The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley - Assignment Example

Book Review Critique - The Ten Faces Of Innovation by Tom Kelley The Ten Faces of Innovation is an attempt to systematize the professional innovation process by breaking it down into 10 components. Each component corresponds to a role or profile to be adopted by a person as part of an innovation team. The thesis of the book is that this model allows companies to foster constructive innovation within their own organization, something that is not only desirable but now necessary for companies to survive and prosper. The author, Tom Kelley, advances the argument that the same methods have been tried and proven to work within his own company, IDEO. The purpose of the book is to give practical, usable information to any person or organization needing or wishing to increase innovation. Kelley does so by describing the way in which an innovation team can be built and function, providing numerous examples of application of these concepts. The introduction sets the scene by singling out the "devil's advocate approach" as the worst enemy of innovation, before defining three groups of roles, or "personas" which typically constitute a successful innovation-oriented activity. In a manner reminiscent of other team role models defined in organizational behavior, Kelley names the groups "learning", "organizing" and "building" personas. It is the learning group, which is the focus of the first three chapters. First the Anthropologist's role is discussed, where the key to beginning successful innovation is un-blinkered perception of how people behave. The theme continues with the Experimenter, whose accelerated failure allows for faster progress towards the goal, before closing with the Cross-Pollinator, adept at applying concepts from one area to a completely different one. Following this is the organizing group, again with one role per chapter. The Hurdler is the problem-solver, the Collaborator brings people together for a result and the Director sets the pace, the direction and the goals. The chapter on the last group, "building", open with the Experience Architect, with similar priorities to the Anthropologists but this time focused more on the products and services to be provided rather than on the people who will use them. The Set Designer then effects the changes to create an organizational environment that encourages innovation, building on aspects of how people meet and congregate. The Caregiver is tasked with making it easier for the customer to transition to a new innovative context and the Storyteller, the final persona, enhances the motivation and the bonding of the team to produce real and useful innovation. The book closes with a final chapter with some general pointers on succeeding in innovation. The strength of the book lies in the very attainable possibility of replicating the innovation system that it describes. Kelley expresses the concepts and methods in terms that are related to everyday business life and does not make any excessive demand on the reader's intellect. The "cookbook" approach also allows readers to review their own organizations and to pinpoint any particular areas of weakness or malfunction. In a sense, the strength of the book is also its weakness: managing 10 different role models in a fast-moving business environment is a complex task and requires considerable energy. A section on a minimalist approach with ease of application would have been welcome, all the more so in that chapters on some roles (Director for example) appear to have been "padded" with more generic material. In addition, the transversal or underlying nature of certain personas notably in the organizing group could be further developed to enhance practical application. However Kelley makes a valid contribution to business in general with a workable innovation system underpinned by his own real experience. In the field of organizational behavior in particular, Kelley contributes at a micro-organizational level, mostly by charting the development of individual contributor roles, but also to some extent in the creation and performance of a team that in terms of "personas" may be formed by the Collaborator, normed by the Set Designer and led to performance by the Director. The experience of IDEO can be considered in the light of concepts such the collective mind and transactive memory. If the roles are clearly defined and distributed in a static way, that is a role is not transferred from one person to another, it is possible that phenomenon of transactive memory is produced. In this case the team members know who has assumed a role and what contribution they can expect from that person, without necessarily being experts on the subject themselves. Kelley's descriptions of his experience would suggest that this has been the case with IDEO. On the other hand, it is possible that within other structures, innovation roles are assumed or transferred in a flexible way between team members, much as companies engage in job rotation for managers for example. In this case, the collective mind assumes greater importance as more and different information is absorbed by the innovation team as a whole. In conclusion, it is the area of group dynamics that is well served by this book, in particular for team roles models such as the one defined by Belbin. The top three lessons that can be learned are: more than one useful team roles model exists, for example Belbin and IDEO; team role models can be defined in a practical and applicable way for real-world results; underlying principles common to different models (for example, simultaneous adoption of several roles by one team member) also translate well from more theoretical to more practical contexts. Kelley's book can be recommended to non-management organizational employees as much as to their managers: innovation is not a management prerogative and employees will need (and perhaps want) to learn practical ways of making innovation happen. For the OB practitioner, scholar and student, the recommendation can also be extended at least at the micro-organizational level. For the practitioner, "The Ten Faces Of Innovation" is a useful practical application, the scholar a documented case study of group dynamics and for the student an interesting, readable and educational text. Read More