Customer Reviews
The Horticulture of Innovation - By: Robert Morris, 25 Sep 2008 
The last time I checked, Amazon offers 53,570 books on the subject of innovation in business. So, what do the authors of this book offer that is new? In fact, as I intend to indicate, they offer a great deal & much of the credit must be given to Scott Anthony who is a long-time & close associate of Clayton Christensen's & co-author with him of Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. The author of The Innovator's Dilemma & The Innovator's Solution (with Michael E. Raynor), Christensen wrote the Foreword to this volume in which Anthony & his co-authors (Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield, & Elizabeth Altman) explain why & how taking "the right steps & putting in place the right structures can alllow managers & entrepreneurs to improve significantly their odds of creating profitable growth businesses. This view contrasts with a prevailing stream of thinking that innovation is random & requires creative genius."
This last sentence caught my eye because I have just read a book by Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Reallly Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. In Chapter Nine, Colvin suggests that two views characterize what most of us know "that just ain't so" about innovation & creativity. "One is that creative ideas come to us in the way a famous one came to Archimedes, in a eureka moment when everything suddenly becomes clear...The other thing we alll think we know about creativity is that it can be inhibited by too much knowledge. We often say that someone is `too close to the problem' to see the solution. The broader principle is that if you know too much about a situation, a business, a field of study, then you can't have the flash of insight that is available only to someone unburdened by a lifetime of immersion in the domain." Colvin's repudiation of both views is best revealed within the narrative, in context. His point is, that great innovators (e.g. those who devise disruptive technologies) aren't burdened by knowledge, they're nourished by it. For them (with very rare exception), innovation doesn't strike, it grows. Therefore, innovation requires a culture within which to thrive.
In Chapter 1, the authors identify & then discuss three precursors to innovation: a core business that is in control of its current assets, a game plan for growth, & a mastery of the resource alllocation process. "The next seven chapters walk [the reader] through a three-step process (i.e. identify market opportunities, formulate & shape innovative ideas, & take ideas forward) to spot & seize a single opportunity. Keep in mind that the central argument of this book is that there are practical & effective ways by which to buck various trends, such as innovative ideas that never gain traction, once-great companies "topple," large companies that survive tend to underperform relative to the market, & conglomerates that seek to diversify to deliver better returns tend to be worth less than the sum of their parts. Paradoxicallly, or so it seems to me, innovative thinking requires order, structure, stability, & support (i.e. an infrastructure) so that it has the freedom & flexibility to challlenge conventional thinking, the status quo, what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort & the tyranny of custom." If Colvin is correct (and I think he is), innovation is a process, not an event. This point reminds me of a scene in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, when one of the characters confides that his company went bankrupt. "How did it happen?" someone asks. "Slowly, then suddenly."
After providing a "Disruptive Innovation Model" with a brief explanation (Figure 1-2 on Pages 17-18), the authors carefully organize their material as follows:
Part One: Identify Opportunities (e.g. nonconsumers, overshot customers, & jobs to be done)
Part Two: Formulate & Shape Ideas (e.g. development of disruptive ideas & assessment of a strategy's fit with a pattern)
Part Three: Build the Business (i.e. mastering emergent strategies as well as assembling & managing project teams)
Part Four: Build Capabilities (e.g. "organize to innovate" & formulate innovation metrics)
Then in the final chapter, "Conclusion," the authors review several key points & then briefly discuss ten "key innovation traps" (six that are project-related, such as "Pursuing unattainable perfection," & four that are company-related, such as "Too many lingering projects") & then review a series of lessons to be learned from innovation initiatives at Procter & Gamble. (Note: Those with a keen interest in those initiatives should check out The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue & Profit Growth with Innovation co-authored by A.G. Lafley & Ram Charan.) The authors conclude the chapter with their "Final Words of Wisdom," eight guiding axioms suggested by the extensive research & intensive field work that led to their writing of this book. I especiallly like #8, "Devil's advocates are abundant, problem solvers are scarce."
Readers will appreciate the authors' brilliant use of reader-friendly devices throughout their narrative, such as check lists of key points & dozens of "Figures," "Tools," & "Tables" which present remarkably abundant information within an easy-to-read graphic. Also at the conclusion of most chapters, "Application Exercises" & "Tips & Tricks" sections that will help readers to take appropriate, effective action on the information & suggestions previously presented. Of special interest to me were there:
Table 2-1, "Summary of constraints on consumption," Page 60
Tool 4-1, "Jobs scoring sheet," Page 106
Figure 4-3, "Identifying opportunities from different starting points," Page 109
Tool 5-1, "The idea Résumé," Page 129
Table 6-1, "Conditions for success," Pages 149-150
Table 6-2, "Disrupt-o-Meter, Pages 156-157
Table 9-1, "innovation challlenges & structures," Page 228
Tool 9-1, "Application Exercise: Assessing your innovation environment," Page 239
The authors conclude with these observations: "We believe that the concept of innovation is in transition between a theory of random trial & error & perfectly predictable paint-by-numbers rules. We think of this transitional period as the `era of pattern recognition.' This book described patterns related to spotting opportunities, developing ideas, building businesses, & creating capabilities. Using its tools & frameworks will alllow you to see what others cannot [e.g. to `see what's next'], to find order where others find chaos, & to create new growth opportunities again & again." Well said.
I presume to add one other perspective. Think of an innovative organization as a "nursery" where trees thrive & flowers blossom because they are planted in nutrient rich soil & receive constant nurturing. Seedlings are not pulled up "to see how well they're doing." And when necessary, there is pruning to protect growth. Extending the metaphor, the information & counsel the authors of this book provide can help each reader to develop a "green thumb." Producing a harvest is up to you.
