An engaging collection of useful ideas for leading teams to tackle the unique challenges of innovation.
Cagan and Boatwright outline best practices for leading teams in developing breakthrough products in this nonfiction business guide.
Asserting that “nearly all innovation is done by teams” and that “innovation teams are not like other teams,” the authors, professors at Carnegie Mellon University, state in their introduction that they wrote this guide “to fill a gap in the knowledge base.” While there are many good books on innovation processes and methodologies (and on management and leadership in general), Cagan and Boatwright saw an unmet need to address the management of innovation teams specifically. What sets innovation teams apart is the fact that they’re “always trying to do something that hasn’t been previously done,” ideally producing a high-quality result quickly. Despite the many unknowns and inherent unpredictability of innovation, the authors posit that it’s possible to reliably optimize a team’s functionality by using management principles derived from Cagan and Boatwright’s considerable experience. They provide a toolkit of 13 best practices (“tips”) they have identified for leading such teams effectively, preparing them to anticipate roadblocks and respond creatively to unforeseen challenges. The authors also review traditional management styles and identify situations in which conventional management practices don’t work well with innovation teams, while approaches that may seem counterintuitive actually produce better outcomes, and they explain why. Beginning with the fundamental question “Why innovate?” the authors consistently emphasize the importance of creating value for customers and the company. Their best practices include managing the process rather than the outcome; building and nurturing the right team; balancing broad initial exploration with refining the best solution; reframing limiting beliefs; defining criteria for success; setting deadlines; establishing a price range for the final product early on; keeping up with new technologies such as AI; and using effective storytelling to engage stakeholders. Each tip concludes with a paragraph or two on how managers can apply it personally to their own work and professional development.
The authors, who established Carnegie Mellon University’s Integrated Innovation Institute, provide ample evidence to support their principles, including research findings from academic studies, real-world examples from well-known organizations including Apple, Ford, Nest, Waymo, DARPA, and various sports teams, and advice from experienced leaders at innovative firms and such luminaries as Peter Drucker, Daniel Goleman, and Benjamin Franklin. Their writing is consistently clear, straightforward, and upbeat, packed with excellent descriptions, logical explanations, and persuasive recommendations, presented with empathy and humor (the book has a few tongue-in-cheek mentions of “Econ 101” when a mini-refresher on a basic market or business principle is needed). The text is also enlivened by numerous colorful illustrations by Hess. Throughout, Cagan and Boatwright suggest that readers should choose as needed from the various options presented rather than following a cookie-cutter approach. It’s likely that, after an initial read-through, many team leaders will find this guide handy to dip into again from time to time to review the tips most relevant to their current management dilemmas.
An engaging collection of useful ideas for leading teams to tackle the unique challenges of innovation.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781953943415
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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