In consumer fiction, everybody and their sibling nowadays writes novels that project human drama into the space of zombie-werewolf-vampire-x-men-viral-divergent dystopias. About time that someone applies the motif of aliens to economic drama and explains to humble earth dwellers how alien thinking can deliver benefits to, or even save, business organizations. Infusing an ‘alien’ mindset into the DNA of corporate decisionmaking is the self-chosen mission of a collective of business scholars in Switzerland who found in their teaching and consulting work that many corporate decisionmakers experience innovation as a “very difficult journey” and “are stuck because they are complacent,” according to scholars Theo Peridis and Michael Wade. The genre of leadership books often, and with mistaken romanticism, portrays successful innovators as superhero figures, under a notion that “being innovative requires special talents that are given to a few ‘elect people’,” says Cyril Bouquet, a French–Canadian expert on strategy and management. The
