My work-in-progress book, Feedback-Led Innovation, is the first evidence-based book revealing how feedback fuels breakthroughs in every corner of society. It uncovers the untold story of how the world’s most effective organizations—from tech giants and financial institutions to retail chains, religious communities, and energy companies—are using feedback to gain insight and turn it into value.
You’ll also meet athletes, veterans, and creative professionals who’ve used feedback to spark career-defining moments. Backed by research and real-world case studies, this book reimagines feedback not only as a conversation that can lead to incremental improvements, but as a comprehensive skillset that can drive personal and organizational transformation.
Whether you’re leading a team, launching a startup, or seeking to grow in your role, this book will help you reimagine what feedback is so you can use it as fuel for the breakthroughs you’re striving for. See the FAQ below that answers additional questions about the book.
While Feedback-Led Innovation reflects my current writing and focus on management and workplace culture—as featured in Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Impact Education—my earlier writing was rooted in various genres, including investigative journalism, poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Essays have appeared in anthologies such as Coming of Age at the End of Nature: A Generation Faces Living on a Changed Planet (Trinity University Press), poetry book reviews in Rattle, poetry in the Medical Journal of Australia, fiction in Hawai‘i Pacific Review, literary journalism in outlets including Newsweek, where it was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
You can explore a selection of those books and works below.
“When a collection like Malaria, Poems comes along, the world must take notice. In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our attention to a disease that kills over 627,000 people a year. Call it the poetry of awareness: Through beautifully realized and scientifically sound lyrics, Conaway educates us on subjects ranging from the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits the disease, to the gray market in false remedies. The work, while deeply cerebral, manages to get to the heart of the issue with intense power.” —NPR, Best Books of 2014
Chittagong is a book of poems and essays that focuses on the shipbreaking industry in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Shipbreaking is the dismantling of decommissioned ships, and the industry is known for its pollution and child labor violations. Chittagong pushes genre boundaries as it explores the “whirling and whirring dust of togetherness” in Bangladesh’s second largest city.
“Conaway draws attention to the despicable and unsafe working conditions in the [shipbreaking] industry… [the work] revolves around encapsulating toxicity in language and capturing the personhood of laborers, as a way to challenge what global capitalism carefully conceals.” —South Asian Review, 2024
“I was inspired.” —Ken Shamrock, UFC Hall of Famer
“Conaway is the first-person narrator of this memoir, who wears his heart on his boxing gloves. He’s not sly or conniving in any way. He’s transparent and sincere, vulnerable and open. He’s honest and confessional… One of Caged’s strengths is how it’s not just about MMA. At its core, it’s a reflection of a young man’s coming of age without his father, and how he relied on other men—his step-father, his coaches, and celebrity fighters—to guide him through his adolescence. It’s a memoir emphasizing the importance of the mind and body balance, as seen through Conaway’s obsessive need to give equal weight to his intellectual life and his physical life. As the sub-title suggests, it’s a meditation on being literally and metaphorically caged in one’s life and finding ways to break out.” —Full Review at DIAGRAM
“For those who fear poetry, namely for its potential lack of coherency, narrative, or obvious purpose, here is an entry point. Each realism-burning tale is an urn painted in succinct, sonnet- like revelatory turns.” —Ottawa Arts Review
“A brilliant and deeply moving debut… the book’s unflinching gaze ultimately is about mercy and forgiveness.” —Todd Davis
“These unforgettable stories in this untraditional telling will remain with the reader forever.” —Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
In addition to these books, here’s a small sample of my journalism which has been supported by organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Fellowship from Moment Magazine.
“No river is as cared for and in need of caring. No river’s mythology is as intertwined into its hydrology. No river is as preserved by old stories and as desperate for new stories. The Ganges is often talked about in the context of its juxtapositions—of deification and defecation, of the solemn and the fantastic, of prayers and pathogens—and since time immemorial it has held these as well as it holds scenic row boats at dawn. But the Ganges is suffering perhaps more than ever. Long considered one of the world’s most polluted waterways, many reports indicate that the situation is getting worse. Can it be rejuvenated in ways that at once heal the environment, maintain cultural traditions and support the millions of people who are linked to and reliant upon it for life?”
“For more than four years, Azid and his wife, children and grandchildren have been imprisoned in a government-designated, internally displaced persons camp on the outskirts of the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe in western Myanmar. They have not committed a crime, but they are not allowed to leave. Ohn Taw Gyi South, located along the Bay of Bengal, is one of at least 80 such camps across the state, which together hold about 140,000 people. Labeled concentration camps by groups and individuals ranging from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to The New York Times to Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, they are jammed with Muslims: former students, shop owners and employees, mechanics, fishermen, caretakers, teachers, food vendors—and thousands and thousands of children.”
Frequently Asked Questions About Feedback-Led Innovation
Feedback acts as the spark that ignites innovation. It reveals unseen gaps, highlights emergent needs, and enables continuous iteration. In this book, you’ll see how feedback isn’t just about product and performance improvement—it’s the fire that both ignites ideas and guides them through the execution phase.
Absolutely. The book is filled with real-world stories based on interviews with dozens of leaders across a range of industries. It includes practical tools and tactics that can help you develop feedback receptivity, navigate career changes, and spark new levels of growth.
This book challenges the status quo of how feedback is typically used in organizations. Even experienced leaders will gain new strategies and a new understanding of feedback so they can build stronger feedback cultures, shorten feedback loops, and unlock untapped innovation potential both in their people and in the organization at-large.
Creativity and execution matter—but without feedback, they often miss the mark. This book positions feedback as the genesis and the connective tissue between ideas and impact, between creativity and effective execution.
Yes, bad feedback exists. This is one reason why it’s especially important to expand our understanding of what feedback really is. When we do, we see that it is everywhere—it includes spoken words, yes, but also new ideas, customer habits, and market signals. This book provides a step-by-step process for developing better feedback receptivity, so people managers and leaders everywhere can better separate signal from noise and stay focused on what matters.
It will absolutely help. Innovation doesn’t only mean industry disruption—it also includes the micro-innovations that shape feedback cultures into innovation machines. This book shows you how to build feedback practices that enable innovation at both the product and people levels.
Yes. While grounded in research, this book is loaded with real stories from organizations that used feedback to drive growth. The book distills academic research into easy-to-digest insights and actionable tools that make it engaging and immediately useful.
Most likely, yes. The book includes insights from dozens of leaders across a wide range of sectors. Even if your industry isn’t directly mentioned, all of the foundational principles are highly transferrable.
Yes. It will be available on Audible and other major audio platforms when released.
Yes. It’s designed for both individuals and teams. It includes conversation starters, exercises, and shared practices to help teams build a strong and innovative feedback culture together.
Definitely. Feedback literacy is foundational for future leaders. This book helps students understand and apply feedback across contexts, making it an ideal classroom resource that make them better prepared for their future roles.