Institute's Blog

Innovator's Bookshelf Below are short reviews by IIIP member representatives, Academic Advisors and staff of their favorite books on innovation, productivity, and a few other related topics. The following reflect the opinions of the individuals and in no way represent an endorsement by the Institute. Feedback may be submitted to: LoBue@III-P.org The 5-Day Course in Thinking by: Edward de Bono Penguin UK © ?? During a recent (Dec. 2008) interview for an upcoming book on management and leadership (written by someone else -- not me), I was asked about early influences and how I got "in to" creativity and innovation. This is the course that started it all for me. When I was in middle school in Chicago, there was a multi-week broadcast on the local PBS station of Dr. De Bono's 5 day course in thinking. I was glued to the TV ... I realized for the first time that there were hidden abilities, almost like superpowers (remember - I was in middle school at the time), that I could unlock and do battle with. I've searched the web for a copy of that original video .. no luck. This is the book that describes the course and goes through the same exercises. Phil McKinney The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by: Dan Roam Portfolio (The Penguin Group) © 2008 I was sent this book from a business associate and I love it!! I'm a visual thinker and always looking for books, tools, etc to help take complex subjects and convert them to something that anyone can understand. As I've said many times -- where most great ideas fail to gain traction is in th e ability of the champion to "tell the story". This book is a great tool to hel ping you build and present the story. Phil McKinney I think I was the business associate referenced above; I concur with Phil's assessment 100%. It may look like a "child's book", but it's a very serious treatment. If you've ever read anything by Tufte on graphical presentations you were probably frustrated because Tufte doesn't discuss anything about how to approach visual thinking — wonderful critiques, but nothing about how. Roam fills that void in a highly enjoyable and readable way. This book is not about innovation — it is innovation! Michael LoBue Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by: Janine M. Benyus HarperCollins, Inc. © 1997 Innovations, whether in farming, composite science, or computing, are a product of human creativity. Science writer Benyus uses these subjects and others to demonstrate how nature's solutions to situations have been the creative jumping-off points for individuals seeking solutions, developing, or simply revitalizing processes or products. Phil McKinney Click by: Bill Tancer Hyperion © 2008 Tancer exposes one of the important new tools for understanding what's important to people — online search data! While Tancer, and his colleagues, have access to data sets of search traffic that are not available to mere mortals, he was very candid in his descriptions of how he goes about answering questions about trends and consumer preferences. In his final couple of chapters he also reveals some characteristics about how products and services move from alpha/beta stages to fully embraced market phenomenons. This book is very readable and drove me to rediscover Google analytical tools to run some search-data analysis of interest to me. Michael LoBue Enterprise Information — Security and Privacy by: C. Warren Axelrod       Jennifer L. Bayuk       Daniel Schutzer Artech House © 2009 In today's information- and communication-rich environments, issues of security and privacy should be among the concerns of any serious manager, especially those managers concerned with innovation and productivity. Innovation and productivity take place within our enterprises, thus envoking the need to balance organizational goals with the practical realities of security and privacy. But, if you're not a computer scientist, where do you go for an understanding of both the organizational and technical issues? Look no further than "Enterprise Information Security and Privacy". The book is a collection of short chapters written by experts in their respective security fields. Each is written for organizational folks — whether a non-technology manager or a system designer — it matters not; the material in this book is accessible to all. The focus in each subject is 'balancing the purpose of the organization with the practical realities of proper security and privacy'. The IIIP wishes to especially thank Academic Advisor C. Warren Axelrod for his work as one of the editors of this important book. Michael LoBue Innovation Nation by: John Kao Free Press, A divison of Simon & Schuster, Inc. © 2007 Author John Kao makes a forceful argument to provoke US policy makers into action. Kao draws from many well established authorities on the importance of innovation and describes a number of success stories (e.g, Finland, Ireland, Singapore) to illustrate what's possible when there's a willingness to move entire nations to create and sustain innovative practices through national programs.   What Kao lacks in the way of original research he makes up for in a synthesis and set of recipes to have the U.S. earn the label Innovation Nation. Kao begins each chapter with a topical quotation. The one he includes for Chapter Nine: "A National Innovation Agenda" is: "There is a profound difference between getting it and getting in done." — Eric Best, futurist (So true!) Michael LoBue The Innovative Leader by: Paul Sloane Kogan Page Limited © 2007 The Innovative Leader stresses the importance of innovation and creativity in modern business to help organizations secure competitive advantage over rivals. It shows how to apply methods of innovation and creativity to the individual, to business peers, and to the organization. Author Pual Sloane demonstrates the importance of setting out your vision clearly and emphasizes the need for continual evaluation of the process. Numerous international examples illustrate how organizations such as Virgin, Body Shop, Disney, and 3M have benefited from this approach, encouraging excellence and entrepreneurship through challenging goals that keep employees motivated and engaged. Phil McKinney The Future of Management by: Gary Hamel        with Bill Breen Harvard Business School Press © 2008 This ranks up there with some of Peter Drucker's books in terms of capturing the big picture issues of how management has evolved over the 20th Century, where it probably should go and more importantly why. The author goes beyond fadish treatments of management in general, management innovations in particular. For example, he cites a handful of case studies that pre-date the Internet to demonstrate that the fundamentals at play have been at play for a long time. The Internet has certainly increased the velocity of change, but it's not the cause. Michael LoBue Listening to the Future — Why It's Everybody's Business by: Dan Rasmus        with Rob Salkowitz Wiley; Microsoft Executive Leadership Series © 2009 This is a worthwhile read because it covers a number of important issues about strategic planning and frameworks for thinking about future trends. It's an interesting read to learn about the future scenarios Microsoft has envisioned for itself about "the future of work". The author(s) can be forgiven for some choppy spots, given the breadth of the subject. There were spots when it appeared as though the target reader had changed, but there was not clear transition. Still and all, it contains some useful concepts and brief case studies that should provoke good discussion within an organzation. Michael LoBue Uniting the Virtual Workforce — Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise by: Karen Sobel-Lojeski        Richard R. Reilly Wiley; Microsoft Executive Leadership Series © 2008 The topics and discoveries authors Sobel-Lojeski and Reilly discuss in this book are valuable, if not essential, for any enterprise during any economic climate, but they are especially relevant during the current chaotic and uncertain times we all face going into 2009. I found their work particularly poignent in two important ways. First, that distance is not just a physical condition, but a psychological condition that often exists between workers. And, that these psychological gulfs can have a more significant impact on the results than physical distances. Second, they present a framework for understanding and measuring these psychological distances in their construct of the Virtual Distance Model. The Virtual Distance Model is comprehensive and comprised of three major parts: physical distance; operational distance; and affinity distance. Their writing style is easy on the reader and as much for line managers as it is for C-suite executives. For that matter, it also contains useful concepts and practical lessons for entrepreneurs and professional sole-practitioners looking to improve their effectiveness working in teams working in teams within an office or worlds and cultures spanning wide time-zones. Michael LoBue The Venturesome Economy — How Innovation Sustains Properity in a More Connected World by: Amar Bhidé Princeton University Press © 2008 While the major theme of this book is about national policy issues relating to how best to stimulate innovation to drive productivity, it contains equally valuable lessons for executives and managers relating to concerns of the firm. Professor Bhidé bases his analysis on an extremely robust 3-level model of innovation. This model deserves more attention as it clearly expands the dimensions of innovation beyond the typical models, which focus attention, resources and research only on basic R&D where the number of patents filed is the primary metric of measurement. If there's one book on innovation to read this year — this is the one! Michael LoBue Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy by: Erik Brynjolfsson       Adam Saunders MIT Press Press © 2009 This is one of those occassions where you have to commission your own book to read what you must. Along with MIT's Center for Digital Business and the NSF, the IIIP commissioned Brynjolfsson and Saunders to conduct a literature review and analysis of what is known about how IT relates to productivity and innovation and to suggest some fruitful approaches to the overall question: "How do we measure productivity in a knowledge-economy?" They did not disappoint! This is not a long book, which is a good thing because you'll want to reread parts several times. Not because any part of the work is poorly written, but because the authors are so provacative. Is it provacative from a scholarly point of view? Not sure — but it holds a good deal that's practical for business professionals. Michael LoBue X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed by: Deborah Ancona        Henrik Bresman Harvard Business School Press © 2007 Much of the literature you read on building teams in the workplace deal with the internal interactions of the group... how they get along, building morale, etc. Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman offer up a different take on team success in the book X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed. The most noticeable difference between the conventional team and the X-Team is the focus of their activity... external. Instead of spending time waiting for the team to gel and feel secure, waiting for the rules and directions to be established, Ancona and Bresman advocate for an external focus. Get out in the field immediately and start talking to the potential customers and clients. This tilt towards immediate action may well lead to a moderate level of confusion and frustration on the team in the early days, but the net result is a quick start and insights that can't be gleaned from existing knowledge. Couple this with active "ambassadorship" and flexible membership and team roles, and things get done rather than just being talked about. Phil McKinney