Julia Kathi Froehlich & Michael Gibbert 
Using Thematic Thinking to Achieve Business Success, Growth, and Innovation [PDF ebook] 
Finding Opportunities Where Others Don’t Look

Leverage hidden similarities and connections to succeed in new markets and avert emerging business risks! Firmly rooted in the latest cognitive science, Thematic Thinking helps you recognize your great opportunities and grave threats in distant but related industries and markets. If you’re an executive, entrepreneur, or strategist, it will help you illuminate blind spots on your strategic maps and innovation processes, by radically redefining what you see as similar to your core business. Using Thematic Thinking to Achieve Business Success, Growth, and Innovation explains why this approach to innovation works so well, and how to successfully apply it in your business. Using realistic business cases, the authors show: How Thematic Thinking responds to today’s radically shifting business environment, and the collapse of traditional market boundaries Why traditional approaches to innovation can often be counterproductive, and how to go beyond them How to systematically uncover deep similarities where most managers only see differences How to understand these similarities as immense new business opportunities — and uncover emerging risks you wouldn’t otherwise notice until too late How to explore and combine themes, identify similarities, create and evaluate thematic ideas, organize for Thematic Thinking, and overcome obstacles to success Which Google manager would have imagined people substituting Facebook for Gmail? Which Nike manager recognizes the huge potential competitive threat now presented by Apple? With Thematic Thinking, linkages like this become clear — and innovative, once-hidden strategic options are revealed!