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A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change

Jossey-Bass, 2011 plus...

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

This fascinating book on innovation meets the primary criterion of any guide on the subject: Be innovative. You would expect no less from Andy Stefanovich, the “chief curator and provocateur” at Prophet, a strategic branding, marketing, innovation, and design consultancy. His message: To develop a truly innovative concept, go sit in a park, or confer with your building’s custodian, or ask your team for the worst possible idea for a project. Over the past 20 years, Stefanovich has established a reputation as an extremely disruptive consultant – in a good way. He guides his clients to shun traditional thinking, pat answers and clichéd responses. He insists that they think not just outside the box, but far away from wherever they left the box. Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Nike, GE and other corporate giants follow his idiosyncratic, creative recommendations. If you want to learn to cook, find a chef, says getAbstract, which recommends the idea that if you want to learn to innovate, perhaps you should find a provocateur.

Summary

Hairdresser Becomes Eco-Champ

In March 1989, Phillip McCrory, a Madison, Alabama, hairdresser, was as shocked as everyone else by the Exxon Valdez’s 11-million-gallon oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. McCrory watched a CNN news report showing a rescue worker trying in vain to clean oil from a distraught otter’s fur pelt. The oil seemed almost chemically bonded to the fur. Then the proverbial light bulb switched on above McCrory’s head: “If fur can trap and hold spilled oil, why shouldn’t human hair work equally as well?” As a hairdresser, McCrory knew that most beauty salons sweep up about a pound of hair every day, so “millions of pounds” of hair end up in landfills. His brilliant idea: Collect all that hair and use it to contain oil spills. To test his theory, McCrory collected five pounds of hair from his salon. He stuffed it into a pair of pantyhose and tied the feet together to create a ring. He floated the ring in a plastic swimming pool and poured motor oil into its center. The oil quickly adhered to the hair and soon vanished from the water.

McCrory found that hair adsorbs (not absorbs) oil, which “clings to the hair rather...

About the Author

Andy Stefanovich, the “chief curator and provocateur” at Prophet, a branding, marketing, innovation, and design firm, is a visiting professor at Duke, Dartmouth, and other prestigious universities.