Innovating - a short guide to making new things
Today, I can tell you about my very latest book to be available: Innovating: A short guide to making new things..
This follows closely on the publication of my recent book with Jim Horbury, Embedded Analytics. Two books in a month! But this one is a little different.
For one thing, I published this book myself because I will often use it as a course book for my workshops and I need to be able to give it away easily, which is more difficult to do with a commercially published book.
Nevertheless I have done my best to keep this up to a professional standard and I think it will be an enjoyable read for anyone interested in innovation strategy, innovation techniques and the software industry in particular.
Innovation is not about problem-solving
The first half of the book deals with methods for ideation. There’s a lot in there, all building on practical experiences from workshops over many years … What you can learn from the world’s largest necktie. Why brainstorming doesn’t work - and what is better. The advantages of taking walk rather than having a meeting. And why innovation is not about problem-solving.
The second part of the book is more focussed on corporate innovation, including how innovation strategy needs to appropriate for the maturity of your business. I describe why I am unimpressed by the Innovator’s Dilemma, how innovation labs and open innovation can work best and why you have a future in failure.
There are 19 exercises to build your own innovation skills and strategy. And there are numerous digressions, as you might expect, from knitting to Indian refrigerators to Donald Rumsfeld to attempts to make the horseless carriage more acceptable to horses.
The book is available on Amazon, for Kindle (including Kindle Unlimited) and a surprisingly nice paperback. I am very pleased with their production.
If you do read it, I would very much appreciate reviews. They are so important to our visibility in a crowded market.