Innovation @ Merage - UCI Paul Merage School of Business : People/Culture

Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter…But Really Do.

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:53:00 GMT

By Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman, W.W. Norton (2009). While this book builds on the established notion of weak ties being valuable information sources, it also offers a handful of insights into how those weak ties work in innovation. It starts with a simple self test: a list of 22 occupations. You check off whether you’re related to someone in that field, are friends with someone, or just know them as what you might call acquaintances—someone you could talk to. Most people know people in about six or seven of the occupations—the best performer could check off 19. According to Blau and Fingerman, the more of them you know, the more likely you are to get diverse experience, ideas, and more tools for solving problems. It even works virtually. When InnoCentive posted scientific inquiries, within four years 80,000 people had signed up—and the best solutions came from diverse groups of scientists in a variety of fields. This book is eye-opening on a personal level (you’re more likely to find a new job through these consequential strangers in your network than through friends and family), and it offers a number of examples that reinforce the importance of diverse opinions in creating breakthrough ideas. I’d give it an 8.5 on the LL Innovation Meter for anyone who wants to increase your own effectiveness or that of your team.

In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing

Lynda Lawrence — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:28:00 GMT

By: Matthew E. May, Broadway Books, 2009

Refrigeration without electricity. Traffic flowing without traffic lights. A smart phone without a keyboard. Houses without living rooms. May makes a convincing argument that the human tendency is to add complexity, but subtracting is the key to real innovation.

Using a handful of stories, May explains the neuroscience behind why we leap to less-than-optimal solutions, why we feel good when we complete a Sudoko puzzle (or solve a business problem) and how to get people involved in solving problems by making the missing pieces exactly the right size to provoke our natural curiosity.

In this environment of cost-cutting and limited resources, it’s good to hear that the most elegant ideas emerge precisely when there are serious constraints. And that by looking at what we don’t need to do, we will always find better ways to do nearly everything.

He quotes Steve Jobs, “Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas…I’m as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.” And Jim Peters, of Good to Great fame, who starts each year deciding which things he’s going to stop doing.

For anyone in charge of streamlining processes, inventing new products, or just managing more with less, it’s an intriguing approach. I’d give it a 9.5 on the LL innovation meter, because it will make you think about everything a little differently.

Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science

Lynda Lawrence — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:22:00 GMT

By: Charles S. Jacobs, Portfolio, 2009.

Take everything you think you know about management and throw it out the window. According to Jacobs, the latest brain science proves that people simply don’t work the way we’ve been taught: incentives and threats don’t change behavior, lofty goals won’t change organizations, and managers would get better results if they did far less management.

Instead, he reports, our brains are hardwired to do the same things in the same ways until a major threat disrupts those habits. At that point, we don’t want to be ordered to change—we’d like to figure it out for ourselves. And we’re particularly good at responding to change via storytelling, not facts.

Comparing Patton’s failure to the success of Henry V at Agincourt, he says that people respond to leaders who can tell inspiring stories, who admit that the situation is difficult, and who empathize with their audience because they have failed themselves: think FDR, Churchill and JFK.

While it may not convince you to scuttle everything you’re doing today, it certainly may cause you to rethink your management strategies.

Good for managers, even better for those aspiring to be leaders.
I’d give it an 8.5 on the LL Innovation Meter.

Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:30:00 GMT

By: Robert Brunner and Stewart Emory, FT Press (2009).

If you know anyone in love with an iPhone, you may understand the feelings that Brunner and Emery describe. According to them, this fierce devotion extends past the product to the company, and enables Apple to charge higher prices and be forgiven for any mistakes.

Does this apply to companies that don’t make the latest must-have gadget? Only if you concentrate on designing the customer experience as carefully as Apple has designed the entire experience of an iPhone purchase: the meticulous product design, the anticipation, the storytelling, the retail stores full of techies to answer questions, the exquisite packaging, the intuitive interface, the geniuses who do the set up, the follow-up emails, and the easy (and often free) downloading of thousands of apps you never realized you wanted.

If, and only if, you create a company that is focused on creating better-than-expected customer experiences, you can reap the benefits. That means top-down permission to play, no cutting corners, no incremental changes substituting for innovation (think Razr phones), quick prototyping, and even quicker response to the market (think GM).

While the recommendations are easier to apply to a product-focused company, they will apply to services. If you’re in charge of a small company that needs to innovate, or in charge of design and need to sell your ideas company-wide, this would be a good book to use.
I’d give it an 8.5 on the LL innovation meter—not a lot of new insight, but a persuasive argument.

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:49:00 GMT

By: Joshua Ramo: Little, Brown, 2009.

While it’s not strictly a business book, this is the best book for business that I’ve reviewed this year. It is, in fact, a whole new way of facing the future of any endeavor: Ramo suggests that the only way to deal with uncertainty is to accept that you can’t possibly predict anything.

He begins with an analogy from physics. When you methodically add single grains of sand to a pile, there is absolutely no way to tell which grain will cause an avalanche. Then, using examples from Google to Hizb’allah, he explains that no successful organization has a vision or strategic plan that can anticipate all the changes in a global and interconnected world. The successful ones, he says, are those that constantly adapt to change.

For most businesses, that attitude is too frightening to contemplate. Strategic planning, quarterly earnings projections, and overpaid executives are not guarantees of anything. Instead, he recommends that organizations think long-term, holistically and flexibly. It’s not innovation as a growth or survival strategy—it’s innovation as an organizational structure, a product and a philosophy.

This one gets a 9.8 on the LL innovation meter. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to be part of a viable organization in the next few decades. And if any of our nation’s political leaders have the time, it should be on their reading lists as well.

Why We Make Mistakes

Lynda Lawrence — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:56:00 GMT

By: Joseph T. Hallinan; Broadway Books, 2009

Aside from having the cleverest (and most frustrating) cover in the history of publishing, Hallinan’s new book on the neuroscience of decision-making tells us a lot about why innovation is so hard to accomplish.

For the last couple of centuries, we’ve created a dichotomy between rational and emotional decisions, and most major decisions in business are supposedly made on purely rational terms. According to Hallinan’s research, however, there’s no such thing. Patients with brain damage that didn’t let them tap their emotions, who should have been making decisions better than Spock on Star Trek, couldn’t make even the smallest choices.

Our brains are designed to select between three and five items, and when we get more variables, we automatically revert to habit or emotion. He says you can choose a potato peeler on rational terms, but a car—not so much. Imagine then, what happens in business when you have an infinite number of variables and plenty of unknowns. Bingo. You revert to habit or emotion, and since we automatically distrust things we haven’t seen before, truly breakthrough ideas are killed. Then, of course, we rationalize those decisions because, after all, it’s business and it should be rational.

I’d give it a 9.5 on the LL innovation meter, good for anyone who has to make any kind of decision about anything. And let me know what you think about that cover.

When Service Means Survival

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Abstract: In a series of articles BusinessWeek explores innovative and pragmatic ways to maintain customer service in these uncertain times.

Published: March 9, 2009

Link: BusinessWeek

Radical Innovation Across Nations: The Pre-eminence of Corporate Culture

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Abstract: Corporate culture is the strongest driver of radical innovation across nations according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Marketing. Authors Tellis, Prabul and Chandy found that an innovative culture consists of 3 attitudes and 3 practices. They also report that commercialization of radical innovation translates into a firm's financial performance and is a stronger predictor of financial performance than other popular measures such as patents.

Published:December 2008

Authors: Gerard J.Tellis, Prabul, Chandy

Link: Journal of Marketing

Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators

admin — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:29:00 GMT

Abstract: True innovators are rare and if you want them to generate creative business ideas, you'll need to fiercely test and wisely deploy them.

Published: December 2008

Authors: Jeffrey Cohn, Jon Katzenbach and Gus Vlak

Link: Harvard Business Review

Does Globalization Lead to Innovation?

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:38:00 GMT

Abstract: Competition is supposed to spur innovation. But the authors of this study found that the opposite is true for domestic firms in emerging economies. They examined 27 “transition” economies across eastern Europe and central Asia to understand how globalization — foreign direct investment, trade, and increased competition with firms operating in their home countries — affects markets and the likelihood that incumbents will develop new products and technologies. The authors looked at data from the 2002 and 2005 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey.

Published: January 2008

Authors: Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Jan Svejnar, and Katherine Terrell

Link: strategy+business

P&G's Innovation Culture

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:22:00 GMT

Abstract: How we built a world-class organic growth engine by investing in people.

Published: Autumn 2008

Authors: A.G. Lafley with Ram Charan

Link: strategy+business

The Unique Advantage

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:02:00 GMT

Abstract: Innovation is difficult for mature, slow-growth businesses and often results in long line extensions rather than high-profit, game-changing innovations. Companies, especially those focused on food and consumer products, need to rethink their innovation strategies to develop products that are unique and hard to copy.

Published: Autum 2008

Authors: Alexander Kandybin and Surbee Grover by Alexander Kandybin and Surbhee Grover

Link: strategy+business

The Ergonomics of Innovation

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:57:00 GMT

Abstract: A successful campaign to save 100,000 lives shows that efforts to make it easier for organizations to innovate can yield remarkable results.

Published: September 2008

Authors: Hayagreeva Rao and Robert Sutton

Link: The McKinsey Quarterly

Inspiration Can Be Found in Many Places, but You Need to Be Looking

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Abstract: How do successful inventors, entrepreneurs and writers come up with the big ideas? Constantly looking and keeping an open mind are important, but the critical ingredient is exposing yourself to things outside your usual purview.

Published: October 23, 2008

Author: Mickey Meece

Link: The New York Times

Capturing Culture

admin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:13:00 GMT

Abstract: A corporate anthropologist helps Chronicle Books design its office around organizational relationships.

Published: June 18, 2008

Authors: Kristin Palm

Link: METROPOLISMAG.COM