Left on Red: How to Ignite, Leverage and Build Visionary Organizations - Hardcover

Glynn, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470230231 ISBN 13: 9780470230237

Publisher: Wiley, 2008

Synopsis

In Left on Red, venture capitalist and business innovator Bill Glynn reveals how visionary thinkers and risk-takers build great companies by doing the opposite of the expected. Today?s coolest and most successful businesses?including Google, Apple, and YouTube?were built by people who break the rules and bring radical ideas to life. If you?re an entrepreneur or an executive, this book gives you the inspiration and the guidance to bring your radical ideas to life?and change the world in the process.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

What does it take to build a company capable of changing the world? Constant innovation, and ideation? An obsessive, almost insane sense of urgency? Business Velocity and IQ? In Left on Red, venture capitalist and recognized innovator Bill Glynn presents an insider's view of the way great businesses are built.

Visionary, game-changing companies like Google and Apple don't just appear out of nowhere. Instead, they are built by maverick leaders and business commandos willing to throw the rules out the window and disrupt the status quo. They don't just "think outside the box"—for them, there is no box at all. With great personal, financial, and social risk, true innovators throughout history have overcome the most complex constraints society can throw at them. Naysayers, deal prevention teams, and the social order, like red lights, are meant to slow or stop progressive movement. Taking a left turn at a red light or driving right through it—like real innovation—is dangerous, a little crazy, and certainly a lonely sport not for the weak-willed. But if you have the guts and smarts to try it, the rewards are well worth it.

Most companies stifle and discourage their most creative employees and leaders. Only today's best companies constantly and perpetually seek out visionary employees, encourage ideation, and use every means necessary to improve their business and products. Those companies know how to build a business environment that promotes innovation and rewards risk-taking. Left on Red shows how they do it, revealing the way today's best business leaders implant innovation and change into the very DNA of their businesses.

Corporations are inherently risk averse, yet taking risks and breaking rules is the only way to truly innovate and compete. If you're an entrepreneur or an executive, Left on Red provides the insight, ideas, and examples you need to build the kind of culture of innovation and creation that's necessary to survive the systems and markets meant to keep you and your team bottled up.

Those people who change the world are mavericks and free thinkers who choose to swim against the current, cut against the grain, or turn Left on Red. For anyone who has a vision and wants to build a business that's unique, exciting, and different than anything that's come before, this book will show you the most direct route to innovation. It will teach you how to overcome red light people and systems along the way. Left on Red points out the obstacles and people that stand in the way of progress and warns that someone will end up being crushed under the weight of change. Will it be you or them?

From the Back Cover

Praise for Left on Red

"Bill Glynn has a unique ability to cut through the clutter and immediately identify what the key issues are facing businesses, executives, and entire industries, and solve them in real time. He can be brutally frank and about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but it is impressive how many times he turns out to be right."
—Thomas Tull, CEO, Legendary Pictures

"In all my years of doing business with some of the world's greatest leaders and most creative personalities, Billy G. is one of the smartest executives I've met. Left on Red is a manual for those who think differently."
—Joel Katz, media icon

"Innovation is a way of life. To be achieved, companies must unlock the potential of their employees and surround themselves with thought leaders, allowing everyone to think differently. I encourage everyone I meet in business to pick up the phone or email Billy G. In the spirit of Left on Red, he is the ultimate super connector."
—Glenn Armstrong, Vice President, Business Innovation, Amway, an Alticor business, one of the world's largest private companies

"Billy G's Left on Red is exactly what America needs right now to accelerate change and innovation."
—Tony Jeary, strategic facilitator and coach to the world's top CEOs

"Zone in. You don't want to miss a thing here, lose your head, or worse, risk being left behind."
—Greg Ray, CEO, International Speakers Bureau

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0470230231
• ISBN 13: 9780470230237
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256