Overcrowded.
If we are blinded by darkness,
we are also blinded by light.
Annie Dillard
We live in a world awash with ideas. Thanks to open innovation, design thinking, crowdsourcing, and especially to digital technologies, we have easy access to an unprecedented amount of novel opportunities.
How to make sense of this overabundance of opportunities?
How to envision the next big thing?
How to avoid trying everything and fall into the paradox of ideas (the more ideas we create the less we innovate)?
To succeed in an overcrowded world we need a meaningful direction. To focus our creativity and the creativity of others towards a new, shared purpose.
This book shows how to take the first crucial step in any innovation journey: the design of a meaningful direction. It provides the mindset, the process, and the tools.
Leveraging on the experiences of firms such as Apple, Yankee Candle, Nest Labs, Philips, Gucci, Deloitte, the book shows how we can nurture a new purpose that is actionable, and that people love.
The MIT Press, 2017
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Reviews.
"In his new book, we find Roberto Verganti at his most humanistic, placing the 'person' back at the center of attention. The individual is no longer simply the object of our design thinking approach, but becomes the very starting point of the innovation process, ideating from the inside out, in an act of love toward people and society. In a full-circle journey that moves from person to person, Roberto shares with us why, in modern society, we need 'innovation by meaning' more than ever; and why this notion makes such sense for business today. Overcrowded serves as a precious gift and a priceless reminder for anybody trying to create something new in this world."
Mauro Porcini, Senior Vice President and Chief Design Officer, PepsiCo
"Overcrowded challenges the conventional wisdom that innovation is all about problem-solving and that the key to success is creating more ideas to solve problems. In a world full of ideas, Verganti argues, advantage lies with those organizations that can craft innovative visions, rather than those that can find yet one more idea. This is a provocative book that will get you to think about innovation in an entirely new way."
Gary P. Pisano, Harry E. Figgie Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Tools.
Find out more about the methods described in the book, our latest developments and the digital tool to design and nurture meaningful visions.