The Webster’s Dictionary defines innovation as “the introduction of something new.”  Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant and author said “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship… the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”

The word Innovation is used constantly and has become a confusing buzzword in the business world that is used probably too much and not always appropriately, but Innovation surely is a fascinating topic.

Below is a list of my favorite top 10 Books on Innovation. Reading them has been a fascinating learning experience.

My List of Top 10 Books on Innovation

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The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen

The Innovator’s Dilemma was written by Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard Business Professor who created the term disruptive innovation. 

The Innovator’s Dilemma explains how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right yet still lose market leadership.

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Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson

This book is a fascinating deep dive on innovation. The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery: they are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment produces them?

Steven Johnson identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines.

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The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. We know that most startups fail. But according to Eric Ries, many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup describes a new approach, a movement, being adopted across the globe, that is changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. 

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The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm (Hardcover) by Tom Kelley

In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

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The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Hardcover) by Clayton M. Christensen

In this bestseller Clayton M. Christensen exposed this crushing paradox behind the failure of many industry leaders: by placing too much focus on pleasing their most profitable customers, these firms actually paved the way for their own demise, by ignoring the disruptive technologies that aggressively evolved to displace them.

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The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley

The author of the The Art of Innovation reveals the strategies IDEO, the world-famous design firm, uses to foster innovative thinking throughout the organization to overcome the naysayers who block creativity. 

The role of the devil’s advocate is nearly universal in business today and it allows individuals to effectively kill new projects and ideas.

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The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (Hardcover) by Jeffrey H. Dyer

Building on the Theories of Disruptive Innovation, The Innovator’s DNA demonstrates how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move progressively from idea to impact.

The world’s best innovators share several skills in common that distinguish them from ordinary managers.

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Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Hardcover) by Ed Catmull

As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Storywas released, changing animation forever.

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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a fascinating story of the roller-coaster life and intense personality of Steve Jobs, a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries.

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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel

If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.