Must-own book helps crystallize your value proposition like nothing else...

A Guidebook for Serious Innovation Practitioners | Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want | Curtis R. Carlson, William W. Wilmot

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	• Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want Curtis R. Carlson, William W. Wilmot Crown Business, 2006 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Read the first half

Someone who's part-way into a running a small business would benefit greatly from reading this book. particularly the first half. It's good motivational reading... because you feel as though you've learned something, and really you have. It teaches how to get from a good idea, to a successful innovation. It's not innovation unless it's successful and gets used. Such a big concept, yet it often gets missed. That and it's well written, and a very enjoyable read.

Must-own book helps crystallize your value proposition like nothing else...

If you struggle with defining and communicating the value of your product, service or business, look no further than Chapter 5 of this book. In my 20 years as a communications practitioner, I've never seen such a foolproof system for distilling a value proposition. We've adopted the NABC method like religion, and the process has been a revelation for our clients. No matter how complex your offering, Bill Wilmot and Curtis Carlson's elegant method will help you talk about it simply and in ways that matter most to your customers and prospects.

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A Guidebook for Serious Innovation Practitioners

This is the first book that is a comprehensive "how to" guide written for leaders that want to drive the innovation performance of their organizations. Curtis Carlson is president and CEO of SRI International, arguably a collection of the most productive innovators on the planet. If you read only one book on innovation, this is the one to read. If you are limited for time, buy this book and read Chapter 5: It's as Simple as NABC. NABC is an acronym for: What is the customer and market NEED? What is the specific APPROACH to satisfying that need? What are the BENEFITS from that approach considering costs? & Why are these benefits superior to the COMPETITION and/or alternatives? That chapter alone is worth twice the price of the book. We bought copies for everyone in the company. At Metrics Reporting, we are innovation practitioners. We practice the discipline of innovation. This is a guidebook for practitioners that are serious about creating extraordinary results.

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Business focused "innovation" as opposed to waste of time & money

This book is not about innovation - it is about focus on what adds value instead of "useless" projects. It is applicable within innovation, but it could be better at it. It should have been more brief and with a more structured approach.

To summarize the book:
1. The developing world will soon beat the developed.
- We must come up with new products to compete.

2. Don't waste peoples' time
- learn how to do elevator pitches
- focus on important not interesting problems

3. Scrutinize ideas
Write small business plans / value proposition, and when presenting or writing focus in this order:
- What Need / problem does the idea solve
- How that problem is solved today (Competition and Alternatives).
- What Benefits and Costs / Disadvantages your solution has
- Last spend time on the Approach / implementation.

4. Be customer focused
Understand your customer. Read The Innovator's Solution.

5. Iterate ideas
Read Serious Play if you really want to understand this - this book just touches the subject.

6. Align your team
Make sure all works towards the same goal. Read Good to Great.

7. Focus on profit, not turnover
Be profitable as soon as possible, that is create value as soon as possible, as that would steer the idea.

8. Think big
Don't try to build 1M-companies, but 1B-companies. I think this is a useful exercise, even if the numbers look big the point is - if you are thinking about products that would address 100k problems, lift the bar.

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Innovation - The Story of SRI International

Right, this is not a book about innovation - it is a book about business management today, and its guidance is spot on! In what the authors call today's "exponential economy" (Freidman calls it a Flat World), the five disciplines of innovation equate to the five critical elements for business success. Consider each discipline:

1. Important Needs: Work on important customer and market needs - is the purpose of any business, and should be declared by the mission/vision statement(s).
2. Value Creation: Create customer value fast - is the basis for strategy. The NABC acronym - Need, unique Approach, Benefits per costs, Competition or alternatives - is an excellent way to dissect the strategy development process.
3. Innovation Champions: Be a champion to drive the value-creation process - is a statement that every business requires leadership that is committed to its success. And the list of ways to work as described on page 163...
* Listen and learn - all input is positive when the goal is increased value
* Fail often to succeed early - test your ideas early and often
* Ask for ideas before resources - keep costs down and interest up
* Surround yourself with enthusiastic volunteers - recruit for passion, curiosity, and values as well as talent
* Build business and financial models early, but be skeptical - Be quantitative and start with a SWAG
* Thank the thinkers, praise the participants - Share the credit, acknowledge contributions
* Trust the process - Visit Watering Holes and iterate, iterate, iterate
...are pretty good (well, except, the fail piece, which might simply read test your ideas) bits of advice for most leadership positions.
4. Innovation Teams: Use multidisciplinary, team-based approach to create a collective, genius-level IQ - is often the most effective organizational structure for any business today.
5. Organizational Alignment: Get your team and enterprise aligned to systematically produce - is about using identified and aligned business processes.

If you look at this book as the story of SRI International's success at innovation - and they are good at it - it has much to offer the reader. I particularly liked Chapter 6's "Watering Hole" process that was suggested as a way to improve ideas, and the DNA of change - Desire, New vision, and Action plan - is clever. While in general the book is a bit long-winded, the stories held my attention and that says a lot.

Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"

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Nothing is more important to business success than innovation . . . And here?s what you can do about it on Monday morning with the definitive how-to book from the world?s leading authority on innovation

When it comes to innovation, Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot of SRI International know what they are talking about?literally. SRI has pioneered innovations that day in and day out are part of the fabric of your life, such as:

?The computer mouse and the personal computer interface you use at home and work

?The high-definition television in your living room

?The unusual numbers at the bottom of your checks that enable your bank to maintain your account balance correctly

?The speech-recognition system used by your financial services firm when you call for your account balance or to make a transaction.

Each of these innovations?and literally hundreds of others?created new value for customers. And that?s the central message of this book. Innovation is not about inventing clever gadgets or just ?creativity.? It is the successful creation and delivery of a new or improved product or service that provides value for your customer and sustained profit for your organization. The first black-and-white television, for example, was just an interesting, cool invention until David Sarnoff created an innovation?a network?that delivered programming to an audience.

The genius of this book is that it provides the ?how? of innovation. It makes innovation practical by getting two groups who are often disconnected?the managers who make decisions and the people on the front lines who create the innovations?onto the same page. Instead of smart people grousing about the executive suite not recognizing a good idea if they tripped over it and the folks on the top floor wondering whether the people doing the complaining have an understanding of market realities, Carlson and Wilmot?s five disciplines of innovation focus attention where it should be: on the creation of valuable new products and services that meet customer needs.

Innovation is not just for the ?lone genius in the garage? but for you and everyone in your enterprise. Carlson and Wilmot provide a systematic way to make innovation practical, one intimately tied to the way things get done in your business.

Teamwork isn't enough; Creativity isn't enough; A new product idea isn't enough

True innovation is about delivering value to customers. Innovation reveals the value-creating processes used by SRI International, the organization behind the computer mouse, robotic surgery, and the domain names .com, .org, and .gov. Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot show you how to use these practical, tested processes to create great customer value for your organization.

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