The Jossey-Bass nonprofit and public management series

Tools for innovators introduces public managers to the tools that today's most innovative leaders are using to bring about change in their organizations. Steven Cohen and William Eimicke distinguish tools for innovation from traditional functional tools such as budgeting, human resource management, and organizational structure. The six key innovation tools they examine are: strategic planning, reengineering, total quality management, benchmarking, performance, measurement and management, team management, and privatization. They show what the innovation tools are all about, how to use them, their costs and benefits, and perhaps most critically, how to use them together - showing how to integrate them into a single framework of management innovation. Concrete case examples of successful innovation efforts drawn from the authors' own experiences provide examples of the challenges managers face as they attempt to innovate. These cases discuss how innovations are introduced and adjusted to the specific needs of real-world situations.

Any organization can innovate once. The challenge is to innovate twice, thrice, and more - to make innovation a part of daily good practice. This book shows how nonprofit and government organizations can transform the single, occasional act of innovating into an everyday occurrence by forging a culture of natural innovation. Filled with real success stories and practical lessons learned, Sustaining Innovation offers examples of how organizations can take the first step toward innovativeness, advice on how to survive the inevitable mistakes along the way, and tools for keeping the edge once the journey is complete. Light also provides a set of simple suggestions for fitting the lessons to the different management pressures facing the nonprofit sector and government. Unlike in the private sector, where innovation needs only to be profitable to be worth doing, nonprofit and government innovation must be about doing something worthwhile. It must challenge the prevailing wisdom and advance the public good. Sustaining Innovation gives nonprofit and government managers a coherent, easily understandable model for making this kind of innovation a natural reality.