The ten faces of innovation IDEO's Strategies for defeating the Essay

The ten faces of innovation IDEO's Strategies for defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization Thomas Kelley, Jonathan - Essay Example Kelley does so by describing the way in which an innovation team can be built and function, providing numerous examples of application of these concepts. The introduction sets the scene by singling out the "devil's advocate approach" as the worst enemy of innovation, before defining three groups of roles, or "personas" which typically constitute a successful innovation-oriented activity. In a manner reminiscent of other team role models defined in organizational behavior, Kelley names the groups "learning", "organizing" and "building" personas. It is the learning group, which is the focus of the first three chapters. First the Anthropologist's role is discussed, where the key to beginning successful innovation is un-blinkered perception of how people behave. The theme continues with the Experimenter, whose accelerated failure allows for faster progress towards the goal, before closing with the Cross-Pollinator, adept at applying concepts from one area to a completely different one. Following this is the organizing group, again with one role per chapter. The Hurdler is the problem-solver, the Collaborator brings people together for a result and the Director sets the pace, the direction and the goals. The chapter on the last group, "building", open wi... The Caregiver is tasked with making it easier for the customer to transition to a new innovative context and the Storyteller, the final persona, enhances the motivation and the bonding of the team to produce real and useful innovation. The book closes with a final chapter with some general pointers on succeeding in innovation. The strength of the book lies in the very attainable possibility of replicating the innovation system that it describes. Kelley expresses the concepts and methods in terms that are related to everyday business life and does not make any excessive demand on the reader's intellect. The "cookbook" approach also allows readers to review their own organizations and to pinpoint any particular areas of weakness or malfunction. In a sense, the strength of the book is also its weakness: managing 10 different role models in a fast-moving business environment is a complex task and requires considerable energy. A section on a minimalist approach with ease of application would have been welcome, all the more so in that chapters on some roles (Director for example) appear to have been "padded" with more generic material. In addition, the transversal or underlying nature of certain personas notably in the organizing group could be further developed to enhance practical application. However Kelley makes a valid contribution to business in general with a workable innovation system underpinned by his own real experience. In the field of organizational behavior in particular, Kelley contributes at a micro-organizational level, mostly by charting the development of individual contributor roles, but also to some extent