The Idea-Driven Organization:
Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas

By Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder

"The Idea-Driven Organization is so reasonable that the magnitude of its change message is easy to miss. The richness of the examples from all over the world make it fun to read, and the authors convincingly demonstrate the power of incorporating frontline thinking into your organization!"

- Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

The Idea-Driven Organization addresses how too many organizations overlook their single greatest engine of growth and innovation: employee ideas. This new book provides the tips and insights necessary for leaders to implement the type of employee-created concepts that will benefit businesses from top to bottom.

In this follow-up to their bestseller Ideas Are Free, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder show how to align every part of an organization around generating and implementing employee ideas. Offering dozens of examples of what a tremendous competitive advantage this can offer, this book will enable leaders to build the kind of idea-driven organization capable of implementing 50 to 100 more ideas per employee per year.

Using samples from idea-driven organizations around the world, both authors explain what’s needed to put together a management team that embraces grassroots ideas and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that enable-or hinder-them. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one that fits all organizations, including teaching employees how to come up with more and better ideas. The-Idea Driven Organization is exactly what every thriving business needs.

About the Authors:

Alan G. Robinson is a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Dean M. Schroeder is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz Professor of Management at Valparaiso University. Between them, Robinson and Schroeder have advised hundreds of organizations in more than twenty-five countries on how to improve their performance.

Publication date: March 2014, $27.95, Hardcover, 240 pages, 6 1/8" x 9 1/4", ISBN 978-1-62656-123-6