The Innovation Age

After fifty years of slowing productivity, declining trust, and rising inequality, leaders know something is broken—but few agree on what to fix. In The Innovation Age, Jamie Heywood offers a radical yet pragmatic answer: the modern company is mis-designed for the world it now inhabits. From courtroom battles at Uber to lessons drawn from cities, communities, and even the human brain, Heywood shows why hierarchies suppress innovation, why shareholder primacy distorts purpose, and why the most creative systems are modular, diverse, and collaborative. Clear-eyed, original and deeply practical, this open access book is a manifesto for corporate change. It shows what each of us—employees, citizens, and policy makers—must do to build the companies of the future. For leaders, it explains how to organise for innovation rather than efficiency, how to balance autonomy with alignment, and how to turn companies back into what they were always meant to be—society’s most powerful problem-solving institutions.