Five New Innovation Books for the Holidays
As the holiday season in the US gets underway, I habitually look back on what I’ve learnt over the previous year. An important part of that is always what I’ve read, and in the festive spirit of sharing, here are five books that greatly influenced me in 2019. None are strictly ‘Innovation books’. Instead they contain insights that I think are pertinent to innovation and innovators. Only three of them actually published in 2019. Instead one is from 2018 and one from 2017, but I’m sharing them this year because I personally only got around to reading them in 2019. So they were new for me, at least! And if anyone has suggestions for any additional new books, please let me know. Books not only make excellent stocking stuffers, but are also critical sanity tools for me over this holiday period – invaluable for killing time at airports, or simply for providing a little quiet ‘bah humbug’ time away from family and holiday celebrations.
1. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, Starting early and specializing is fashionable, and the 10,000 hour rule has become a popular mantra. Epstein acknowledges that there are indeed skills and careers that benefit from focused, narrow skill building, and he shares the example of golf, and Tiger Woods. But he also argues that there are also many others where too narrow a focus can be a disadvantage, and limit potential to be adaptive. He therefore encourages us to celebrate ‘late developers’ and ‘slow bakers’, and not be too quick to specialize ourselves, or our children. I’d argue that nowhere is this more true than in innovation and creativity. and it’s becoming even more pertinent in a world where technology is changing so rapidly, making over-specialization increasingly risky. From an evolutionary perspective, mammals were more flexible than dinosaurs, and in a world where the rate of change is accelerating at an almost blinding pace, who wants to risk becoming a dinosaur? Even a very efficient and skilled one!
2. The Longevity Economy And we not only under-target older consumers. Even when products are designed for them, or maybe I should I say us, they often miss the mark. In general, older consumers don’t want products that are obviously targeted at the old, but instead want innovations that help us to feel young. Yes, we have some specific age related needs, and may not always be cutting edge with tech, but most people over 50 don’t want dumbed down, or obviously age targeted products. We want new, cutting edge tech, albeit with the occasional simplified interface.
As a personal example, I recently went to an Aerosmith concert in Vegas. Now, Steve Tyler may be no spring chicken, but the band has maintained appeal with a young as well as more mature audience, and the crowd reflected that mix. From an innovation perspective, the venue was trying out a cool new concert technology: In-ear ‘mixhalo’ personal headphones provided A minor caveat. I didn’t love all of this book. For me it was a bit too anchored in Maslows’s hierarchy. But overall it was really useful in reshaping my thinking about how much time to spend thinking about more mature consumers, as well as changing the way I think about innovating for them.
3. The Case Against Reality. Don Hoffman. This was perhaps my favorite book of the year overall. Full disclosure, I’m biased. Don is a friend, and I’ve been fortunate to have shared many long and fascinating discussions with him about how perception and attention works; how we see, what we see, and perhaps more importantly, what we don’t see. But part of the reason I have spent so much time trying to understand this space is because I believe attention and perception are so critical to innovation. No matter how great an innovation is, it is of little value if people don’t notice it. Don’s book peels back the onion on the science of how this works. And at this detailed level, the insights are often counter-intuitive and driven far more 4. Enlightenment Now, 5. Bring Your Brain to Work And I particularly love his insights on the jazz brain. As a musician, it’s an analogy that naturally appeals to me. Our world is not scripted, and, to paraphrase an old military saying, no plans survive initial contact with the market, management or consumer. But the ability to improvise in the face of ever changing context and information is one of the most important skills an innovator can possess. As innovators, we obviously need to bring our brains to work every day, but deep understanding of improvisation may be one of the most important things we can learn.
So in summary, five books, all of which got me thinking about innovation in a slightly new way. Only time will tell if these will become personal classics like How the Mind Works <img class="aligncenter wp-image-8697" title="Build a common language of innovation on your team" src="https://innovationexcellence.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Common-Innovation-Language-550-Image Choose how you want the latest innovation content delivered to you:
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A twenty-five year Procter Gamble veteran, Pete Foley has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Follow him @foley_pete