Innovate or Die

83 percent of companies call innovation a top-three priority. Only 3 percent are ready to deliver on it. The gap between the two is not a budget gap. It is a culture gap, and closing it is the CEO's job. Innovate or Die is a field guide for chief executives and their leadership teams. It shows how to assess where a company really stands on innovation, and how to build the culture, the pipeline and the governance that turn good intentions into products customers pay for. At its heart are the five elements that separate the companies that pull ahead from those that fall behind: technology instinct at the top, tolerance for intelligent failure, consistency through the cycle, market obsession rather than idea obsession, and decisions that actually decide. None of them costs money. All of them cost courage. Written by a former CEO of a global technology company and one of Germany's most experienced transformation consultants, the book combines the operator's scars with four decades of pattern recognition. Every chapter follows the same rhythm: the idea, a real example from a public company, concrete homework for your own organization, and questions to reflect on. Scorecards, templates, a ninety-day CEO sprint and a twelve-month roadmap turn reading into doing. This is a handbook to be written in, argued with and brought into the boardroom. Not another book about innovation, but a practical program for building real innovation leadership.