This month we look at books that will help you change people's social behaviour for good, understand why people make irrational decisions and make innovation more systematic.

Up and Out of Poverty: The Social Marketing Solution 
By Philip Kotler and Nancy R. Lee

Traditional solutions to solving the problem of poverty include economic growth, redistribution strategies and foreign aid.  But what about marketing?  Consider what the impact would be if governments and civil organisations could support and persuade more people to get immunised on time, put mosquito nets over their beds, take their tuberculosis medicines, use condoms, or quit smoking.  This is what social marketers seek to do every day - influence peoples’ behaviour for good. In Up and Out of Poverty, Kotler and Lee demonstrate how social marketing can help alleviate poverty through a series of remarkable case studies of organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Vision and Microsoft - and without using academic jargon.  The book lives up to its sub-title A Toolkit, as you can access downloadable forms and checklists to help put social marketing into practice.

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour
By Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman.

People sometimes behave in surprisingly irrational ways, disregarding facts or logic. Take the accomplished pilot who made an apparently irrational decision that resulted in the death of more than 500 people, for example, or the Washington subway passengers who ignored the performance of a virtuoso violinist because they perceived him as a street musician. Brothers Ori and Rom Brafman interviewed experts and collected stories from the realms of psychology, economics, sports, politics, aviation, jurisprudence, anthropology, and corporate management to understand the psychological forces that sway our behaviour. The book looks at how these irrational impulses can lead to us making the wrong decisions, affecting our careers and personal lives. They also show how we can outsmart ourselves.

Innovation Tournaments 
By Christian Terwiesch and Karl T. Ulrich

Innovation is the lifeblood of companies, but the process is difficult to manage because it’s often creative and random.  For managers and entrepreneurs, it’s difficult to filter the good ideas from the bad.  Innovation Tournaments shows how a structured and rigorous approach to innovation can be successful, using real-world case studies. Terwiesch and Ulrich describe how an innovation tournament, which starts with a large number of opportunities and has several rounds, can help managers to select opportunities that are more likely to be successful.  The book takes a hands-on approach to show how this technique can be used in different industries.  For small business owners, it provides practical ideas and useful case studies to help entrepreneurs implement an innovation process that can be managed using scientific principles and tools.

Visit www.innovationtournaments.com for more information.