Future First: How Successful Leaders Turn Innovation Challenges into New Value Frontiers

Future First is a practical guide for any business leader who wants to build, expand, or reinvent their company by finding new value in global challenges. Traditional companies often view issues like income equality, global warming, and resource scarcity as "problems." By contrast, future first leaders understand them as opportunities, as innovation challenges. Through real-life business examples ranging from Nike to Opower, this book lays out how to identify and adopt the future first leadership mindset and business capabilities required to achieve lasting and integrated performance results. Future First examines how leaders from companies including Unilever, Etsy, Revolution Foods, Method Products, and others have adopted this mindset toward innovation and people practices, accelerating business ecosystem transformation. Alice Mann, an organizational psychologist with twenty years of experience consulting and coaching on executive leadership, organization design, and business transformation, interviewed scores of business leaders to understand how their companies are expanding into new value frontiers. Future First makes a convincing argument that successful partnerships and alliances among big global companies and small mission-driven ones can reshape the global ecosystems of apparel, food, automobiles, and energy, and remake the future of our world.