Monday, September 25, 2006

 

Non-TRIZ books--discussion?

BOOKS: This time the research comes from friends.

Joyce Wycoff (
http://www.thinksmart.com ) writes that she hasn’t been this excited about a book since In Search for Excellence in 1982! The book will be released on October 2. The book is "Mavericks at Work, Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win" by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre. I've been reading and living with the book for several weeks, waiting until the time was right to share this find with you. In that time I've tried to decide why this book is so energizing and it seems to boil down to two things: fresh, incredible stories and an emphasis on individuals and values. In the past several years the dozens of innovation books that poured onto my bookshelves were primarily focused on tools, techniques, processes and organizations as a whole. I've learned a great deal from those books but seldom felt that surge of excitement that happened with almost every page of "Mavericks." The authors set the expectations on the first page of the introduction when they state: "...this is more than a how-to book. It is also a what-if book."

You can pre-order the book at amazon.com now -- I would suggest buying enough for your associates and make it the focus of a book club. It will be the focus of the October Innovation Bookclub, starting mid-October to give people a chance to get the book and start reading it.

You can also get more information at these links: -- U.S. News & World Report summary and review:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060917/25eebusmav.htm
Book website: http://www.mavericksatwork.com Check out the "Manifesto for Mavericks" ... a quick-read document that aims to get people thinking and talking about business in a new way.

Darrell Mann (
http://www.systematic-innovation.com) sounds almost as excited about his latest find, the new book from controversial economist Paul Ormerod. ‘Why Most Things Fail… And How To Avoid It’ is Ormerod’s third book. The titles of his previous two – The Death Of Economics and Butterfly Economics (a book using a biological complex-systems analogue for economic systems) – perhaps serve to explain why the author is often not the most popular amongst other economists. This fact doesn’t stop his books from selling in large quantities, and Why Most Things Fail looks set to achieve the same breadth of exposure.

Ormerod, unfortunately doesn’t appear to have any knowledge of TRIZ or its uncovering of some of the dynamics of change in systems. If he had, the book could have ended with some far stronger conclusions in this third theme area.

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I’m planning to read both (I have some serious airplane time this month) and would be glad to use this blog for a discussion. Anybody interested?


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