Rating: 
Summary: Great Stories, Doable Wisdom
Review: But Sutton's approaches to innovation are as wise as they are weird -- and eminently doable. Filled with wonderfully compelling stories in contexts as varied as high tech start-ups to large established companies to rock and roll bands, the book will force any reader who cares about fostering creativity to rethink many of their assumptions about how they manage. But he doesn't stop at good stories. Sutton seamlessly weaves in a wide range of management theories to elaborate his accounts of innovation successes and failures. This will undoubtedly become a classic among management texts on innovation. But it should also be read by anyone who wants some wonderful ideas for managing and people who simply want a great read!
Rating:
Summary: Very useful - full of a dozen great ideas
Review: Choose your favourite weird (or not so weird) idea. I found about 20 in the end. My favourites include :
- reward success & failure - punish inaction;
- forget the past, especially your successes;
- encourage people to ignore/defy superiors;
- hire people who are stubborn;
- focus on abandoning failing ideas more quickly, rather than try to reduce the failure rate.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful - full of a dozen great ideas
Review: Choose your favourite weird (or not so weird) idea. I found about 20 in the end. My favourites include :
- reward success & failure - punish inaction;
- forget the past, especially your successes;
- encourage people to ignore/defy superiors;
- hire people who are stubborn;
- focus on abandoning failing ideas more quickly, rather than try to reduce the failure rate.
Rating: 
Summary: More unorthodox than weird, but vibrant and smart
Review: Even if you've already read Bob Sutton's "The Weird Rules of Creativity" in Harvard Business Review, don't deprive yourself of the pleasure and benefit of reading his book. While you may not find Sutton's ideas especially weird (more like unorthodox and perhaps contentious), when considered together they definitely push the reader to challenge their assumptions about the corporate conditions conducive to creativity and innovation. Filled with gripping stories from far-flung contexts, Sutton conveys his ideas with verve and passion. These are also some of the qualities that support creativity. As Sutton notes, playfulness, curiosity, and zeal are hallmarks of the innovative company culture. Some books are stuffed with stimulating stories but leave the brain empty. Weird Ideas that Work weaves its tales into a rich fabric of ideas. For instance, Sutton makes the vital distinction between routine work and innovative work. Applying the methods of one to the other can only be disastrous. Related to this, Sutton looks at the issue of whether and when to separate innovation efforts from the mainstream organization. He also makes the distinction (which seems to be catching on more widely) between invention and innovation. Whereas invention is rather like science in that it involves creating something truly new, innovation is more like engineering in that it finds new applications for existing inventions. Grab a copy of this book, kick back for a couple of hours, and see if you can come up with another three and a half weird ideas of your own. One of them might just unlock latent value in your company.
Rating:
Summary: An inspiring book whose ideas will be referenced often
Review: I had read Sutton's earlier book on the "Knowing-Doing Gap," and I was looking forward to this latest book. I am happy to say that "Weird Ideas that Work" is a terrific complement to this earlier work (and to any management bookshelf in general, I would say), as it presents a compelling case for several innovative management practices. Sutton challenges the reader to take some risks, and looking back at my last challenging management position, I wish I had had this text on-hand to help me take a leap in trying some of these counterintuitive practices (for example, I should have stuck to applying Weird Idea #1, keeping a "slow learner of the organizational code" longer in my group). I also appreciated the mix of management (and psychological) theory with examples that are easy to understand and recall, such as how the practice seeing something old as something new, at times a disadvantage, can in fact lead to innovative products, from round tea bags to new designs for palm computers. In summary, an inspiring book that will be referenced often.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: I thought the book was a great way to think of different approaches to common work situations. Anything that sparks creativity and conversation is always a good thing in my book!
Rating:
Summary: Find some happy people and get them to fight
Review: Robert Sutton's Weird Ideas That Work: 11 Practices For Promoting, Managing, And Sustaining Innovation takes a contrarian approach to conventional business wisdom and uncovers a mostly-original set of principles for fostering organizational creativity. The author offers convincing arguments and supporting examples for each rule along with a host of ideas for applying them. They include: hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike; find some happy people and get them to fight; reward success and failure, punish inaction; etc.
Rating:
Summary: Some Striking Ideas, But May Not Be That Practical
Review: Someone once said that the driving forces for all management industries, whether they be guru-ing or book publishing, are fear and greed. Seldom are these forces as prevalent as in times of great change. Robert Sutton's award-winning book utilizes this to its utmost advantage since his eleven and a half rules are hardly Business Studies 101 kinds of material and quite characteristic of the kinds of stuff that tend to appear in bookstores when most newspapers are preoccupied with words like "meltdown" and "recession". Economics taught us that demand creates supply (or was it vice versa), business studies that profits occur when costs are lowered or revenues increase. Suttons "science" teaches us that hiring kooky, quirky and somewhat incompetent people will most likely breed that buzzword of the 90's known as innovation. His reasons for this are understandable and unassailable: Innovation is a process, not a practice that is either inherent in the corporate culture or shiningly absent. However, if you're one of those executives looking for that quick-fix get-ahead-of-the-pack rule to soothe your fear and greed, reading this book will leave you slightly disgruntled. It isn't that the rules are in any way sloppy or too `ivory-towery'. Quite the contrary, as Sutton goes to great lengths to convince the reader of the rigid acid tests these rules have had to put up with (namely hundreds of management seminars full of angry looking people in suits). The real predicament of these 11 rules (the `...and a half' tagged on to make the book literally ooze of creativity) is that they tend to be a little too creative for the regular, business-minded executive. On the other hand, they're not creative enough to appeal to the other side of the management spectrum, i.e. the crowd that enjoys walking on burning coal for sales training or inviting witch doctors as motivational speakers. After all, the idea that employees that talk back when given orders are valuable isn't exactly a scorching hot concept. All in all, this book will leave you somewhat amused and with the odd quote being good enough to put on your screen saver (should you happen to work in one of the old-school behemoth companies that the author is so unashamedly trying to reach) it might actually be worth an effort to browse through. Browse, but no more. Like so many of its forefathers in the management industry, this is an article's worth of material smeared over three hundred pages.
Rating:
Summary: After You Read This Book, Challenge Every Idea in It
Review: There are dozens of excellent books on the subject of innovation and this is one of the best. Frankly, I found none of Sutton's ideas "weird." Unorthodox, thought-provoking, and perhaps even somewhat controversial but certainly not weird. (Perhaps the title was devised to accommodate marketing needs.) He makes two important distinctions: between routine work (essentially defending and sustaining the status quo) and innovative work (challenging and disrupting, perhaps even transforming the status quo), and, between invention (creating something entirely new) and innovation (discovering new applications for what has already been invented). He also correctly acknowledges the advantages and disadvantages of separating innovation initiatives from the traditional organization structure. In Organizing Genius, Patricia Ward Biederman and Warren Bennis explain why it was so important to establish Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, far removed from corporate headquarters in Connecticut. Sutton suggests that such separation may not always be possible or at least prudent. In general, though, innovation is most productive when not constrained by limits of any kind. Indeed, innovation worthy of the name is by nature anathema to order and structure. For me, the greatest value of this book lies not in any one or even in all of the "Weird Ideas" which Sutton proposes; rather, in what could be the "world view" and mindsets which those ideas suggest. "Feelings -- not cold cognitions -- drive people to turn good ideas into reality....Every innovative company I know is passionate about solving problems....Playfulness and curiosity are related attitudes of innovation [in combination with] the ability to switch emotional gears between cynicism and belief, or between deep doubt and unshakable confidence." If you take Sutton's admonitions to heart, challenge all of his ideas as well as everyone else's ideas and come up with more innovative ones of your own. Throughout the 15 chapters which comprise this book, he carefully prepares his reader to do just that.
Rating:
Summary: Love This Book!!!
Review: This book is just full of great interventions and truths. I have enjoyed trialing the suggestions and altering them to fit my needs, with great outcomes! Now, some of my own weird ideas are even validated! A very useful tool in these fast changing times.
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