The AMA Foundation (AMAF) is proud to announce “The Illusion of Innovation: Escape ‘Efficiency’ and Unleash Radical Progress” by Elliott Parker as the recipient of the 2025 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award, with “Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way” by Jonah Berger as the finalist for this award.
This award honors books published in recent years whose innovative ideas have had significant impact on marketing and related fields.
The 2025 Berry Book Review Selection Committee praised “The Illusion of Innovation” as an engaging, authentic, adaptable, and future-forward read.
This book explains why meaningful innovation naturally emerges from deliberate inefficiency and how large corporations can harness the power of small teams- startups – to drive radical change through systematic experimentation. “The Illusion of Innovation” explores:
• What the Federal Witness Protection Program reveals about the power of individuals
• How the Amazon river basin relies on random evolution to build resiliency
• How the NBA’s shift to the three-point rule demonstrates the importance of thoughtful experiments
• How one-thousand-year-old businesses survive crises
While challenging the existing paradigm of “Big Innovation,” Parker’s work illustrates the timeliness, novelty, utility, and relevance to marketing in the modern world.
“The Illusion of Innovation: Escape ‘Efficiency’ and Unleash Radical Progress” by Elliott Parker will be honored at the AMA Foundation Award Luncheon during the 2026 AMA Winter Academic Conference, February 13-15, 2026, in Madrid, Spain.
About the Author: Elliott Parker
Elliott Parker is the CEO of Alloy Partners, a venture builder that co-creates advantaged startups with corporations and entrepreneurs. He earned a B.S. in Finance from BYU and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Elliott launched his career in strategy consulting at Innosight, the firm founded by Clayton Christensen, where he helped dozens of Fortune 100 companies build and execute their innovation strategies.
Elliott joined his friends at High Alpha, the Indianapolis-based venture studio, to lead business design and corporate innovation in 2018. He spun Alloy out of High Alpha to bring the venture building playbook to corporations, universities, and governments. Elliott is the author of “The Illusion of Innovation: Escape ‘Efficiency’ and Capture Radical Progress,” a book that highlights the opportunity for scaled organizations to unlock transformation through rapid experimentation.
A firm believer in the power of entrepreneurs to bring about meaningful innovation, Elliott is driven by this mission. A California native and avid surfer, he seizes any chance to ride some waves, finding that he does his best thinking out on the water. In 2022, he competed in the Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim, placing in the top ten for his age group.
The AMA Foundation (AMAF) strengthens and elevates the marketing profession by advancing knowledge, building a global community of marketing leaders, and supporting marketing initiatives that drive innovation and societal impact. Gifts to the AMA Foundation empower the next generation of marketing students, develop forward-thinking faculty, support passionate professionals, build a dynamic community, and celebrate influential and transformative marketers and their work. Learn more about the AMA Foundation’s impact and ways to get involved here.