Managing Creativity and Innovation (Harvard Business Essentials)

Rating:
Summary: Essential, Informative, and Invaluable
Review: This is one of the volumes in the new Harvard Business Essentials Series. Each offers authoritative answers to the most important questions concerning its specific subject. The material in this book is drawn from a variety of sources which include the Harvard Business School Press and the Harvard Business Review as well as Harvard ManageMentor®, an online service. Each volume is indeed "a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience." And each is by intent and in execution solution-oriented. Although I think those who have only recently embarked on a business career will derive the greatest benefit, the material is well-worth a periodic review by senior-level executives.

In this volume, Richard Luecke assembles cutting edge thinking about managing creativity and innovation, ably assisted subject adviser Ralph Katz, a professor at Northeastern University's College of Business and in the Management of Technology Group of M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. They have carefully organized the material within these eight chapters:

1. Types of Innovation (Several Types on Many Fronts)
2. The S-Curve (A Concept and Its Lessons)
3. Idea Generation (Opening the Genie's Bottle)
4. Recognizing Opportunities (Don't Let the Good Ones Slip By)
5. Moving Innovation to Market (Will It Fly?)
6. Creativity and Creative Groups (Two Keys to Innovation)
7. Enhancing Creativity (Enriching the Organization and Workplace)
8. What Leaders Must Do (Making a Difference)

In the two appendices which follow, there are brief but insightful discussions of "The Time Value of Money" and "Useful Innovation Tools." Luecke and Katz also provide sections dedicated to Notes, Glossary, and For Further Reading. If you need assistance with mastering essentials in only one of these areas, I urge you to purchase a copy of this book ASAP. Luecke is an uncommonly clear thinker and writer. Thoughtfully, he provides a "Summing Up" section at the end of each chapter to facilitate a review of key points.

There are four other books which I also presume to recommend highly, all of which are available in a paperbound edition. First, Michael Michalko's Cracking Creativity in which he explains how to use various strategies to overcome ("crack") barriers to human creativity: knowing how to see, making a thought visible, thinking fluently, making novel (bizarre is better) combinations, connecting the unconnected, looking at "the other side," looking in other "worlds," finding what you are not looking for, and wakening the collaborative spirit. In Expect the Unexpected, Roger von Oech discusses 30 "Creative Insights" of Heraclitus which include, for example, #2. "Expect the unexpected or you won't find it," #4 "You can't step into the same river twice,"#12 "Many fail to grasp what's right in the palm of their hand," and #26 "Donkeys prefer garbage to gold." Obviously, von Oech agrees with Jim Collins that the most formidable barriers to creative thinking include what Collins describes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." If you need expert advice on how to plan and then conduct effective brainstorming sessions, the "must reads" include Doug Hall's Jump Start Your Brain and Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation.

As is also true of each of the others in the Harvard Business Essentials series, this volume is essentially a primer on cutting-edge thinking about an especially important business subject. Yes, much of the material is generic. No, it doesn't offer a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system for managing creativity and innovation. However, any one of the eight chapters (all by itself) is worth far more than the cost of this book. Obviously, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think every decision-maker should read all of the volumes in the Harvard Business Essentials series and then re-visit relevant portions in them (previously highlighted, of course) on an as-needed basis.