Think Outside The Building
How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Over a decade ago, renowned innovation expert Rosabeth Moss Kanter co-founded and then directed Harvard's Advanced Leadership Initiative. Her breakthrough work with hundreds of successful professionals and executives, as well as aspiring young entrepreneurs, identifies the leadership paradigm of the future: the ability to "think outside the building" to overcome establishment paralysis and produce significant innovation for a better world.
Kanter provides extraordinary accounts of the successes and near-stumbles of purpose-driven men and women from diverse backgrounds united in their conviction that positive change is possible.
A former Trader Joe's executive, for example, navigated across business, government, and community sectors to deal with poor nutrition in inner cities while reducing food waste. A concerned European banker used the power of persuasion, not position, to find novel financing for improving the health of the oceans. A Washington couple enticed global partners to join an Uber-like platform to match skilled refugees with talent-hungry companies. A visionary journalist-turned-entrepreneur closed social divides by giving fifty million social media users access to free local education and culture.
When traditional approaches are inadequate or resisted, advanced leadership skills are essential. In this book, Kanter shows how people everywhere can unleash their creativity and entrepreneurial adroitness to mobilize partners across challenging cultural, social, and political situations and innovate for a brighter future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As this stimulating treatise reveals, Kanter (Move: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead), a Harvard Business School professor and cofounder of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, believes exciting new ideas can result when leaders get out of their own institutional headspace and venture into new fields. Kanter focuses on successful businesspeople near the end of their primary careers, but not yet ready to retire and play golf; in her view, they have the needed skills and connections to help drive positive social, political, and environmental change. Through accounts of those who have done so, such as John Dubinsky, a former banking executive now dedicated to easing the construction business's racial disparities, she walks readers through such subjects as reforming institutions; forging relationships, alliances, and coalitions; avoiding the "seven perverse traps of career success" (such as "insulation from disagreement"); and developing a "new definition of what it means to have a successful career and a successful life." Buoyed by strong writing and an encouraging tone, Kanter's thorough and thought-provoking guide will be a boon for veteran leaders who want to put their well-tested skills to new and socially constructive use.
