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The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Beating The Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organisation, by Tom Kelley and with Jonathan Littman.
IDEO are world leaders in their field. They are essentially an Industrial Design Consultancy with numerous offices worldwide and have a unique view on how to solve real world problems with effective products through innovation. This is the latest book by Tom Kelley, together with Jonathan Littman, following on from the hugely successful The Art of Innovation.
This book is a clear advance on from the previous title, and many of the same ideas are upheld and conveyed within as the IDEO way. The book defines, very clearly, ten different Persona’s which are intended for use in kick-starting innovation within the workplace. These persona’s consist of The Anthropologist, The Experimenter, The Cross-Pollinator, The Hurdler, The Collaborator, The Director, The Experience Architect, The Set Designer, The Storyteller and the Caregiver. Each Persona holds it’s own chapter within the book and along with the conclusion and the introduction to defeating Devil’s Advocate the twelve chapters really make for some healthy and interesting reading.
With roughly an hour’s read per chapter, each one is packed full of unusual examples, stories, inspiration and details on sparking innovation through the use of various persona’s. There is a little familiar content which has seeped through from the previous book but with much more detail behind those situations. The attention to detail throughout ties in nicely with the abilities of innovators to notice the details, and ask questions with a child-like approach to learning.
The content is direct advice for improving innovation through examples about real world products and situations. The examples are ready to be used at any time, and the content has a grand colourful atmousphere about it. You can certainly tell that innovation flows through this man’s veins and is the life-blood of IDEO. Techniques, tips and advice are a dime a dozen throughout and very clearly exposed.
Each chapter within the book seems to cover examples of that particular persona in similar ways. An example of someone who practices what they preach usually crops up, demonstrating a first hand experience of how anyone can adopt the persona, but more specifically looking at someone who has done so through IDEO. There is also usually a few examples of how outside corporations have approached innovation and some insightful ways in which they have dealt with problems and overcome them successfully. Each chapter also contains a list which beaks down clear points to put accross how to adopt the persona, or how to recognise people within the persona. These lists are be good reflection points within the book.
The Ten Faces of Innovation is easy to read and Tom Kelley makes his points extremely well. The book is easy to pick up and return to without losing track and the writing style is comprehensive. As this book is the development from the previous title by the same authors, I am pretty sure that there is more to cover on the subject for IDEO. As a designer i kind of wish for a little bit more of the design side to be exposed, but then the vaiety of readers who are potentially able to read and understand this book covers a huge range of industries, job sectors and personalities.
I definately reccomend this book for anyone interested in turning around innovation in their world!
