Remember when it was really just fine to close yourselves up in your boardrooms and offices and discuss strategies around outsourcing, choose the right best practice to implement, write up documents around corporate governance? If you did all of these things, chances are, your business, and your board, would be happy.

Nowadays, of course, everything has changed (once again).

You can see it in the enormous success that companies like GOOGLE and Apple have enjoyed in the last several years while other companies have struggled. You can hear it from everybody who knows that much of what can be produced in the West today can be copied and produced elsewhere, often much more cheaply. For whatever reason, now hear this: To survive, and thrive, your company must truly innovate, and not just once in awhile, but constantly, relentlessly. Innovation is the new paradigm, and that never-satisfied, always probing, always comparing, always powerful customer is the driver behind that paradigm.

Now, take a deep breath. Innovation today may not require opening huge, new labs and dedicating hundreds of researchers and engineers to open-ended projects. According to thought leader and innovator Patricia Seybold, there are end users out there in the marketplace who would be only too happy to help you come up with enhancements, new applications, and even entirely new products, not to mention new processes to optimize production. They are the voices in the Internet ether who are having conversations amongst themselves all the  time about topics you'd like to hear. And in a remarkable, new book, Seybold tells you how to join the conversation and lead your own innovation revolution.

Bio

Patricia B. Seybold is the author of the international best-seller  Customers.com and The Customer Revolution. She is the founder and  CEO of the Boston-based The Patricia Seybold Group (www.psgroup.com), which for more than 25 years has specialized in helping Fortune 500 companies design and continuously improve their customer-focused business strategies.

Resources

Patricia Seybold Group Web  site

Patricia Seybold's  blog

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer