CATS: The Nine Lives of Innovation Review

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CATS: The Nine Lives of Innovation ReviewCATS by Stephen Lundin
The saying goes that curiosity killed it. But in his book, CATS, Stephen Lundin turns that old adage upside down by using cat-like characteristics as an analogy for the essence of innovation.
Lundin's slim, readable book describes the nine lives (essential ingredients) of innovation. These lives are embodied in CATS, people who seek consciously to become better at innovating. Lundin asserts that it doesn't make sense to try to figure out how innovative organizations work when it's actually the individuals within an enterprise that bring about creative change. To that end, his book focuses on the nine essential factors that foster innovation:
An Friendly Environment - Reduce the clutter, noise that distract from being creative.
Being Prepared - Stay up-to-date and curious about your field.
Remembering that Innovation isn't Normal - Make opportunities to startle your routine.
Physical Provocation - Fight against normal by being curious about objects in your environment
Social Provocation - Look for and associate with people who are different from you.
Intellectual Provocation - Use imagery and the ideas of others to inspire your creativity.
Say, "How Fascinating!" - Approach failure with curiosity expecting to discover an idea that was hidden from you before.
Fail Early and Fail Well - Learning rarely happens without failure so plan to make mistakes strategically.
Having Support - Innovation leaders (Lundin calls them "Cat Wranglers") play an important role in nurturing, developing, and supporting individuals to innovate.
In CATS, a chapter is devoted to each of the nine lives. Concepts are illustrated with straight forward examples, some of which span several of the nine lives so readers quickly appreciate the holistic nature of the innovative process. Lundin also takes some time to identify and demystify the challenges to innovation that tend to block our creativity.
Not content with theory, Lundin seems bent on provoking readers to boost their own innovative abilities. Chapters at the end of the book offer creativity tools, concepts, practice activities, and the opportunity to earn an innovation CAT Belt. And you can find more CAT culture on the web.
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Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty Review

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Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty ReviewThis second edition - an update of the 2001 book that introduced us to the 'mindful' organization - is a timely and well-done re-write that furthers the authors' contention that mindfulness is at the core of a learning organization. By substituting a failed preemptive burn incident, (the 2000 Cerro Grande wildland fire that caused $1 billion of damage to Los Alamos), for the 1st edition's Union Pacific/Southern Pacific merger debacle as the central example of their 5 principles of mindfulness, the reader is able to feel the flames of the unexpected leap beyond the control lines of the HRO (High Reliability Organizations) environment. This wind-fed fire metaphor gives life to the uncontrollable nature of today's business environment and every business's need for a mindful response to the unexpected. Managing only for the expected will not provide containment when the winds of change blow into your marketplace. From the authors' perspective, the appropriate response is the creation of an infrastructure to provide the 5 principles of mindfulness.
1.Preoccupation with failure - treating any failure (often small ones) as a symptom that something is wrong with the system, a mindful organization is continually updating its understanding.
2.Reluctance to simplify interpretations - ensuring a more complete and nuanced picture, simplifying less and seeing more.
3.Sensitivity to operations - paying attention to relationships at the front line, where the work gets done.
4.Commitment to resilience - maintaining a deep knowledge of the technology, the system, one's coworkers, and one's self as avenues for improvising and keeping the system functioning.
5.Deference to expertise - cultivating diversity to do more with complexities, mindful organizations push decisions down to the people with the most expertise, not the most rank or even seniority. This deference moves issues around/across the system, migrating problems to someone with the knowledge and capabilities to address them.
I found the book interesting and instructive the first time around, and I was even more impressed with this 2nd edition. Professor's Weick and Sutcliffe make good use of examples to demonstrate their conclusions and to bring the principles to life. The book is thought provoking and instructive; providing yet another perspective on how to manage performance in the face of today's rapidly flattening landscape.
Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"
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Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace Review

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Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace ReviewThis book deserves more than five stars.
Although I have read many excellent books about nurturing creativity and working creatively in companies, this is the first book I have read where the author has been someone who has done that repeatedly and in a variety of ways. That perspective is uniquely valuable both to those who want to have more creative jobs and those who would like to encourage creativity.
Although the analogies seem far-fetched at first (orbiting the giant hairball means taking a creative tangent and refocusing it to have relevance for the company's purpose), they serve to open your mind to thinking differently about creativity and organizations.
Although the author's key points are not summarized anywhere in the book, you will begin to get a sense of how the ideas connect together. That's useful, because otherwise why should he try to teach us so much? Except in the chapter that deals with them, any of the key observations would have been enough for a whole book on the subject. The overall theme is that our minds are subject to being too quickly anesthetized, rather than stimulated to ground-breaking insights. You'll love the story about hypnotizing hens where he introduces that concept.
One of my favorite stories in the book described when the author was asked to create an introductory course on creativity. The first session was wildly successful. The author then analyzed why it worked and created a more organized version of this course (called Grope). That sesssion didn't work as well. Then he went back to being unstructured (operating at the edge of chaos), and the course worked again. He learned from this the delicate connection between groping and rote. You need more of the former and less of the latter.
Another of my favorite stories related to the joy he experienced when he first started parachuting. But within six months, it was getting to be boring. He could only make it more exciting by taking the parachute off, but that would be suicide. On the other hand, if he never tried something new, he would be vegatating. So we want to stay somewhere between suicide and vegetation for the most effective results.
You will enjoy reading this book because it presents a fresh perspective that will stay with you. The successful point of entry is a story about children. When the author shows children about making sculpture from sheets of steel, he asks them if they are creative. All first graders raise their hands. By sixth grade, no one will say that they are creative. The pressure to be like everyone else makes the creative people want to hide. It just gets worse from there. Everyone who reads that story will remember experiences from childhood where their creativity was actively discouraged by teachers, parents, neighbors and classmates. Such a pity!
Each story is imaginatively illustrated to help you get a sense of a different reality. It also makes the material more accessible to people of all ages.
In addition to reading and changing your own behavior, this book should be shared with young people to reinforce the idea that it is desirable to be creative. This would be a good book to discuss with your coworkers, as well.
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The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice Review

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The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice ReviewAs soon as I finished reading this, I bought four more copies for my writer friends. This book will serve creative professionals and dedicated hobbyists of all stripes, from writers, painters, and graphic designers to design engineers and computer programmers.
This book will help you bring a thoughtful structure to your every day creative work. It's work in the best way; Todd teaches you how to examine your life as a whole to make sure that you have the key elements necessary to support your creating over the long term.
So often I find myself exhausted from a long day at work, with little energy left to give to my own personal art. After reading the book I've made some small, intentional changes to my daily habits and I've been excited to find I have so much more left in the tank for my writing and creating sessions. I even find myself waking up early, filled with new ideas. That's in the short term; I'm excited for the long term change to my production.
This book stands on its own (no knowledge of the podcast necessary), but fans of the podcast will especially love this book! It's definitely money well spent and I even find that it is helping me to synthesize the ideas from other creative revolution books like Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind." The book has earned a spot on my desk, not on my bookshelf.The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice Overview

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The Knowledge Executive: 2 Review

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The Knowledge Executive: 2 ReviewThis book was a catalyst in changing my own focus from that of reforming the classified intelligence community, to that of creating a "virtual intelligence community" that served as an on-going educational program for government and business leaders. "If there was ever a moment in history when a comprehensive strategic view was needed, not just by a few leaders in high (which is to say visible) office but by a large number of executives and other generalists in and out of government, this is certainly it. Meeting that need is what should be higher about higher education."The Knowledge Executive: 2 Overview

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The Sources of Innovation (The Executive Bookshelf from the Sloan Management Review) Review

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The Sources of Innovation (The Executive Bookshelf from the Sloan Management Review) ReviewI was shocked that I am the first person to review this book because, by now, Prof. Eric von Hippel's book is a classic in the field of research into the causes of innovation. One of von Hippel's key arguments in this book -- as well as in subsequent research and publications -- is that a lot of innovation comes from users of products and services. As users find new uses or new needs for products and services, producers often innovate to meet those needs. While that may seem obvious, this book was one of the first works to verify it in a scientific and rigorous way. Much more surprising than the conclusion just presented is how von Hippel found that users themselves often made the modifications or created new products and processes that lead to innovation. This book belongs in the library of anyone interested in innovation: scientists, engineers, economists, and businesspeople.The Sources of Innovation (The Executive Bookshelf from the Sloan Management Review) Overview

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Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders Review

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Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders ReviewWhen I first ordered this book, I was expecting a general book on brain science that occasionally mentioned business. However, what I received instead was an extremely detailed and specific book about how the growing field of brain science can help businesses identify and correct problems and generally thrive.
Dr. Pillay, the author, is both an executive coach and professor of psychiatry. This unique combination informs the entire book. He examines various topics in brain science, then provides specific applications to business practice. For example, he discusses how the brain moves from idea to action, then suggests techniques to motivate employees to take action on their creativity. While including technical scientific terms, the author always does so in easy to understand language with many helpful visuals.
One of the book's biggest strengths is its organization. Dr. Pillay looks at broader topics, then neatly subdivides them into smaller concepts. He provides numerous charts listing problems and then solutions based on brain science. For almost every point and sub-point, he gives real world anecdotes to clarify his principles. This is very helpful and will allow his strategies to be effortlessly implemented in a corporate environment.
Although not an executive or manager, I can see how this book would be invaluable for anyone trying to understand or motivate employees and win and keep customers. It's obvious that Dr. Pillay has great skill in melding the abstract world of brain science with the results driven practicality of business.
Overall, I found this book fascinating, even if it was more focused on business than I thought and I'm not really its target audience. I would highly recommend it to managers and any other leader who deals with people on a regular basis. Anyone with an interest in either brain science or leading others would also be advised to check out this helpful book.
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Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower Review

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Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower ReviewAs a recent Biology Ph.D. graduate, I am fortunate to have found this book about 1 year before graduation. I have always enjoyed biology, but my heart was just not in research, poring over the same project and data, day in and day out, 50 hours a week. Biology Ph.D.'s are, unfortunately, trained with tunnel vision in terms of career development. You are lead down a research path, and graduation represents a fork in the road: You can choose a life of academia following your mandatory postdocs, or you can immediately enter industry, following your mandatory postdocs.
For those who don't know, a postdoc is a type of internship following your graduation. You are the personal Igor for the head of the lab (usually a professor at a university or medical school). Hours are typically 6 days a week, 60 hours minimum, and earns about $35,000. You work on at lest 2-3 projects for the lab, and are expected to assist in training the new graduate students as well. In addition, you are expected to find your own grant money.
After the extreme stress of graduate work had been completed, call me crazy, but I decided an increase in stress was not what I wanted. Don't get me wrong; for those who love research, this is heaven, but not for me.
A year prior to graduation, I found this book. In my multiple years of study, no one had ever mentioned a sentence about any of the career options mentioned here, ALL of which were accessible to a Ph.D. student. About two dozen career options are mentioned here, from clinical research, to broadcast journalism, to sales...lots. Every career is discussed in detail from a personal account of someone who actually works in the field. Everything is discussed, from salary, hours, a typical day, to extra training and advancement opportunities.
This book did nothing short of change my career outlook from a pessimistic view of my science career to a wonderful new career in medical writing...earning twice as much as the postdoc I quit after one week. (If this doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other choices in this book.)
The book does not discuss EVERY option. The job I have now was not mentioned initially in the book. However, it opened my eyes, and got me started in this path. Spend the cash and buy it. Consider it a cheaper version of going to a great career counselor....or a psychiatrist.Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower Overview

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Grow from Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation Review

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Grow from Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation ReviewWolcott and Lippitz created research-based tools for entrepreneurs within corporations to genuinely bring innovative ideas to market. My favorite is the Innovation Radar, which has different elements for corporate professionals to consider while developing their ideas. Everytime I show this radar to an entrepreneur or corporate entrepreneur, they realize they had not considered at least one of these elements.
The other areas of the book: The Four Models of Corporate Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Learning, all provide insights not normally provided by other authors, books, or conversations with experts. There are far too few skilled business professionals familiar with corporate entrepreneurship. Wolcott and Lippitz know many of this special group and have the skills to capture what the best of them accomplish, thus making plain this important art for the rest of us regular people. I highly recommend the book.
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