Innovation Garden

A curious mind (book by Glazer & Fishman)

A Curious Mind

Brain Glazer & Charles Fishman

A Curious Mind

Brain Glazer is a producer of movies and televisions shows. This book is the story of the role curiosity, in many forms, has been a force in his life. He did not set out to work in movies but a summer job taken before law school became the entryway to this career. Looking back, Glazer recognizes that he was always curious and this curiosity was fostered by his grandmother in particular. It is clear from reading this book that Glazer has a degree of adventurousness that he has used to satisfy his curiosity.

Improv wisdom (book by Madson)

Improve wisdom

Patricia Ryan Madson

Improv wisdom

This book describes how the method and mindset of improvisational theory can be applied to everyday life and business. We all have some urge to control our lives and this often means that we can’t react to events. Improvisation is the unplanned response to events and is a skill that can be learned. Improvisation in comedy gets a lot of attention but improvisation has also been part of music, conventional theater and visual arts.

A more beautiful question (book by Berger)

A more beautiful question

Warren Berger

A more beautiful question

This book asserts that adults lose their most powerful learning tool when they lose the ability and inclination to ask questions. Questions are at the heart of innovation. Yet, organizations from schools to business do almost nothing to teach questioning and may take steps to suppress or eliminate questioning. The book describes a framework to think about questions and some approaches to teaching/practicing questioning.

Seeing is forgetting the name of what you see (book by Weschler)

Seeing is forgetting the name of what you see

This is a biography of the American artist Robert Irwin. This is different from most book summaries that I write because it does not really deal with issues or processes that fill business life. What makes Irwin interesting is his focus and discipline in seeking the answers to questions that lay at the heart of ‘art’. I first read about Irwin in a book about creative people that I read almost 15 years ago which gave an amazing example of his approach. The example was astounding and I had to read more about him once I discovered this biography. What follows are this and a few other examples of his unique and powerful approach.

How to fly a horse (book by Ashton)

How to fly a horse

Kevin Ashton

How to fly a horse

There are many books about creativity available. There are how-to manuals, books on famous creators, and books that books that suggest that it is all about motivation. This book is different than all of them. This book describes a very different perspective on creativity, of which the most radical is probably: there is no such thing as creative thinking – it is a myth.

Hunch (book by Jiwa)

Hunch

Bernadette Jiwa

Hunch

This is a supposed to be book about intuition expressed in the form of a hunch. A hunch is a combination of insight and foresight, brought about by understanding what is and questioning what could be.* According to the author, insight is derived from a combination of patterns and practice. Foresight arises from potential and predictions. The book consists of a series of anecdotes and short essays that describe different aspects and examples of hunches at play. But it is really a book about ideas and some of the people who have had them. The book is not highly structured, so this summary will include more interpretation and explanation than normal in an attempt to fill in gaps.

Messy (book by Harford)

Messy

Tim Harford

Messy

There is a strong drive to get organized and efficient. The premise of this book is that disorganized mess has an important role in making us effective, and that in many cases organization does not even work as advertised. A number of examples shows that embracing the messy elements of life can increase the long-term potential for success.

Business Model Generation (Book by Osterwalder et al)

Business Model Generation

Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith

Business Model Generation

This book describes a visualization approach to the creation of a business model. The visualization addresses all aspects of a basic business model and can be used to explain the model to others. The visualization is called a business model canvas and it can fit on a single standard piece of paper. Obviously, it is not very detailed; rather it is a distillation of the essential features of the business model.

Originals (book by Grant)

Originals

Adam Grant

Originals

This book is an examination of some of the traits of “original” people. Grant defines “originals” as creative people who have gone on to make their novel idea into reality. He makes clear that the creative part is important, but the realization part is more important. The book contains a wide range of stories about people and events that illustrate elements of Grant’s conclusions. Like many such books, it is less a scholarly exposition than a series of stories that can be used as inspiration.

The Misfit Economy (book by Clay & Phillips)

The Misfit Economy

Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips

Misfit Economy

The premise of this book is that changes in our society, economy and marketplace come from the edge of society. Often the instigators are misfits, and their original concept fails. But subsequently, other people will adapt it into something that will find success.

Misfit may not fully express the mindset and experience of some of these people. Pirates, con men and renegades are on the misfit spectrum, as are many misfits hiding inside of large conventional organization. The authors began with a large number of case studies of individuals challenging the status quo and narrowed this down to 30 for more intensive study. The book is primarily a set of stories about the people and situations.

Non Obvious (book by Bhargava)

Non Obvious

Rohit Bhargava

Non obvious

This is a book about trends and insight. A main thesis of the book is that discovering trends and developing insights from them is a style of thinking that can be learned. One metaphor for the approach is curation, in the sense that an art museum will arrange a set of works according to one or more themes. In this metaphor, one begins by gathering ideas and information then begin to identify themes. Subsequently, the curator creates a “story” about the content and then provides some validation that the theme is rational. The book describes an approach for uncovering and describing trends and then provides a set of trends for 2015.

Seeing what other's don't (book by Klein)

Seeing what others don’t

Gary Klein

Seeing What Others Dont

 This book proposes a model for the three basic ways that we get insights into our world. Klein is interested in naturalistic mental processes; he is interested in how people react in real life as opposed to artificial mental tasks. Part of the book is devoted to the conditions that lead to insight creation, but another part of the book describes how we resist insights both as individuals and organizations – especially as organizations.

 

The Progress Principle (book by Amabile & Kramer)

The Progress Principle

Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer

 Progress-Principle

 The book in bullets:

• The inner working life of people is strongly connected to their productivity. People are more productive on days when they feel good about their progress.
• The strongest positive influence on inner work life is a sense of progress in meaningful work.
• Setbacks are the strongest negative influence. Events which decrease the “meaning of work” are a sort of setback.
• People experience both positive and negative events that improve and degrade their inner work life. Negative events are much more potent than positive events.

 

How to get ideas (book by Foster)

How to get ideas

Jack Foster

How to get ideas

 This book is written by an advertising executive and is an easy-to-read, fun guide to having ideas. The book is largely told in stories and quotes, with advice and instruction gluing it together.

Idea definition – “An idea is nothing more and nothing less than a new combination of old elements.”

                Attributed to James Web Young

 

Homo Ludens (book by Huizinga)

Homo Ludens

Johan Huizinga

 The central observation of this book is that play is an essential part of life. Its principles pervade many aspects of culture and represent a major part of everybody’s approach to life. Play is a major learning vehicle and a major form of expression. While play is often framed as fun, it may be associated with activities that are not at all obviously fun.

 

Creativity, Inc. (book by Catmull)

Creativity, Inc.

Ed Catmull

Creativity Inc

 

Pixar is a company that started as a computer hardware maker, morphed into an animation/movie studio and eventually reinvigorated animation in movies. Ed Catmull was one of the founders of Pixar and has been its chief executive for its entire existence. From an essentially non-existent industry, 3D computer animated films have become a billion dollar business with much of the innovation coming through Pixar’s development and application of graphic technologies. Catmull’s own background is computer sciences and he was responsible for some early developments in graphic animation, but his role as executive at Pixar had forced him to consider how creativity must be managed to create a sustainable culture. In particular, he became concerned with the large number of companies that followed initial success with failure. Why did innovative forward-looking companies become weak followers whose products no longer appealed to customers?

 

Ignorance (book by Firestein)

Ignorance

Stuart Firestein

Ignorance

 The author is a neuroscientist and Head of Biology at Columbia University; he wrote this book to explain the importance of questions in science. In particular, he wanted to convey the importance of a certain kind of collected ignorance as a driver of scientific discovery. It is clear from his description that top scientists are masters in using ignorance to drive learning, but the practice can be used widely by people in many situations and circumstances. Market research, design and entrepreneurship are not so different from science in this perspective.

Voice of the Innovator (book by Byrd)

 

Jacqueline Byrd

Voice of the Innovator

Many books about innovation try to explain innovation based on a few famous individuals. Trying to imagine yourself as Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein is intimidating enough. And it is not clear how lessons from such extreme examples teach us. This book takes a much more human-scale approach. There is definitely some reference to “greats”, but the bulk of the book is based on studies and examples of innovators that you probably have not heard about – ordinary innovators. A series of interviews are used to demonstrate some of the principles that have been derived from formal research on innovation and innovators.

 

Powers of Two (book by Shenk)

Powers of Two

Joshua Wolf Shenk

Powers of Two

 There are two common ideas about people’s creativity. The more common and traditional view is that of the lone genius working in splendid isolation. The other, more recent view is of the team working together to create something new. This book asserts that pairs are the fundamental unit of creativity. If you begin to dig deeper into the stories of many famous creative people, you find a second person – but not a third. There are a large number of famous pairs: Lennon & McCartney, Watson & Crick, and Jobs & Wozniak to name some more prominent pairs. Examples of pairs where one of the partners is “hidden” include Vincent and Theo Van Gogh, George and Marcia Lucas, and Tiger Woods and Steve Williams. The author set out to study the dynamic that begins the partnership, some of the characteristics of creative pairs, and their ultimate dissolution. One thing to note: pairs are not always partnerships the way that we think of them. In the context of this book, a pair is a vehicle for two people to lift each other to a higher level of performance – often a creative performance.

 

Inside the Box (book by Boyd & Goldenberg)

Inside the box

Drew Boyd & Jacob Goldenberg

Inside the Box

 Many creativity and innovation authors promote “thinking outside of the box”. The authors of this book say that such efforts are a waste of time because they do not acknowledge reality. In a surprisingly high percentage of the time, creative solutions are available within the resources immediately available – inside the box.

How to think like Leonardo da Vinci (book by Gelb)

How to think like Leonardo da Vinci

Michael Gelb

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci

 Leonardo is potentially the most impressive person to ever live. He has a long list of impressive accomplishments in fields as diverse as painting, architecture, biology, geology and astronomy. If not for an accident of birth, he might have been the greatest accountant in history. It is easy to look as his successes and think that there is nothing that we can do to approach his level of skill. While we might not be Leonardo’s, we can observe some of the attitudes and behaviors he had and copy them. In fact, he thought about how he thought and constantly worked to improve it. This book suggests 7 things that anybody can do to act like him.

 

The Innovation Equation (book by Byrd & Brown)

The Innovation Equation

Jacqueline Byrd & Paul Lockwood Brown

The Innovation Equation  

 This book proposes that innovation is the product of creativity and risk taking. People vary in both dimensions with the most innovative people having strong orientation to both. Organizations need people with all combinations of these factors to succeed, but organizations seeking growth should foster development in these two dimensions. The book asserts that these are not fixed behaviors but learnable and suggests ways to increase both.

 

100 Things every designer needs to know about people (book by Weinschenk)

100 Things every designer needs to know about people

Susan M. Weinschenk

100 Things

This book is written primarily in the context of good web design, but has many observations that are relevant to communication, motivation, learning and decision making in general. I found it interesting to reflect on how much using a new web site depends on how I perceive the page, learn what I want to know from it and then decide whether to continue or abandon the page. By analogy, many of the decisions that I make follow the same path of perception, learning, motivation and decision. In many cases, the author adds a brief summary of modern physiological observations related to the topic at hand. My favorite relates to sensitivity: if you were standing on a high enough hill in the dark – you could see a candle 30 miles (about 50 km) away. I will try to group some of the 100 observations using the scheme described above.

101 Design Methods (book by Kumar)

101 Design Methods

Vijay Kumar

101 Design Methods

This book sets out a framework for user-centric design and then describes methods that can be applied in each of the seven major steps. The book is primarily geared to consumer product and service design, but the framework seems applicable to business-to-business innovation as well. Each method is described in stepwise fashion together with an example of an actual design teams’ work using the methods.

 

Group Genius (book by Sawyer)

Group Genius

Keith Sawyer

Group-Genius

 The central concept of this book is that most innovation is the result of some sort of collaborative action. Numerous anecdotes are used as a backdrop for examples of how individuals in groups interact and demonstrate a number of “rules” in action. The author trained as a psychologist with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and combines observation of groups with concepts developed to explain “flow” states in individuals. What becomes clear in reading the book is that groups cope with problems both better and differently than individuals do, and that organizations might improve their performance if they established a number of practices to facilitate group creativity. In particular, groups that engage in improvisation-like behaviors demonstrate greater innovative potential.

Problem solving starts with a problem – right?

If you read a lot of blogs and books about innovation, one recurring theme is that too many ideas are not good enough. Objectively, this may be true – if we define the situation in a certain way. I am in the process of reading Turing’s Cathedral (by George Dyson) about the beginning of the computer era. One of the interesting dynamics in this story relates to the relationship between theory-focused and applications-focused people. Mostly, they did not get along. That is the stereotype, but what is clear is that the people developing the computer were dependent on the theoreticians for ideas, but not just any ideas. The people focused on theory were able to suggest mental models of the world that could be applied to the real world.

 I learned about an era of technology development that I knew nothing about, including something about the extraordinary people who were part of this story. The story was amazing at the time, and looking back makes it seem more amazing.  

 The earliest computers were asked to solve simple problems and the primary issue was how to get the computer (hardware) to work. Very clever people used these relatively simple machines to do very complex calculations.  As those hardware problems were resolved, the problem became one of programming. In other words, how would a programmer express the problem in the programming language of the computer? In the flow of this conversation was the following passage.

 In the real world, most of the time, finding an answer is easier than defining the question. It is easier to draw something that looks like a cat than to define what, exactly, makes a cat looks like a cat. A child scribbles indiscriminately, and eventually something appears that resembles a cat. An answer finds a question, not the other way around. The world starts making sense, and the meaningless scribbles (and unused neural connections) are left behind.

 In innovation, the two extremes of innovation might be incremental and transformational. We often think about them as points on a continuum, but maybe they exist on completely different dimensions. Maybe we have also reached the point when our ability to solve problems exceeds our ability to describe problems. If true, then maybe transformation arises from answers finding questions, but incremental innovation arises from questions finding answers. This is why transformation often shocks. People did not “see” the problem, until somebody used the answer to shine a light on the problem.

 Maybe one of the problems with some of the inadequate ideas is that business leaders have not been looking for the problem that they have been given the answer for.

Ideation cycles

Most business people dislike ideation. While constantly advised to lead brainstorming sessions, managers are routinely disappointed in the output. Ideas are "old" or "bad". Often, no idea is adequate to generate action. People blame the ideators, but I blame expectations.

The drive for continuous efficiency improvement, combined with the quality movement, created an expectation that people will "do it right the first time". The output of a single round of ideation does not look like the "right" stuff; ideas are incomplete, have "obvious" flaws, and are often just the same old ideas brought back again. Why ideate, if the output is so poor?

Resolution of this requires first recognition that the ideators did it right the first time. They had an idea. Maybe they did not know all the issues. In a modern business, there are so many issues and nobody is expert enough to address all issues. Maybe they did not know all the nuance of the problem. It is not possible to concisely explain any problem completely.

But once some potentially useful ideas are offered, there is a chance to repair the weaknesses of those ideas in a second round of ideation. Take a few interesting ideas, identify the main problems with these ideas, and ask people for ideas to solve those problems in the context of the original idea. Explain the problem more clearly, seek specific ideas on how to create a complete solution, and to set the stage for execution on the best idea(s). This requires that managers suspend judgment more than they are accustomed to. It also requires that they use more intuition to select ideas. Early stage ideas may resist logical analysis, making intuition more important. Because there are cycles of idea improvement, mistakes will have chances to be caught and eliminated. So here the advantages of continuous improvement come full circle. Why not engage in cycles of improvement for ideas - not just products and processes?

This approach is not new. Synectics has promoted it for a long time, and idea capture software often incorporates the approach. But the mis-expectation of a single cycle of ideation is so common that organizations that develop an expectation of multi-cyclic ideation will probably be safe from copy-cats for some time to come.

 

Conceptual Blockbusting (book by Adams)

Conceptual Blockbusting

James Adams

Conceptual Blockbusting

 There are a number of ways that people conceive of the world, and in each of these ways people face blocks. Written by a Stanford professor of design, in a very broad way this book describes the development of a broad vocabulary and perspective for problem solving. The book contains a number of exercises, some of which are familiar but a number of which illustrate potential limitations in creative fluency.

 When we speak of improving the mind we are usually referring to the acquisition of information or knowledge, or of the type of thoughts one should have, and not to the actual functioning of the mind. We spend little time monitoring our own thinking and comparing it with a more sophisticated ideal.* The book deals less with spontaneous imagination and more with deliberate imagination. The book never defines conceptual, conceive or concept directly, but the sense of the meaning may be captured by the phrase ‘pattern of thinking’.  Conceptual blocks are mental walls that block the problem-solver from correctly perceiving a problem or conceiving a solution.

Creative People Must be Stopped (book by Owens)

Creative People Must be Stopped

David A. Owens

Creative People Must Be Stopped

 This book applies an unusual perspective to the question of what limits innovation. In effect, he assumes that innovation would happen naturally if it was not for the constraints imposed at six levels of society. An organization, hoping to be innovative, must overcome barriers imposed by the individuals themselves, the immediate group with which they work, the organization as a whole, the industry in which they work, society, and the technologies required to deliver the innovation. Most successful innovations do not need to overcome barriers at all of these levels, but it is easy to find examples of innovations that struggled or failed due to constraints at one of more level. In some cases, the constraints may seem senseless – but the author makes clear that the point is to identify the constraints in advance and create a plan to avoid, by-pass or overcome the constraint. An innovation may fail for many reasons, but failing because of unwillingness to think ahead is probably most wasteful.

 The book explores these constraints in a very engaging way that is almost imposible to concisely summarize. As a result, this summary will not do justice to the book, but should illustrate the basic concepts.

Designing for Growth (book by Liedtke & Ogilvie)

 Designing for growth

Jeanne Liedtke & Tim Ogilvie

Designing for Growth

 This book about design thinking is a close to a recipe as you are likely to get. The book sets the stage for an exploration of design thinking in a business context by contrasting design and business, then observing that design thinking is a combination that merges the customer experiential aspects of design with the strategy/value thinking of business. The authors suggest that there are four stages with a number of sub-stages that a company would go through to use design thinking in creating a new product or service.

 

Imagine (book by Lehrer)

Imagine

Jonah Lehrer

 This book examines both the individual and collective aspects of creativity. There is no hyperlink to the book at Amazon because the author “made up” some quotes that were included in the book. The publisher withdrew the book from distribution. I thought about whether to write a review and decided in the end to continue. I have read about much of the content of this book elsewhere, but this is a good assembly of that information into a narrative. While the scandal will certainly have a bad effect on the author, this is a really good book and deserves the praise it was receiving before the scandal broke.

 

The Wide Lens (book from Adner)

The Wide Lens

Ron Adner

The Wide Lens

 Most companies think of their innovations in terms of the benefits that the innovation delivers to the user. Market research reveals an unmet need, a creative solution is discovered and delivered through well-planned execution. A significant percentage of these innovations fail anyway. Sometimes the failure is due to bad timing or misleading research, but an important cause of failure is the result of misunderstanding of the complete context of the users’ world. The book uses the terms ‘blind spot’ and ‘innovation ecosystem’ to describe this phenomenon.

 

Make Space (book by Doorley & Whitthoft)

Make Space

Scott Doorley & Scott Witthoft

Make Space

 

This book describes some of what has been learned in the Stanford University d.school about the design of spaces for teams. This group had to move into new facilities four times in four years. They had to teach and work in spaces that they remodeled knowing that they would be moving out soon. They scavenged furniture and made many of their own fixtures. The constant change and need to improvise helped them do many experiments on the relationship between space and behavior.

Made to Stick (book by Heath & Heath)

Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

 Made to Stick

 This entertaining book is dedicated to understanding why some ideas are easily understood and remembered and some are not. The authors consider “true” stories that have trouble catching on, and false stories that are widely believed. The authors suggest that ideas that “stick” are those that have the following traits. Sticky ideas are:

Simple

Unexpected

Concrete

Credible

Emotional

Stories

 

The Medici Effect (book by Johansson)

The Medici Effect: What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation

Frans Johansson

The Medici Effect

Book in bullets:

• The biggest innovations are coming at the intersection between fields
• The number of intersections is growing due to demographic and technological shifts
• While the source of major innovations, the success of these innovations is very difficult to predict
• Dealing with this uncertainty is difficult for most organizations, but the usual responses to uncertainty (analysis & planning) don’t help. Instead, expect to revise plans in route.
• Innovators succeed, in part, because they learn to accept the risk of failure and choose the possibility of failure over the certainty of not trying

 

The Innovation Killer (book by Rabe)

The Innovation Killer by Cynthia Barton Rabe

 The Innovation Killer

 Book in bullets:

1. Success breeds confidence. Confidence breeds groupthink. Groupthink resists innovation. In the extreme case, ideas disappear down the black hole of “expert” rejection.
2. Groupthink effects can be undermined with zero-gravity (outsider) thinking.
3. A good “outside” thinker will have psychological distance, renaissance tendencies and related expertise relative the group and jot to be done.
4. There are many places to find outside thinking, inside and outside of your organization. People can improve their “outside” thinking capability.

The Ten Faces of Innovation (book by Kelley)

The Ten Faces of Innovation

Tom Kelley

 

Ten Faces

 This is another book from Tom Kelley, one of the leaders at IDEO. In this book, he describes 10 archetypes involved in innovation. The book starts out discussing the “devil’s advocate” and the role this archetype has in stopping innovation. The role is effective because it is completely negative, and once the tone of discussion turns negative, it may be impossible to return to balanced consideration of a proposal. To counter the devil’s advocate, there must be some alternative archetypes, and this book offers ten candidates – that fall into 3 categories: learners, organizers and builders. Kelley says that these archetypes are about “being innovation” rather than “doing innovation”. The book describes these different archetypes mostly through anecdotes, but I will summarize the basic descriptions.

 

Look at more (book by Stefanovich)

Look at More

Andy Stefanovich

 This is primarily a book about ideation, and the practical reality that getting good ideas is not quick and easy. The book has two central ideas:  Look At More Stuff, Think About It Harder (LAMSTAIH) and the 5 M’s of Mood, Mindset, Mechanisms, Measurement and Momentum.

 The book is primarily a collection of stories and examples; it is not over-concerned with explaining procedures or problem solving. In this sense, the book is dedicated to creating an attitude towards creativity more than a process.

Change by design (book by Brown)

Change by Design

Tim Brown

Change by Design

This book, written by the CEO of IDEO, describes “design thinking”. Design thinking is more than design. At one level design is about making things that work well, and can be done by one person based on their own insight, analysis and imagination. Design thinking is more integrated and holistic that this. In particular, design thinking is more human-centric than technology-centric. If design is tactical, design thinking is strategic. More than many books, this is a book of stories rather than lists. In fact, the author notes that a central theme in design thinking is the creation of a story about somebody who had a problem and how a solution for that problem that made that person’s life better. I’ve organized this summary with the stories at the front and the lists behind.

 

Spark (book by Winsor)

Spark: be more innovative through co-creation

John Winsor

 Spark

The essence of this both is the contention that innovation is not the work of an isolated individual, but the product of people working together in a suitable organization and culture. This perspective is illustrated by the following graphic, adapted from the book.

 

Uncertainty

I read a scientific article about the effect of uncertainty on people’s recognition of creativity (Bias Against Creativity). In brief, they authors did some experiments that showed that when people were put into an uncertain state, they became much less receptive to creativity.

Where good ideas come from (book by Johnson)

Where good ideas come from: The natural history of innovation by Steven Johnson

 Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From

 The book in bullets

1. There are many parallels between the natural sciences and commercial innovation
2. Most innovations come in 6 circumstances
   1. Small improvements based on advances in nearby fields
   2. Liquid networks of connectivity allowing people to learn from others
   3. Hunches which slowly grow into full-fledged ideas
   4. Serendipity, random inputs that inspire
   5. Errors, not getting what you expect can be educational
   6. Exaption, adapting something for another purpose
   7. Platforms, taking advantage of another innovation to make an innovation
   8. The model of the isolated inventor has historical validity, but over the centuries innovation is increasingly from people working in groups or networks.
   9. While profit has always been a good motivation for innovation, more innovation may come from “open systems” because of the free flow of information that occurs in non-commercial settings.

 

The Myths of Innovation (book by Berkun)

The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun (2007)

The author identifies 10 myths people have about innovation and the innovation process. The book has a breezy style and is somewhat repetitive at times, but drives home the point that innovation is complicated, unpredictable, and social; many things businesses dislike. Here is a brief rundown on the ten myths.

Saving Innovation (book by Dugan)

Saving Innovation 

Michael Dugan & Chadd Scott

Saving innovation

 

Ultimately, this book has a few simple messages, though their execution is anything but simple.

Most organizations face three main barriers to innovation: managers behaving badly, unrealistic expectations, and disregard of the basics. In brief, the number one barrier to employee engagement with innovation is the response of managers to new ideas. Because of the high impact direct supervisors have on people, if these individuals consistently resist or reject new ideas and the people who suggest them, there is no hope for the organization to become innovative.