STRATEGY CENTRAL

What if breakthrough innovation is less about brand new ideas and more about combining parts of old ideas from a variety of sources to make something new?  It turns out that's how it is.

One of the main ideas of How Breakthroughs Happen?  "Innovative firms can succeed not by breaking free from the constraints of the past but instead by harnessing the past in powerful new ways (p. xii)."

Think that could make a difference for all of us?  I think so.  Want to read along?  You can order your copy right here.

Sometimes it's last in, first out on my stack. When Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan it looked too good to go to the bottom of the stack.  It releases on March 16th.  In the meantime, here's what caught my eye in the first few pages:

Business as usual is unlikely to lead to breakthrough growth.  Left to their own devices, employees of most companies will come up with incremental, rather than breakthrough ideas.  This is to be expected, as most people will have spent their careers being rewarded for doing incremental things.  Breakthrough growth, however, requires that adjust people's aspirations upward, to help them focus on bigger ideas.  As Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com notes: "I think you need to make sure, with the things you choose to do, that you are able to say, 'If we can get this to work, it will be big.'  An important question to ask is, 'Is it big enough to be meaningful to the company as a whole if we're very successful?'"

Great question.  One we rarely ask.  One we should be asking at the outset.

Spending some time working through Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm. One of my favorite reads of the last 10 years was his The Ten Faces of Innovation.  This is an earlier work, a highly regarded look into a great design firm…and an innovation leader.

How do they do it?  Their method has five basic steps:

1. "Understand the market, the client, the technology, and the perceived constraints."  I personally love the word perceived.  It opens to door to challenge it later.
2. "Observe real people in real-life situations to find out what makes them tick."  This is about the discovery of unrecognized needs.
3. "Visualize new-to-the-world concepts and the customers who will use them."  Not gazing into some crystal ball.  Instead, spend effort and energy building prototypes along the way. 
4. "Evaluate and refine the prototypes in a series of quick iterations."  This is significant.  It's not fire, ready, aim.  It's more like taking quick shots at what it looks like, then adjust, look at it again, adjust, and keep going.
5. "Implement the new concept for commercialization."  Not enough to dream or even to prototype.  Must launch and get the new concept into the environment.

I can tell this is going to be a great read.  No doubt it will inform our discussion around here.  Want to come along?  You can order your copy right here.

Taking the opportunity to check out The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success, Marcus Buckingham's latest.  You've probably picked up Now, Discover Your Strengths and Go Put Your Strengths to Work.  If so, you've got to ask the question…how'd it work for you?  Did you figure out your strengths and then move forward at finding a job that was you?  Or are you still living in the world of wishing you had?

The Truth About You is a little different.  This one is a little more workbookish.  Complete with a DVD, this latest effort is shorter (just 110 pages) and more to the point.  Each chapter pushes you toward activities that are understandable, achievable, and doable in a week.

Me?  I think I know my strengths.  But right now is a great time to clarify and sharpen my understanding of where I really shine and feel satisfied.

Don't let the title fool you, this is very interesting.  It's been in the stack for about a month (actually, I've had a preview copy even longer), but getting into it I'm finding this is a really fascinating read.  Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlefield to the Boardroom by Mark Herman, Mark Frost and Robert Kurz, begins with a string of stories about Booz Allen Hamilton's work developing wargames that predicted Gulf War outcomes.  Hard to see it coming…this is a page turner for me.  Can this have application for all of us?  Stay tuned to find out.

Picked up a really engaging book off the stack last night. Jack's Notebook: A business novel about creative problem solving by Gregg Fraley.  As the sub-title notes, it's actually a novel with creative problem solving principles built in.  Found myself really pulled in by a compelling storyline from about page two!

I'm just into chapter four…so it's early…but so far the built-in lessons are there for a great takeaway.  I know this is one I'll be posting on later.  If you want to read along, you can pick up your copy right here.

One of the blogs I check out on a regular basis is 800-CEO-READ.  Great place to discover this year's most important business titles as well as a frequent look ahead at what's due out.  Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten have collaborated on an interesting new project:  The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You. 

When a review copy arrived this week, I had to have a look at what books made the list and instead found a really interesting take on the project.  Although others have undertaken this kind of thing in the past, this is the first time I've seen one that actually links the concepts within the book.  For example, at the end of the review of Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive there is a reference to David Allen's Getting Things Done and Marcus Buckingham's Now, Discover Your Strengths. That is cool.

I mentioned Outliers in Friday's post.  You can watch Malcolm Gladwell give a very interesting (and short) talk over at Pop!Casts on the topic that drives his newest book.  You can check it out right here.

Thanks to Mike Wagner over at Own Your Brand for the link!

If you’ve been listening in the last few years you’ve been influenced by Malcolm Gladwell.  His first book, The Tipping Point, gave new insights into the way we understand and talk about movements.  His next book, Blink, changed the way we think about thinking.  His new book, Outliers: The Story of Success will probably give us a new way of thinking about why things succeed.

The introduction leads with a fascinating story of a Pennsylvania town with a significantly lower incidence of heart problems.  The first chapter tells the eye opening story of chance occurrences that make or break the career of Canadian hockey players.  In typical Gladwell fashion, Outliers is a book that will influence conversations.

You can pick up your copy right here.

Sometimes books arrive unsolicited. Other times I desperately connive to seek them out. Inside Drucker's Brain by Jeffrey A. Krames is a book that I had to read.  If you've been following StrategyCentral for any time at all, you know that I am a huge fan of Peter Drucker.  Not a biography, this book is a look into "Drucker's world, one in which the future always comes first (from the introduction, p. 19)."

Can't wait to dig in!  Want to follow along?  You can order your copy right here.