These days, few would argue that the pace of change in the business world isn’t accelerating—it’s generally agreed that every industry faces some kind of disruption in the coming years. This leaves continuous business innovation as the only way to maintain any kind of competitive advantage in the long run.

Innovation in today’s connected world doesn’t just mean launching new products and services. It also means new business models, which often require different ways of organizing and new forms of organization design.

But most organizations today aren’t designed for continuous innovation. Innovation, if it happens at all, happens slowly. Innovation teams must often make do with meager resources as margins shrink in other areas of the business. People in the organization are attached to existing models and ideas. They have formed deeply embedded habits and routines that make it hard to let go of the current mindset or imagine alternatives. If new businesses, or new products and services, make it to launch, there are often problems getting people aligned around new ways of thinking and getting them to take ownership of a new way of working.

Design sprints are an exciting new approach: they get people aligned around new ideas, create more ownership and buy-in, get new ideas to prototype and launch more quickly and efficiently—and with higher quality.

Design sprints create alignment and buy-in because they get more people involved in the design process, working together to co-create new products and prototypes. People are more engaged when they are involved in the creation process.

Design sprints are faster and more efficient because they are “timeboxed,” which means they give design teams a way to eliminate distractions, focus their full attention, and get tangible results in short time frames.

Design sprints also increase quality by involving more people from more parts of the organization, including the people who will be tasked with execution and understanding the implementation challenges.

The design sprint is an important new approach and an essential practice for organizations that are serious about innovation. The book you are now holding in your hands was written by pioneers in the field who will guide you, step by step, through this process of running a successful design sprint.

Good luck!

— Dave Gray, coauthor of Gamestorming and founder of XPLANE May 12, 2015, St. Louis, MO