Most businesses claim they want innovation. Most people do not consistently do this. They have a plan. They possess scorecards. They often get new ideas. What they lack is an operating system that is a reliable means of uncovering authentic opportunities, testing them with evidence, and scaling them without the organisation's immune system attacking them on arrival.

The AIF is an operating system of sorts. AIF draws upon years of consulting experience in diverse sectors like manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and industrials. As such, it offers a leadership team a comprehensive and pragmatic architecture for implementing innovation as a discipline. It is not a department, not a program, nor merely a poster on the wall. This guidebook carries you through the whole system: its five layers, seven flow stages, four capability domains, and an intelligence layer, which tells you whether the engine is running or stalled. Each concept has a tool to work with. All investigations are supported by evidence. Concrete application of the system throughout the book is illustrated with a worked example that provides a coherent view of the application of the system across all twelve steps.

There is also a worked example that runs from the first page to the last of the book on a manufacturer who sensed his real opportunity was to sell uptime, not parts. There is also a description of modifications that were made to the system, experiments that tested it, pivots that reshaped it, and scale-ups that made it real.

No hype. No magic. Just a system that runs and gets better every time it turns.

Start with one opportunity. One team. Ninety days.