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Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition

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Best Practices are Stupid is the subject of one of Steve Shapiro's innovation tips and the title for this book. Rather than ridicule current approaches to innovation, Shapiro takes a comprehensive and compelling look at the next set of things companies need to do to innovate.

Shapiro points out that innovation is a well-worn subject and that in many cases those tried and true beliefs about innovation are neither innovative nor effective. In response Shapiro offers 40 tips some of which confirm but many of which breath new life into innovation thinking and practice.

The book is recommended to individuals and teams who are looking to initiative innovation programs, particularly for the first time, as it gives fresh thinking to the field. Experienced innovators or students of innovation will find much of the first part of the book familiar and may tend to discount is value. That would be a mistake as Shapiro effectively bridges the best parts of current innovation practices with new ideas to create new results.

The book presents each of the 40 tips in short and focused descriptions, many with examples that make them easier to understand and deploy. In addition, Shapiro makes use of illustrations when it matters to help people see the ideas clearly. This gives the book both an intellectual feel as its stimulates your thinking as well as an actionable and practical side needed to create value from innovation.

Among the better tips I found in the book include:

* Don't think outside the box; find a better box
* The performance paradox
* Hire people you do not like
* Why pyramids are one of the seven wonders

Other tips are more familiar but provide a comprehensive view of the issues and practices associated with innovation. The combination creates a new set of `proven' practices that give people a leg up on getting new results from their innovation projects.

Read the whole book, which may sound silly but the information in the introduction, overview and appendices is valuable not filler.

The book is recommended for teams starting innovation projects where these new ideas can have the greatest impact. Experienced teams will tend to view many of these tips as `old ground' and need to be encouraged to think differently about innovation and how to employ it in your organization.

Length:: 3:07 Mins

Obviously, proven practices are not dumb. But sometimes we lock ourselves into this cage of thinking, "This is the way it must be done." And that just kills innovation.

Stephen Shapiro's Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition takes a look at some of the best practices formed over many years. And yet, we are America. We are innovators. And we cannot be tied down by things like this.

So, Shapiro introduces us to:

OVERVIEW: Innovate the Way You Innovate

Tip 1: Not Survival of the Fittest--Survival of the Adaptable
Tip 2: How Can You Avoid Becoming a One-Hit Wonder?
Tip 3: Asking for Ideas Is a Bad Idea
Tip 4: Don't Think Outside the Box; Find a Better Box
Tip 5: Expertise Is the Enemy of Innovation

PROCESS: Challenge-Driven Innovation

Tip 6: The Difference Between a Pipeline and a Sewer Is What Flows Through It
Tip 7: The Goldilocks Principal
Tip 8: There is No Such Thing as a "Know-It-All"
Tip 9: What Did Edison Get Wrong About Innovation?
Tip 10: What Do Cisco, LG Electronics, and GE Have in Common with American Idol?
Tip 11: To Compete or Not to Compete: That is the Question
Tip 12: Crowds Are Better at Eliminating Duds Than at Picking Winners

STRATEGY: Innovation Strategy and Customers

Tip 13: Lessons From Indiana Jones
Tip 14: Your Market Research Sucks
Tip 15: Be the Aspirin for Your Customers' Pains
Tip 16: Innovate Where You Differentiate
Tip 17: Ever Notice How "One Size Fits All" Never Really Fits All?
Tip 18: Best Practices Are (Sometimes) Stupid
Tip 19: Simplification Is the Best Innovation

MEASURES: Innovation Measures and Motivation

Tip 20: Motivate Like Maslow
Tip 21: You Get What You Measure, but Will You Get What You Want?
Tip 22: The Performance Paradox
Tip 23: Time Pressure Kills Creativity
Tip 24: Failure Is Always an Option
TIp 25: View the World Through a Different Lens

PEOPLE: Organization, Leadership, and Culture

TIp 26: Hire People You Don't Like
TIp 27: Why the Pyramids Are One of the Seven Wonders
Tip 28: The "Top-Down" Philosophy Should Be Left to Convertibles
TIp 29: Use the Reality TV Show Model
Tip 30: Get Your Knowledge Workers Doing Knowledge Work

CREATIVITY: Techniques for Stimulating Creative Thinking

Tip 31: Encourage Employees to Get on Their Soapbox
Tip 32: The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is a Straight Line
Tip 33: Someone Else Has Already Solved Your Problem
Tip 34: Adapt Your Product to a Different Environment
Tip 35: Don't Put the "No" in InNOvation
Tip 36: How Can You Make the Impossible Possible?
Tip 37: Stand in Someone Else's Shoes
Tip 38: Innovation is Child's Play
Tip 39: Sometimes It's Logical to Be Illogical
Tip 40: Predict What the Competition Will Do Next

Appendix A: Technologies That Enable Innovation
Appendix B: Discover Your Innovation Style

Shapiro shows us how to get to those parts of our minds where we're just locked in convention. He takes us there and shows us several different ways to flip it on its head and make it make total sense. He gets you to be more productive and has a knack of evoking this thought from his readers: "How in the world have I missed this all along?"

You will do things differently, and you will be so much better for it with this book.

One of my favorite examples in Best Practices Are Stupid shows how to innovate your own products by looking at other products. Shapiro tells a story of walking around his house trying to see other products and how they could be used to make toothpaste more innovative. So he walks into his bathroom and looks at, of all things, shampoo and conditioner. He asks himself, "What if there was a conditioner of toothpaste? Something that enriches the teeth after you've finished cleansing?" He just unlocks your mind to things like this. (If you've read Personality Poker: The Playing Card Tool for Driving High-Performance Teamwork and Innovation or Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! then you already know that Shapiro has a way of doing this in ALL his works.)

Everyone, thank you so much for watching and reading my review. Now create and INNOVATE!

(In your innovation quest, I'd also highly recommend Innovation to the Core: A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates and Brainstorming and Creativity Software - Thoughtoffice Innovation Suite - Mac OSX - Windows XP-7.)

Remember that kid in school.
The one who kept asking "why"?

And even after the 40th "why", he still had an unlimited number of questions.

You were bored. He was fascinated. Engaged. Passionate.

Stephen Shapiro is that kid (still). And Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition is a most insightful work on challenging the status quo.

This book provides page after page of "a-HA!" moments. Not satisfied with "because that's how we do it around here", Shapiro digs deep into established practices - then turns them on their head and proves why Best Practices could benefit from a fresh injection of "why?".

Addressing everything from Formula One racing team performance to Why the Pyramids are one of the Seven Wonders.

Here's how he begins the book:
INNOVATE THE WAY YOU INNOVATE
1. Not Survival of the Fittest - Survival of the Adaptable
2. How Can You Avoid Becoming a One-Hit Wonder?
3. Asking for Ideas Is a Bad Idea
4. Don't Think Outside the Box; Find a Better Box
5. Expertise Is the Enemy of Innovation

Each chapter is concise, engaging, and most important: actionable. This is beyond theory. This is practical application of NEW ideas - while challenging the foundation of existing, established Best Practices.

All throughout the book, Stephen peppers his ideas with case references and studies. Ones that open your eyes to what CAN be, if we rethink how we do things.

The book is nearly complete when you arrive here:
CREATIVITY: TECHNIQUES FOR STIMULATING CREATIVE THINKING
31. Encourage Employees to Get On Their Soapbox
32. The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a Straight Line
33. Someone Else Has Already Solved Your Problem
34. Adapt Your Product to a Different Environment
35. Don't put the "No" in InNOvation
36. How Can You Make the Impossible, Possible?
37. Stand in Someone Else's Shoes
38. Innovation is Child's Play
39. Sometimes It's Logical to be Illogical
40. Be Proactive: Predict What the Competition Will Do Next

Then he wraps up this quick read with a host of links and references to help you expand on your new thinking.

Regardless of the size of your business or educational institution (Rotman, are you listening?), this is a must-read. The new reference work for individuals, teams and corporations who want to blow through their performance issues and innovate their way to success.

Last thing: One of the recurring themes within the book is a reflection on how effective teams operate. He's not preachy about it. It's just an obvious insight that comes from high-performance groups. I discovered this book and card set earlier this year Personality Poker: The Playing Card Tool for Driving High-Performance Teamwork and Innovation. It's a keystone element that, if employed, can rapidly improve the coordination between people within your business - and help you build better, faster, more engaged and productive teams.

A perfect pair.

UPDATE 9/30/2011:

I spent the better part of yesterday reading the book. I'm someone who rarely gives advice, but here it goes: Buy this book.

The author provides ideas that (I believe)can be applied in any organization--be it your company, household or your own grey matter. Some tips aren't as applicable to where I am, others I'll be trying. I work in higher education administration. Process is well established, territories well defined. Tradition is honored, but the landscape's changing. Opportunities to innovate? Oh yeah.

For starters, I'm going all-in on tip 36.

ORIGINAL POSTING:
Got my copy of the book today! Looking forward to taking its content in and seeing how it can be applied to my work and my department.

I'm really disappointed in the quality of the book, though. Were I to have paid the full jacket price for the book, even more so.

The paper seems darn near pulp fiction in terms of quality. The text bleeds through from the pages. Not good considering it's already a book with small print.

I've been seeing this with increasing frequency---publishers putting their product out on the cheapest paper they can find. Hey, that's fine, maximize the profit, I've got no real beef with that. But it's no way to earn any customer loyalty, but that's probably not the objective.

The more cynical side of me sees this as a way to push the customer onto a digital platform, further increasing the profit margin when there's not a considerable decrease in the price. Does the author see the benefit of that increased margin? But, I suppose that's another topic.

So, if you're considering a purchase, you may want to make it a Kindle edition.

Innovation is a term that gets thrown around a lot but it also seems like there is very little new in this area. You keep hearing the same old advice, the same brainstorming exercises, the same admonitions to just open that suggestion box and get everybody in the workplace to contribute their ideas.

In other words, it seems like the field of innovation is somewhat lacking in innovation.

Well, today an excellent new book comes out to change all that. It's called Best Practices are Stupid - 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition by Stephen Shapiro and it will challenge everything you think you know about innovation.

I was blown away by all the great advice in the book. It outlines clearly what any workplace - big or small, private or public - needs to do to become more innovative.

The book is easy to read and the advice is clearly outlined and accessible. It has 40 chapters each of which challenges one of our preconceived notions about innovation.

Here are some of my favorite examples from the book:
Hire people you don't like. Because the people you like the least are the people you need the most.

Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers.

The performance paradox. When organizations hyper focus on their goals, they are less likely to achieve those goals.

Expertise is the enemy of innovation. The more you know about a particular topic, the more difficult it is for you to think about it in a different way.

Basically, this book should be your new innovation bible. Read more about the book and buy it here.

As a struggling novelist, I was surprised to have a read of Shapiro's book from the fiction writer's point of view - and gain insight into my craft. Among the 40 tips provided, several helped to invigorate my constant exploration of plot, character development and language.

One would think it's a long reach to compare Stephen King and Stephen Shapiro. In King's recent interview in The Atlantic, he suggests NOT writing down ideas because, "If you can't remember it, it was a terrible idea!" That is an interesting demonstration of Shapiro's theme of innovating your way of innovating - an organic aspect of the creative process which Shapiro lays out nicely. Other themes of the book, particularly in the "Creative" section, lubricate rusty parts of the creative intelligence. It's simply a matter of distilling corporate innovation into various layers of the craft of writing fiction.

In his book Pathway to Liberty, The great innovator Thomas Willhite, founder of PSI, brought "Change your Thinking" into the contemporary corporate model. In Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, Stephen Shapiro has both amplified and fine-tuned the concept, even for us right-brain types who would rather get lost than have to follow directions to get there.

So many books, so little time. I think we all know this when it comes to reading - and reviewing - books. This was also my case when I got, Best Practices Are Stupid - 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, the new book by Stephen Shapiro a few months back.

I am glad I picked up this book. I used to read lots of innovation books, but I stopped a few years back as I find more value in blog posts when it comes to insights gained versus time spent. Books are too often too long while lacking new insights and ideas.

This is not the case with this book. It is not only inviting by being fairly short. It is also well written, well organized and full of good advice.

You have 40 short chapters that give you new ideas and insights on how to innovate the way you innovate. One chapter explains why asking for ideas is a bad idea. Here Shapiro gets into the signal-to-noise ratio, which for innovation means that the signal is composed of solutions that are implemented and create value. The noise is made up of all of the ideas and suggestions that really don't matter and don't create value.

Shapiro tells us that if you want to increase your innovation's signal-to-noise ratio, the first thing you want to do is to stop asking for ideas. This might sound counter-intuitive to many people, but you will find good reasons for this advice as you read along.

Shapiro is a big fan of challenge driven, open innovation which Alph Bingham, founder of open innovation intermediary InnoCentive, calls a "massively parallel process where failures and successes happen at the same time." Shapiro worked for InnoCentive for a few years and his insights on challenge-driven innovation are some of the best in the book. It helps you understand why framing challenges rather than just asking for ideas will give you better innovation output.

I also liked how Shapiro forces you to better understand your most important capability and how to apply this for innovation. It gets even better when he follows up with a simple framework called the Innovation Targeting Matrix, which can help you identify the right innovation strategy for your business. Shapiro explains how capabilities fall into three levels of strategic importance (from least to most strategic): "support", "core" and "differentiating." Good stuff!

I really found lots of value in this book and I like that I can recommend it to people who are new to innovation as well as to "experts" that have read it all.

Best Practices Are Stupid - 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition is simply a 5-star book! Enjoy it : -)

I had the privilege of seeing Steve speak at TEDx-NASA - where he wowed the audience with his counter-intuitive insights that stopped people in their tracks and cause them to think, "Wow, I never thought of it that way."

Many of those provocative insights are featured in this page-turning read. You can turn to any chapter and find a fresh approach that has the power to give you and your company a compelling competitive edge.

Buy this book - better yet, hire Steve to speak at your next convention. He is a class act you can trust to intrigue and impress your audience and have them walking out with innovative ways to maximize their performance, productivity and profits.

It,s clean, it's crisp, it's irreverent - and best of all - even if you're not in business, there are ideas in this book for how to generate not the best practices (because as Shapiro says, they're stupid)...but to create the NEXT practices for the business and life you really want. Really cool stuff. Well worth it.