Innovation Book Club

It's the end of another season. Alex and Wais take some time to reflect.

Empathy, empathy, empathy, it's the heart of innovation. Apparently. The problem with empathy is that innovators don't truly empathise, instead, they pick and choose feedback that meets their own preferences rather than the broader picture that better reflects the needs of the user. Indi Young addresses this by providing a better understanding of empathy and offering some approaches to utilising it without falling into familiar traps. Alex and Wais dip in to learn how to empathise...

There are many creative agencies but only one of those agencies is called IDEO, the granddaddy of them all, which traces its history back to 1978, the year after Star Wars was released. IDEO became a named entity in 1991, since which time they've popularised the idea of human-centred design, a process that seeks to empathise with users and embed the understanding that falls from this within the product design process to create better innovations. That's not what this book is about, but it is written by one of IDEO's elder statesmen, Tom Kelley, who believes that innovation requires ten different kinds of people, each of whom contributes in different ways. Alex and Wais discover who they are and get lost in a lot of stories.

Way back in the mists of time, before even the first iPhone was released and kickstarted a seismic shift in digital innovation, Scott Berkun wrote The Myths of Innovation, in which he explores why we have innovation all wrong. Alex and Wais dip into the book and find out what innovation looked like before lean startups and business model canvases were a thing.

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club, Alex and Wais follow up their previous episode about Business Model Generation with a look back at Osterwalder's follow-up, Value Proposition Design.

If our recent fixation with innovation started anywhere, it was with Osterwalder & Pigneur's Business Model Generation which popularised the idea of business model innovation through the introduction of the business model canvas. Alex and Wais reflect on the book's legacy and relevance to the innovation landscape today.

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club Alex and Wais take on the beast that is ChatGPT and consider how it's going to change how we use the web, our work and our lives. This conversation was recorded in January 2023.

Alex and Wais discuss Eric Ries' game-changing book The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses (2011). The book (finally) offered software developers and technology entrepreneurs an alternative to the resource-heavy and time-consuming waterfall methodology and has since become a staple of any startup. But is it all its really cracked up to be?

In this final episode of the second season of the Innovation Book Club, Alex and Wais reflect on the ideas they’ve discussed over the previous seven episodes and how it’s helped to widen their understanding of innovation. They also talk about trainspotting briefly. No links this time, but why not give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss an academic paper, ‘Ideas are born in fields of play: towards a theory of play and creativity in organisational settings’ by Charalampos Mainemelis and Sarah Ronson. The premise of this article is that play is used in organisations in two ways, either to divert us from the tedium of work or to engage us at work and promote our creativity. Play, therefore, is key to innovation, but the authors argue that we don’t know how to harness play effectively or consistently to promote innovation. You can buy the paper here (but you probably don’t want to): shorturl.at/eCTY0 If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss Scott E Page’s book The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy. Scott Page argues that diversity in teams is not only the right thing to do from a social justice point of view, but it’s also the right thing to do if you want to create a successful business. This is because diversity is additive, it brings wider perspectives to complex problems, which means that you’re more likely to deliver better solutions. You can watch Scott Page talking about his ideas here: shorturl.at/pyPR3 If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss Nilofer Merchant’s concept of ‘Onlyness’. Nilofer Merchant argues that at the heart of all ideas are human beings, but we have created a world in which powerful and entrenched hierarchies overlook those ideas that do not align with their own values and experience. Ideas, Merchant argues, are a product of our ‘onlyness’, they are the result of our own history and experience, visions and hopes, and this is what makes them unique. To give our ideas power we need to socialise them by building networks of like-minded people. You can watch Nilofer Merchant talking about onlyness here: shorturl.at/grBCL If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss Woody Wade’s book Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future. Once the preserve of large-scale businesses with their own future-thinking departments, Woody Wade’s approach makes scenario planning both accessible and efficient for everyone. This approach allows organisations to better anticipate a future that is different from the present and align their innovation efforts to this future. You can watch Woody Wade’s presentation here: shorturl.at/hjnI9 If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

This retrospective article looks back at twenty years of disruption and argues that we’ve actually become confused about what disruptive innovation is, how it works, and the contribution it makes to innovation success. As a result, we get disruption all wrong. The authors use the example of Uber to explain how it’s not on a disruptive trajectory and shouldn’t be referred to as a disruptor. You can read the article here: shorturl.at/hmARX If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss ‘Know your customer’s “Jobs to be Done”’, a 2016 HBR article by Clayton M Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S Duncan. The authors propose that innovation success has less to do with the quality of a particular product and more to do with whether that product ‘does a job’ for the user. The key to innovation, therefore, is to focus on the job, which sounds simple enough but requires the innovator to uncover complex social, emotional and psychological drivers, and then design products that deliver against these. You can read the article here: shorturl.at/lqJW7 If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this first episode of the second season of the Innovation Book Club, Alex and Wais discuss ‘Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change’, an article by two giants of the design industry, Roberto Verganti and Donald Norman. The authors were both interested in exploring why successive incremental innovations implemented over time never lead to radical breakthroughs. In fact, the opposite is often true. The key to unlocking this conundrum lies in the importance of meaning-based innovation that changes our understanding of what a product means for customers which then opens up new conceptual opportunities for product development because we are freed from our current paradigm of thinking. You can read the article here: shorturl.at/lAIL8 If you’re enjoying the Innovation Book Club, please give us a 5-star review on your podcatcher of choice.

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club, Alex Drago and Wais Pirzad discuss the paper ‘What creates advantage in the ‘social era’?’ by Tim Kastelle, Nilofer Merchant, and Martie-Louise Verreynne. From the authors: “We have observed the economy move from one where centralized organizations initiated value creation to one where that same value creation develops with the help of multiple outside, contributing networks. This tectonic shift means that all modern industries now have a different source of advantage. We have seen this documented in examples starting in the 1990s, when influencers enabled innovation platforms as business models, and continued to what we see today in the Social Era with crowdsourcing, open innovation and business models. The Social Era will reward those organizations that realize they shouldn’t create value alone. If the industrial era was about building things, the social era is about connecting things, people, and ideas.” You can read the article here: shorturl.at/fqCGN Here’s Nilofer Merchant talking about her concept of ‘onlyness’: shorturl.at/zMQX0 Tim Kastelle’s Discipline of Innovation blog: https://timkastelle.org/ Here’s three questions to help you reflect on what you’ve just heard: 1, According to the authors, new ideas come from outside the core of the business. In your experience of work, do the truly successful ideas come from outside the core of the business or do they just come from the top of the leadership hierarchy? 2, Where does your company think it fits on the advantage map? Where do you think it fits on the advantage map? 3, How would you describe your ‘onlyness’? Contact us: nadrago@gmail.com or wais.pirzad@gmail.com

Note: This episode won’t make much sense unless you’ve listened to the rest of the season first, so best to start there. In this final episode of the first season of the Innovation Book Club, Alex Drago and Wais Pirzad share their reflections on what they’ve learned from the previous seven episodes. No questions for you this time, you get an easy ride. Contact us: nadrago@gmail.com or wais.pirzad@gmail.com

In this episode, Alex Drago and Wais Pirzad discuss Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch’s seminal paper Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing which was originally published in the Journal of Marketing in 2004. Abstract: Marketing inherited a model of exchange from economics, which had a dominant logic based on the exchange of “goods,” which usually are manufactured output. The dominant logic focused on tangible resources, embedded value, and transactions. Over the past several decades, new perspectives have emerged that have a revised logic focused on intangible resources, the co-creation of value, and relationships. The authors believe that the new perspectives are converging to form a new dominant logic for marketing, one in which service provision rather than goods is fundamental to economic exchange. The authors explore this evolving logic and the corresponding shift in perspective for marketing scholars, marketing practitioners, and marketing educators. You can download the article here: shorturl.at/cuyQR Here are three questions to help you reflect on what you’ve heard: 1, To what extent do you agree that the purpose of all marketplace transactions is for a supplier to render service to their customers? 2, Choose a company you admire. How important is service-dominant logic to their success? 3, How could your work be improved by adopting service-dominant logic principles? Contact us: nadrago@gmail.com or wais.pirzad@gmail.com

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club, Alex Drago and Wais Pirzad discuss a Vice documentary based on Jeremy Rifkin’s book The Third Industrial Revolution. The book blurb: “The Industrial Revolution, powered by oil and other fossil fuels, is spiralling into a dangerous endgame. The price of gas and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt is soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future. Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful "Third Industrial Revolution." He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet," just like we now create and share information online. Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life. Rifkin's vision is already gaining traction in the international community. The European Union Parliament has issued a formal declaration calling for its implementation, and other nations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, are quickly preparing their own initiatives for transitioning into the new economic paradigm. The Third Industrial Revolution is an insider's account of the next great economic era, including a look into the personalities and players — heads of state, global CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and NGOs — who are pioneering its implementation around the world.” You can watch this here: shorturl.at/rxV01 Here’s three questions to help you reflect on what you’ve just heard: 1, Rifkin makes the case that the synergies created by innovations in energy, connectivity and transport systems powered previous industrial revolutions, created economic development and generated jobs. How convinced are you by his arguments? 2, Rifkin’s ideas about a green revolution and a distributed economy powered by renewable energy, the internet of things and connected transport networks are presented as the key way to generate economic growth. What else would need to change for his ideas to succeed? 3, What areas of your work could be improved by Rifkin’s ideas if they were adopted by your company? Contact us: nadrago@gmail.com or wais.pirzad@gmail.com If you want to buy the book then consider supporting your local booksellers with Bookshop.org: shorturl.at/loxP4 Alternatively, if you want to give Jeff Bezos more of your hard-earned cash: Amazon.co.uk: shorturl.at/cgjmB Amazon.com: shorturl.at/yCORU