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Innovator's DNA (2012)

by Jeffrey Dyer(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1455894656 (ISBN13: 9781455894659)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Brilliance Audio

review 1: It took a sheer force of will to finish this because a friend of mine wanted to borrow it. At the conclusion of my first reading, I felt like I had heard the same quotes and same ideas over and over so many times that I marveled how Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen could write the same chapter 10 times and get Clayton Christensen to let them put his name on it (I say that because I don't ever sense Clay's voice throughout the mini-tome). The book is so repetitive, I had to wonder if they had put on an essay contest where they said: "Write about how to innovate, and you must mention the Google vs. P&G swap, the Apple "Think Different" ad campaign, and you have to talk about T-shaped people." But, you have to keep in mind that this is a book written by academics. It's not supposed t... moreo be entertaining, so any entertainment value to be gotten from it is a bonus. The book sometimes come across so supremely satisfied with its own ideas that you think that the authors believe that they invented IDEO and were responsible for teaching Steve Jobs et al the secrets of innovation. I finished the book thinking I would give two stars to the trio who came off as a pack of bright and excited Cutco salesmen (or life insurance or pest control or security systems, whatever kind of salesman you need to understand the off-putting excitement over something so highly unexciting).But, as is my custom, I went over the book again to insert the marked quotes into my UberQuotation catalogue (1754 quotations logged and counting). As I re-read some of the portions that I had marked months ago before I started dragging my feet through this slog of repetition, I saw the beauty of the book for what it was: a simple, straightforward recipe for how to innovate methodically and systematically. I noticed how my behavior towards approaching problems had indeed changed because of some latent residual wisdom I had gained from reading. I did indeed focus more on asking questions as opposed to my former method of jumping in to solve a problem. I had indeed made an effort to network with people just for the pleasure of learning from them. I was less afraid of experimenting because something told me that I needed to "fail often to succeed sooner." In reading Innovator's DNA, a little piece of it became fused into my own DNA. For which I, too, was so supremely satisfied.I felt to give it two stars the first time and four stars the second time, so I split the difference: three stars.
review 2: Good primer and great illustration of the distinct differences between the innovative thinkers, organizations, processes...and those that are not. I think it falls short of showing the reader how to make innovative inroads into a non-innovative-oriented organization, but it does do a very good job of illustrating to the reader whether he/she is working in one and what he/she should be doing to be innovation-oriented as an individual or team. less

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