apart a powerful myth, popular in the business world despite it’s lack of substance. Through Berkun’s extensive research into the truth about innovations in technology, business and science, you’ll learn lessons from the expensive failures and dramatic successes of innovations past, and understand how innovators achieved what they did — and what you need to do to be an innovator yourself.

The 150+ Additional Best Books About Innovators

19 Best Books For Innovation Sources/Lists