The Ten Faces of Innovation

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization

by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman

From the reviews

Innovation is now the single most decisive competitive advantage. How to establish and then sustain that advantage?

This book provides a wealth of information and counsel which can help any decision-maker to "drive creativity" through her or his organization
The book is easy to read and contains powerful, persuasive arguments about some of the activities teams need to participate in to unblock the rut they're in or to combat negative environments.

The authors suggest that all good working definitions of innovation pair ideas with action, "the spark with fire. Innovators don't just have their heads in the clouds. They also have their feet on the ground." Kelley cites and then examines several exemplary ("great") organizations
I especially appreciate the fact that Kelley focuses on the almost unlimited potential for creativity of individuals and the roles which they can play, "the hats they can put on, the personas they can adopt...[albeit] unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."

The authors define 10 personas, including Anthropologists, who contribute insights by observing human behavior; Experimenters, who try new things; Hurdlers, who surmount obstacles; Collaborators, who bring people together and get things done; and Caregivers, who anticipate and meet customer needs.

The book is breezy and well written, with plenty of self-promotion.

Kelley and Littman use classic and recent stories of business innovation,

Kelley devotes a separate chapter to each of the ten "personas," including real-world examples of various "unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."

Two final points. First, most of those who read this book can more easily identify with "unsung heroes" such as those whom Kelley discusses than with luminaries of innovation such as Thomas Edison or with celebrity CEOs such as Andrew Grove, Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch, all of whom were staunch advocates of constant innovation in their respective organizations. Also, presumably Kelley agrees with me that those who read and then (hopefully) re-read his book should do so guided by a process which begins with the curiosity of an anthropologist and concludes with the empathy of a caregiver.

This is emphatically not an anthology of innovation recipes. Rather, it offers a rigorous intellectual journey whose ultimate value will be determined, entirely, by the nature and extent of innovative thinking which each reader achieves...and who then uses the breakthrough insights to drive creativity throughout her or his own organization.

"Essential reading for every single person in your organization--even the CEO should read it! Each page contains a nugget that's worth the price of the entire book. Wow." —Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow

“A consensus is emerging that Innovation must become most every firm's ‘Job One.’

‘Hurdle One,’ however, is a doozer: establishing a Culture of Innovation. IDEO thought leader Tom Kelley offers a thoroughly original and thoroughly tested approach to creating that ‘culture of innovation.’ Rigorously applying his ‘Ten Faces’ will get the innovation ball rolling ... fast. Bravo!” — Tom Peters