"How can I create an innovation engine that will consistently deliver substantial organic growth?" This question is the number-one issue for most CEOs and senior executives today. Innovation is a critical driver of organic growth, yet based on the authors' research, only a small percent of companies effectively use innovation to sustain long-term, profitable growth. And the stakes couldn't be higher-failure to create successful new products, services, and business models causes stagnating or declining profits. Now, for the first time, experts Michael George, James Works and Kimberly Watson-Hemphill explain the surprising and significant gap between the CEO's growth goals and actual performance. The authors, who are experts at connecting strategy to execution, give you a complete blueprint for exploiting the strategic and operational dimensions of innovation. Using fresh insights about the true drivers of fast time-to-market and the inadequate success rate of innovation, Fast Innovation reveals: Why current approaches to innovation fail A new strategic and tactical plan that will help your company dramatically reduce time-to-market by 50 to 80 percent The secret for finding out what your customers really want (not just what they say they want) Tools and methods for turning customer insights into ideas that will generate significant ROI The key levers that senior leadership must engage to create innovation