Compassion Driven Innovation

This book is for pathfinders— product, services, business, and nonprofit managers searching for ways to reach beyond the artificial barriers that constrain innovation and make “work” harder. Inspired by real life trailblazers and their own experiences, the authors decode the secrets of achieving breakthrough success at both organizational and interpersonal levels. Learn to use their methodology with the help of checklists and detailed examples that will transform your thinking and skills.

Due to its potential transformative nature, empathy has increasingly received attention in business, psychology, neuroscience, education, medicine, social sciences and design, to mention only a few. During the last two decades, discussions about the role of empathy in design and creative research and practice have developed, with empathy perceived as a key instrument in human-centred design and design thinking. This book revisits the powerful concept of empathy in the new post-pandemic era in which ubiquitous digitalisation presents challenges to retaining human-centredness when developing products and services. The book presents a practical four-step approach to the challenges presented concerning how organisations can turn from merely feeling empathy with or for people, to actions of empathy and compassion that can be implemented with and by communities. A wide range of organisations and organisational settings can benefit from the presented case studies and research methods. Through them, the book explores how to discover, share and act with empathy and compassion in the new digitally driven post-pandemic era to innovate across a wide range of organisations, including for-profit and not-for-profit businesses and those in the public and third sectors. This edited volume will appeal to global researchers in the fields of product and service design and digital, social innovation, as well those interested in organisational development. The practical, interdisciplinary nature of the book and innovative four-step approach will also appeal to upper-level students.

The nature and science of compassion encompasses many aspects of human behavior, social and organizational experience, with resultant debate about its definition, meaning and application. Research, theorizing and scholarship is spread across a wide range of methodological, disciplinary, historical, and cultural perspectives including psychology, sociology, psychosocial studies, organizational science, inter/national politics, and evolutionary studies. Global concerns relating to the climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, and mass movements of displaced people all point to an urgent need for compassion in all human interactions. New and innovative interdisciplinary approaches, agendas, and paradigms are needed to both compliment, and critique, existing understandings of the meaning and applications of compassion in all its diverse and complex forms. In a world where there appears to be increasing demand for simplification and quantification from governments and policy makers, questions must be asked about what this means for psychology and social science research. The tendency towards post/positivist reductionism has led to critiques that universities have become factories that produce sterile, derivative, unimaginative writing. 21st-century universities have been described as ‘anxiety machines’, lacking in compassion, and creating more competition and stress than knowledge. Arguably, research into compassion should take place in compassionate disciplinary and institutional cultures. We all have a role to play in addressing the lack of compassion in universities, which will involve an institutional level shift from individual-level competition to group-level collaboration. Importantly, recent advances in compassion research promise gains in understanding in both the science and neuroscience of human experience, and in applications of that work to improve humankind and the world around us. Qualitative research in psychology and psychosocial approaches, although becoming more visible, still remain a minority endeavor within the discipline. This Research Topic offers the opportunity to foreground the values and virtues of qualitative psychology, alongside more tried and tested approaches.

Leadership is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in getting the job done? A global pandemic, economic volatility, natural disasters, civil and political unrest. From New York to Barcelona to Hong Kong, it can feel as if the world as we know it is coming apart. Through it all, our human spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion. But in hard times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions—deliver negative feedback, make difficult choices that disappoint people, and in some cases lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing out the best in others? Most people think we have to make a binary choice between being a good human being and being a tough, effective leader. But this is a false dichotomy. Being human and doing what needs to be done are not mutually exclusive. In truth, doing hard things and making difficult decisions is often the most compassionate thing to do. As founder and CEO of Potential Project, Rasmus Hougaard and his longtime coauthor, Jacqueline Carter, show in this powerful, practical book, you must always balance caring for your people with leadership wisdom and effectiveness. Using data from thousands of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors find that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty, and well-being in their people. With rich examples from Netflix, IKEA, Unilever, and many other global companies, as well as practical tools and advice for leaders and managers at any level, Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.

What does platform thinking mean? It is the ability to put platform-based mechanisms at the core of digital business transformations in business. Digital platforms like Uber, Spotify, Airbnb, Booking.com, and many others completely re-shaped the daily life of millions of users. However, many innovation leaders struggle to conceive the significance of their impact. Platform-based business models are not just the real of geeks’ startups, digital services, and Unicorns. This book shows there that their potential in creating value is higher than suspected. Even though platform ecosystems are complex, readers will take on a journey to become platform thinkers. Their eyes will be trained to look beyond what’s visible and start reading the platform world around them. Then, they will be guided into a step-by-step process and learn how to write a new platform model from scratch. This book is the result of a decade of research. It offers both a framework and practical instruments to champion digital transformation in any organization. It is specially intended for those who are interested in the glittering platform world and are still trying to figure it out.

This book discusses the attributes of inclusive business by engaging people (customers and stakeholders) in creating social and customer values and enhancing business growth among customer-centric companies. Corporate policy and implications of the inclusiveness in businesses on social development constitute the core discussion in this book. Inclusivity concepts and arguments are endorsed by case studies across the developing economies. Philosophy and practices of inclusive business through theoretical foundations, design arguments, and managerial analysis has been discussed across five chapters. Discussion on the success of inclusive businesses in the context of innovation, technology, and new product development which motivated people-led companies to adapt to agile business modeling and drive co-creation and coevolution initiatives are central to this book.

Are you prepared for the coming AI era? AI advances will profoundly change your daily service interactions, so this book provides readers with a necessary understanding of service, the application of resources (e.g., knowledge) for the benefit of another. In just minutes, you can learn about today’s use of early-stage AI for automation and augmentation, and essential elements of service science, service-dominant (S-D) logic, and Service Dominant Architecture (SDA). Ultimately improved service for all is possible with human-level AI and digital twins – but requires investing wisely in better models: Better models of the world both complex natural and social systems (science), better mental-models in people to improve interactions (logic), better cultural and structural models of organizations to improve change (architecture), and better trusted and responsible AI models. The service innovation community studies and builds better models to improve interactions and change in business and society. The book challenges all responsible actors – individuals, businesses, universities, and governments – to invest systematically and wisely to upskill with AI (the X+AI vision). The service innovation community is a growing transdiscipline harnessing all disciplines to become better T-shaped professionals. Extensive end notes, bibliography, and index are provided.

There are books about product and companies but no books about a company as a product. The Vice Chair arrives from orbit around a corporation with a doctrine of leadership without authority for business warriors who reject control, live in a world of influencers, and aspire to become one. Process and culture converge as competitive advantage by refashioning priorities for Industry 4.0 through unorthodox lenses in a no holds-barred treatment of influence and leverage complete with coaching, mantras, and essential tales of leadership. Competitive action is focused through design thinking and transformation within a social system. A greater metamorphosis combines personal development with management of a company as though it were a product, leading to culture, branding, and innovation in the form of actionable values.