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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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