Exorcizing Innovation Demons (Book Review)
Last week I was sent a sneak preview of Better and Faster: The Proven Path to Unstoppable Ideas by Jeremy Gutsche.
My summary: It’s a high-octane face-slapper designed to awaken the weariest of executives in danger of falling asleep at the wheel.
Should it hit the top of your already impossibly long reading list? Definitely. But only if you’re the kind of person who is willing to point out that the CEO isn’t wearing any clothes, and then do something about it.
If you’re not, then this book will cluster your nuts. Why? Because Gutsche mercilessly points out the root causes of why your organization is already driving you nuts. In fact, it may even prompt you to quit your job in search of an organization that has embraced the Gutsche gospel of corporate salvation.
Exorcising Innovation Demons
No question, this is a book of life. It’s a book that contains awkward truths about complacency, over-protectiveness and repetition — Gutsche’s three innovation demons that strangle organisation’s desire to truly innovate. Better still he provides three simple steps to exorcism and three renewed mindsets that prevent the darkness from returning.
I’ve gone all religious. But inside organisations that do innovation well, senior executives understand the need to view the battle for innovation it in such stark terms. New ideas that challenge the status quo are like poison in the system for managers and employees who are rewarded for delivery today’s business models.
Gutsche’s book is compelling reading and does a good job at pulling together some of the key ideas around innovation, strategy and marketing in recent years — in a very accessible way. What’s more, it’s backed up with personal, hands-on experience with some of the world’s biggest brands and data derived from his own innovation company, trendhunter.com.
If your organization is in a rut or you need to inject some energy into a layer of management, I suggest the following: Buy 100 copies of Better and Faster for your most promising talent, and having read it, ask them to send you their answers to the three questions that I love to ask people: What’s happening around us? So who do we need to become? So who do I need to become?
Let the face slapping begin.
