Books by H. James Harrington

It has been estimated that over 75% of the innovative projects that begin through the Innovation Management System are either a failure or they failed to produce the desired results.

Jim Harrington and Frank Voehl have gathered together the thoughts and ideas of more than 20 of the most creative innovation thought-leaders from business, professional practice, and academia in this compelling book. The thought leaders look at innovation from almost every angle.

As children, most of us were very creative. Yet, as we became more educated our creative powers generally gave way to relying upon something we have studied and been trained to do. The book focuses on how to stimulate the creativity that lies within each of us.

This book is part of a three-book series designed to provide readers with the tools and methodologies that all innovators should be able to use. The Innovation Tools Handbook, Volume 2 presents 23 tools/methodologies related to innovative evolutionary products, processes, and services, or the improvement of existing ones. For each tool, the book provides a definition, identifies the user of the tool, explains what phases of the innovation process the tool is used, describes how the tool is used, supplies examples of the outputs from the tool, identifies software that can maximize its effectiveness, and includes references and suggestions for further reading.

This book combines the knowledge, skills, and risks taken by a young entrepreneur with those acquired by a senior entrepreneur. Dr. Harrington is well-known for his work with many organizations around the world at refining and improving their manufacturing and business processes, organizational structure, and strategic planning. The two authors have combined their experiences to define the process to roadmaps that minimize the risk of failure and cycle time required to go from concept to an established profitable organization. This newly defined entrepreneurial process provides a breakthrough in thinking on activity-by-activity root to entrepreneurial success.

Value proposition, an old concept, is taking on new significance in todayΓÇÖs innovation-driven environment. Business focus has shifted from developing many creative ideas to developing only those that will successfully flow through the product cycle and fulfill a customer need. The old approach resulted in less than a 10 percent success rate for concepts that started through the product cycle; this can no longer be tolerated. This new book on value propositions outlines a systematic approach to making an early evaluation of potential projects and programs so you can determine if they can add real value to your organization or its customersΓÇöpotentially saving you millions of dollars and months of valuable time. Focusing on the necessary data collection efforts, Maximizing Value Propositions to Increase Project Success Rates will help you identify easy opportunities for improvement and will guide you through the process of creating value propositions for the ideas that will drive the organizationΓÇÖs future profits. It outlines a four-stage approach to creating value propositions and explains how to create effective value proposition documents. The book illustrates the role of the opportunity center in capturing new ideas, describes how to present value propositions to management, and includes an example of a new product value proposition. Detailing a method for continuous review of the improvement process, it will help you foster an entrepreneurial mind-set within your employees and encourage them to actively search and document value-adding ideas. Through the effective use of value propositions it is completely possible for your organization to increase the number of new products/services it offers to your customers by over 100 percent. It is not unusual for this to result in more than  a 40 percent increase in profits per year. Adopting the approach outlined in the text for using value propositions can save your organizations millions of dollars and much time. What could be better than reducing costs while increasing sales?

Written for organizational leaders, planners, facilitators, and consultants, this book defines how the four different planning activities used to manage and improve an organization should be merged to maximize effectiveness. Stating that the four plans for organization improvement are the business plan, strategic business plan, strategic improvement plan, and operating plan, it defines each and explains how to link them together to reduce cost and cycle times. The text incorporates sufficient flexibility so readers can adapt and revise, based on changing business needs and marketplace opportunities.

One of the best-known innovators in the field of operations management, Harrington provides a breakthrough method that cuts costs by 60% while improving quality 100%