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Weird Ideas That Work
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Weird Ideas That Work

Robert I. Sutton
Free Press, 2001
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

This is a wonderful but dangerous book. The 11 and 1/2 weird ideas it contains are terrific, exciting and slippery. Use them right and you could transform your company into a hotbed of innovation. Use them wrong and you could also transform your company into a disorganized mess. Author Robert I. Sutton clearly explains that some situations do not require innovation - that they are, in fact, terrible settings for new things. Companies focus on the routine for an extremely logical reason: it makes money now. Identifying situations that can make money with routine work versus circumstances that require change is a tough distinction, particularly since innovation requires many failures, disrupts your culture and forces you to take a rough look into the future. getAbstract.com thus recommends this book to a select group: those who know their fields and organizations extremely well. If you can see clearly through both the current jargon that promotes innovation and your organization’s often unspoken prejudices, you will find this book exciting and extremely productive.

Summary

Creativity, Innovation and Weird Ideas

Many people want to innovate in some fundamental way that changes their line of work, and perhaps their world. Most fail because they try to create something new with old ideas, practices and behaviors. That’s not the way things work. To create something new, act in new ways. These new ways may seem weird because they use different organizing principles. But, actions that work really well to produce profit now, and to complete known tasks, won’t help you create something new or create profits in the future. These 11.5 weird ideas will help you explore fresh approaches and see old familiar things in novel ways, an important form of creativity. Many "inventions" have come from taking an item out of its familiar context and adapting it to a new context, field or function.

If you follow these 11.5 ideas, you’ll see that innovation can be learned and, to an extent, institutionalized. Hopefully, you will see the old in new ways, and learn to produce a wider, more differentiated array of ideas, practices and attitudes. You will break your ties with history. Yet, as you pursue the new, don’t think that all change is good or that all new...

About the Author

Robert I. Sutton is professor of management science and engineering at the Stanford Engineering School and co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization. He has published more than 70 academic articles or book chapters, and is an IDEO Fellow and an Honorary PeopleSoft Fellow.

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