Tag Archives: Reviews

Did you like Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire?

Did you like Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire?My book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire has gotten a lot of great reviews on Amazon already, and several likes, and an increasing number of companies are buying it in bulk to help set a common language of innovation in their organization.

I am constantly humbled by the support that people show for my writing, most recently in a post on the Harvard Business Review Blog by Scott D Anthony titled The Making of an Innovation Master.

If you would like to show support for my writing endeavors, please click the ‘like’ button on Amazon (the international flavors have like buttons too).

If you have already read the book, please let others know what you found useful or valuable about it by writing a short review on your favorite book site. Don’t forget to grab your free stuff here.

And if you would like to build a common language of innovation in your organization, I can help organize a bulk order at up to 35% off the list price for USA deliveries (usually with no shipping and no tax) through a bookseller I’ve had great success with – just contact me. 800-CEO-READ also does a great job with bulk orders and can do some customizations.

Thank you very much for showing your support for Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

Happy Innovating!

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Book Review and Innovation Summary – “The Design of Business”

The Design of BusinessA few weeks ago I received “The Design of Business” by Roger Martin in the mail. “The Design of Business” is a relatively short, easy, and pleasant read.

The main premise of the book is that our organizations, and the business schools that fill out their top leadership ranks, are too focused on analytical thinking at the expense of intuitive thinking. This focus creates too much emphasis on reliability at the expense of validity.

“The most successful businesses in the years to come will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay that I call design thinking.” – Roger Martin

One of the key concepts of the book is the introduction of the Knowledge Funnel – a visual element that shows how knowledge progresses from mysteries to heuristics to algorithms. It all begins with a question at the top of the funnel, and at each stage transition, knowledge and execution can typically be transferred to lower cost labor (and possibly handled by a computer when they reach the algorithm level).

The Knowledge FunnelAt the same time, there are other tensions in our organizations that managers in the era of the creative economy will have to become attuned to, and these include managing an appropriate balance between exploitation and exploration and not falling victim to the false certainty of the past when making business development decisions.

Ultimately, the exploration of the mysteries at the top of the knowledge funnel and exploitation of the algrithms at the bottom of the funnel are equally important. Companies that focus too much on one, at the expense of the other, risk their very future.

Creating a design thinking organization is not easy, and several pages are devoted to describing the struggles of A.G. Lafley and Claudia Kotchka in transforming P&G;’s organizational culture to be more design-centric.

In addition to other examples of organizations pushing themselves more towards design thinking, there is also a great deal of focus in the book on the transformation of mysteries into heuristics and heuristics into algorithms.

Overall, the book is another way of looking at the challenge facing innovators everywhere who are looking to embed design or innovation (or both) into their organization.

So, are you ready to tackle the challenge of achieving a balance of analytical thinking with intuitive thinking in your organization?

My interview with “The Design of Business” author Roger Martin can be found here.

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