Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles

Drucker's argument is that innovation is not a flash of genius but a discipline — a systematic practice that can be learned and managed. The book identifies seven sources of innovation (the unexpected, incongruities, process needs, industry changes, demographic shifts, changes in perception, new knowledge) and insists that most successful innovations exploit the boring ones, not the glamorous ones. For product direction this is the most pragmatic book about innovation on the shelf: it replaces the myth of the visionary with the practice of the alert observer. Drucker's prose is characteristically clear and the examples, though dated, illustrate principles that have not aged. Read alongside Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma for the complementary argument about why established firms fail to innovate.