Customer Reviews

Conquering Innovation Fatigue: Overcoming the Barriers to Personal and Corporate Success

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Conquering Innovation Fatigue is an important and much-needed contribution to the innovation literature. If you have any interest in innovation, this book is a must read.

The book recognizes that the struggle corporations are facing to provide real innovation is complex and goes far beyond a lack of good ideas. On the contrary, there are behavioral, organizational, and external challenges that are the real culprits for squelching innovation.

The book addresses 9 "fatigue factors," providing compelling case studies and practical advice on overcoming these barriers to innovation.

Conquering Innovation Fatigue also introduces a new paradigm for thinking about innovation . . . the "Horn of Innovation." I found it a well-thought-out and particularly intriguing metaphor for enhancing success with innovation.

As I read the book, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed at the task faced most major corporations to improve innovation. With so many potential barriers, where should one start? I would have appreciated if the book had contained some sort of assessment to help prioritize which of the 9 fatigue factors to tackle first. An easy thing to fix, and hopefully something that will appear on the book's website in the future.

Walter Reade, Ph.D.

I'm an inventor, and so I went straight to chapter 5, "Innovator Deficiencies" to see what the authors had to say of folks like me, those 'creative' types with messy hair and odd work hours (including late nights and weekends).

I completely agree that we 'innovators' have our dark side, which is our personal contribution to innovation fatigue, and which often comes across as blown up pride. Honestly, it's because we think our ideas are the greatest gift to the planet. This attitude is understandably shunned by all others, such as those we must sell our ideas to.

Me being made aware of this phenomenon was most liberating. It got me thinking. In fact, we innovators NEED that pride to invent something in the first place. That pride is our strength: to have that grand and lofty vision; to think we can make a difference and fix all the world's problems. And then to go about coming up with solutions.
But as Lindsay et. al. point out, we must BALANCE this pride with patience, humility, diligence.

The theme of balance is brought up again and again - for example, in Chapter 7, Breaking The Will To Share, the authors say, "One of the paradoxes of human life is that strength becomes weakness when it is not balanced or coupled with flexibility and openness to change and growth." This points to the general solution to all hindrances in life, and innovation in particular: For every strength there is a dark side (a weakness), and the key is bringing BALANCE to that strength. (This deep truth is a recurring theme in many ancient works as well, such as the I. Ching.)

I also appreciated the thorough attention given (in the second half of the book) to legal issues, including patents and government regulation issues, that can hinder innovation progress. A great collection of real examples were provided, leaving me with the equivalent of several lifetimes of careers in corporate management, patent law, and research & development - along with the wisdom gained thereof. Thank you Lindsay, Perkins, and Karanjikar for your contribution via this book.

I read Innovation Fatigue cover-to-cover in 1 sitting. My firm consults with a lot of inventors and entrepreneurs, and I've been recommending this book to each of them before they head too far down the road. The value proposition to inventors/entrepreneurs will become evident within the first couple fo chapters, but many larger corporations will benefit from the principles shared in this book as well. I've lost count with the number of companies that have a "Not Invented Here" culture that I've come in contact with. The NIH chapter alone is worth putting this book in your library.

2009 seems to be a year with very few "gotta have" breakthrough products that consumers are racing to claim to put under their trees this season. The stores are full of products and variations of products from previous year, with the only differentiation being price. Competing on price alone is a "race to the bottom" - only "innovation" will rescue corporate profits and increase top-line revenue, and "Innovation Fatigue" provides a roadmap of the routes to take, and detours to avoid, to be successful in the years to come.

Intellectual Property (IP) is the currency of the 21st century, and "innovation" is the key ingredient to any IP recipe. The authors of Innovation Fatigue clearly have a deep and profound understanding of this principle, and have pulled their insights together in a way that an individual inventor to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company can understand and put into action. Well done!

To put things into perspective, you first have barrier to innovations, which is being studied by a great number of people. Second you have things that are not barrier but more or less slow down or hinder innovating. Lastly, you have thing that very much help innovation. This book is very specifically about the second topic of what things create fatigue in respect to innovating. Clayton Christenson's series of book talk about major barrier to innovation, and many creative books by authors like Tom Kelley talk about factors which help innovation. This book is rare, in that is studies and details the factors which cause fatigue, hence the name "conquering innovation fatigue."

This book explains the many fatigue factors by organizing them smartly into 9 easy to remember categories detailed in chapters 4 to 17. The book is well organized and easy to read. Interestingly, executive managers can take easy steps to remove fatigue factors and then have an easier time concentrating on the major barrier to innovation in the companies. Hence, I recommend this book as a nice read for innovation managers, and I strongly feel it would make a great reference book.

Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management from Purdue
Innovation Management
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Commercialization
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Besides being very timely, the book addresses very valid issues and barriers to overcome Innovation barriers. It is well researched and has great relate-able examples. It is not so much a how to but focused on the challenges to overcome. Good read for innovators engaged to improve and excel further.

It is rare that a business book hits the right balance between thoughtful reflection, actual experience, historical grounding and practical recommendations. Conquering Innovation Fatigue has nailed it exceptionally well. It is packed with stories of real people and inventors and real companies dealing with both success and frustration in bringing innovation to market. But examples are selected with care to illustrate some very important aspects of the creative process and remind us that innovations is really about humans, not just ideas.

Although countless books explain why innovation matters and how to benefit from it, few address the reasons that companies and individuals don't innovate successfully. That's where this volume comes in. Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar provide many examples of corporate, political and structural barriers that block innovation, the forces that smother it, and the organizational and social factors that make it difficult. Their analytical book expertly blends research and firsthand perspectives. Though the authors are somewhat fond of jargon and coined terms, their guide is a welcome addition to the innovation canon. getAbstract recommends it to innovators, human resources professionals and executives who want to inoculate their companies against the disease of innovation fatigue.

Innovation is a hot topic for many firms these days. Dr Lindsay and his coauthors have a hit here, probing how to identify and avoid major factors (fatigues) that destroy innovative effort. They create a 3x3 framework for this discussion, focusing on threats to property and trust, systemic flaws, and barriers to collaboration as applied across individual, organizational, and environmental factors. The framework felt slightly forced at times, but still I found it extremely useful; and the authors draw nicely from their experiences to provide numerous case studies and examples that document their conclusions.

As a patent attorney who has worked many years with innovators in a large corporate setting, I have faced firsthand many of the fatigue factors they discuss. This work is a crucial tool for R&D managers but, more importantly, it is a "must read" for leaders of an organization who have asked themselves "how do I get my teams to be more innovative". The answer - which is _not_ based in cost cutting, efficiency or shareholder opinion - may not be popular, but it is informative.

This book provides an in depth overview of the barriers to innovation. The authors have a deep understanding of the innovation process, and have written this book to categorize the various pitfalls that can prevent inventors from capitalizing on their ideas, or prevent new ideas from achieving success in the marketplace. There are a lot of books on the invention process, but relatively few on the challenges that can prevent good inventions from becoming innovations. This book takes a systematic approach to the subject. The chapters form a checklist that anyone can use to make sure that all barriers to innovation are minimized in their company, organization, or personal entrepreneurial endeavors.

I especially enjoyed reading the case studies. The book contains so many interesting stories about famous and not-so-famous inventors. I was unfamiliar with many of the stories and learned a great deal from the examples--particularly those where the inventor failed in his/her effort to bring an idea to fruition.

There are so many roadblocks on the inventor's path. This book is like a road map for inventors or those who work with inventors--it details the pitfalls as a way to improve your chance of success. At the same time, the many stories make it fun to read. I highly recommend it.

This is truly a unique book about innovation. Unlike most of the innovation books out there, this looks straight at innovation and masterfully helps you to recognize and overcome the 9 innovation fatigue factors. The advice is very practical, with examples and stories that helps the inventor understand the fatigue factors from the perspective of an individual, the organization, and the outer world. The examples are extremely well-written so that you become engaged in the story, while clearly understand what's causing the fatigue and what you can do to be a successful innovator.

The stories expalining the fatigue factors have a tremendous range; something will speak to you given your own perspective on invention and innovation. Here are a few of my favorites:

From the innovation fatigue factor of theft: Robert W Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, who eventually won $30million. Also associated with this chapter is "Stigler's Law of Eponymy" which states that no scientific discovery is named after it's original discover. This discussion will whet your appetite about Edouard-Leon Scott and recorded sound. Farnsworth and television. And with this series of stories comes the practical advice of non-disclosure agreements and use of laboratory notebooks.

From innovation in business methods, there is an inspiring chapter from Orion Energy systems and how they have transformed the business model for energy and sustainability by installing the lights for free and accepted payments based on the savings that his customer's received.

And the rapid granting of a patent involving the author and the Peer to Patent program that utilizes the "wisdom of crowds' to unearthing prior art. And in the author's experience, they were able to make good on their claim of efficiently getting a patent issued within a year.

There are many more gems within this book. It's well-written, full of engaging stories, and a treasure box of great insight about invention and innovation.