"A much-needed blueprint for leaders seeking to turn chaos into a competitive advantage." —Forbes
2026 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD (Leadership category)
People aren't predictable—but your innovation leadership can be.
You've built the best innovation process. You've mapped out every step. Then, reality hits: People hesitate. Doubt creeps in. Resistance surfaces. Suddenly, your well-designed plan feels like it's unraveling, and you're left wondering, What am I missing? What have I done wrong? These moments aren't setbacks—they're gifts. They hold the key to deeper trust, alignment, and impact in your work.
In Leading Through Free Fall, innovation strategist Brianna Sylver reveals how to turn the inevitable challenges of innovation into your greatest advantage. Drawing on over twenty years of experience at the intersection of user experience, market research, and strategy, Sylver walks you through three stages of leading innovation: Suiting Up, Free Fall, and Safe Landing.
This playbook delivers 17 practical tools—that can be implemented immediately—to help you navigate the messy humanness of innovation with confidence, while you build trust and lead with greater clarity, resilience, and impact.
The biggest roadblocks in innovation aren't technical—they're human.
Through real-world stories and actionable strategies, Leading Through Free Fall teaches you how to tame uncertainty, embrace resistance, and turn roadblocks into breakthroughs—so both your teams and projects thrive.
You'll walk away with a repeatable system to unlock your team's potential, keep your best talent engaged, and lead with a steady hand—no matter how fast the ground is moving.
Innovation strategist Brianna Sylver helps Fortune 500 leaders and city governments unlock growth by mastering the human side of innovation. As President of Sylver Consulting and author of the Amazon Top Seller Leading Through Free Fall, Brianna specializes in "insights activation"—the bridge between great ideas and real-world execution.
Blending 20+ years of expertise in Market Research, User Experience, and Strategy, she equips audiences with the clarity and tools to navigate uncertainty, align teams, and turn turbulence into trust. Her insights have been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Business Week and HSM Management.
Whether she's hitting the main stage for a keynote or rolling up her sleeves in a leadership workshop, Brianna has sparked new ways of thinking for teams at DHL, PepsiCo, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Marriott International, Amway, and more. She's also a frequent guest on innovation podcasts, where she skips the jargon to share real-talk perspectives on leading through change.
Brianna holds a Masters of Design degree from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech.
