Innovation Garden

Team of teams (book by McChrystal et al)

Team of teams

Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell

Team of teams

This book describes the kind of organization required to cope with a complex environment. The lead authors uses his experience leads the US Special Operation Group (USSOG) in the Iraq during the early-to-mid 2000s. Modern business and modern business both organized around reductionist specification of work combined with delivery of explicit directions for its completion. This works very well in highly predictable environments where initiative and innovation create no value. An increasing portion of business life does not belong to that predictable world and requires new ways of working. Though the specific context of this book is military, the application is not just military.

Demand (book by Slywotsky)

Demand

Adrian Slywotzky

Demand

The subtitle of this book is “Creating what people love before they know they want it”; the book describes a number of perspectives on creating demand. One implication of the author’s approach is that latent demand is the most important kind of demand because this is where innovators can create a new offer of greater value – not expressed demand where everybody can and does already play. The author offers six overlapping perspectives on demand creation.

Ten Types of Innovation (book by Keeley et al).

Ten Types of Innovation

Larry Keeley, Ryan Pikkel, Brian Quinn, Helen Walters

10 types of innovation

The authors describe a perspective based on their study of innovation at companies over multiple decades and industries. Seeking a pattern in the successes and failures, they observed that most companies devote the majority of innovation attention to product or process innovation, but most distinctively innovative companies do more than this. Eventually, they identified 10 types of innovation that could be grouped into business configuration, offering and user experience. Many successful innovations involve elements of 3 or more areas. In fact, some industries tend to focus in a narrow set of types creating excess competition in those areas. Innovating in another type can create distinctive value.

The Founders Mentality (book by Zook and Allen)

The Founder’s Mentality

Chris Zook & James Allen

The Founders Mentality

This book is based on the proposition that the big difference between successful companies and companies that are doing poorly can be traced to use of a founder’s mentality. The founder’s mentality comprises (1) having an owner’s mindset, (2) an obsession with the front line, and (3) a sense of insurgency. Combined, this sets a focus and energy for the organization that makes it better at serving customers and better at outdoing potential competitors.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship (book by Drucker)

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Peter F. Drucker

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

 This book was originally published in 1985. Despite being 30 years old, the book’s currency shows clearly the classic value of Drucker’s insights. It also shows that a large number of books basically re-package the content of this book to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. Drucker provides both a definition and a rational for studying innovation and entrepreneurship together. Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service….Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation.* The key concepts here is “exploit change” and “search purposefully”.

 

The Lean Startup (book by Ries)

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

Lean Startup

 Lean methodology is generally associated with manufacturing – not entrepreneurship. This book proposes that entrepreneurship is a kind of special case of management and that Lean principles can be applied to this special case. The author was part of two startup failures and one success, and these experiences guide his perspective. One of the main questions that he asked was “why do most startups fail?” and his answer was this counter-intuitive observation. The first problem is the allure of a good plan, a solid strategy, and thorough market research.* These inputs might be important in established situations, but not in a startup. The second problem is that after seeing traditional management fail to solve this problem, some entrepreneurs and investors…adopted the “Just Do It” school of startups. This school believes that if management is the problem, chaos is the answer.