Customer Reviews

Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products

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This book goes on the shelf right by Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, and Gary Hamel's Leading the Revolution. But of the three, Hauptly's Something Really New might be the best, and certainly will be the most useful.

Innovation books frequently are written by business school professors about their clients. This leads to books that are heavy on theory, and inadequately critical of their subjects.

Hauptly's book is like other Innovation books in that it is concise, readable, and filled with helpful illustrative examples. But the effect is entirely different when the author is an actual Innovator writing for other Innovators about how to Innovate, rather than a color commentator describing action on a distant field.

Gone from Hauptly's account are the fawning success stories. Gone are the complex theories and graphs. Gone even are the unrealistically simple formulas that turn into traps when you try to do it in the real world (think Anthony Ulwick's What Customers Want). What remains is practical advice about how to innovate and how to avoid false innovation.

Hauptly takes us into mind of the Innovator like no other book I have read (even more than Joel Barker's classic, The Business of Paradigms). Not only does Hauptly pave the road for aspiring Innovators, but perhaps more importantly he sets out all the warning signs and side-markers to help avoid common psychological traps. Hauptly takes equal care to explain what is NOT an innovation, which in the real world may be the more vexing problem.

Something Really New is actually two books in one. Although Part One will stand as a major contribution to the literature simply by offering the first true Innovator's Deskbook, I was equally impressed by Part Two, which covers the people issues, organization, and culture of innovation. Where other books dance around these sensitive political issues, Hauptly is direct and pragmatic about how and where innovation can occur, who does it, who stops it, and how.

The book's chat-over-lunch tone and brain-teaser exercises are a sleight-of-hand that will lull some readers into thinking that the book lacks depth. However, the careful eye will note where the conceptual framework shows through (page 81 cannot resist a 2x2 grid; page 107 introduces the phrase "functional contiguity," and of course the concept of net utility is actually dynamite in the presence of false innovation).

The book will be least interesting to academics seeking theoretical exposition, and least welcome by senior executives who would cheer lead for innovation without actually aligning the organization and doing the work. For them, this book offers little.

But as a no-nonsense player's guide to the game, Something Really New is in a league of its own. It will be read by aspiring and experienced product development staff in all industries. Some of the concepts Hauptly introduces, like mutations, net utility, and task linking, may enter the popular lexicon of innovation. But the book is most to likely win the hearts of product developers working in the trenches, among whom word will spread of the brightest light yet shone on a notoriously dark terrain.

So many corporate innovations are not. They are incremental "feature enhancements" that do not change the user experience or differentiate defensibly from current or future competition. This book could change all that. In a readable style with exercises throughout, the author teaches people how to think about their products, but more importantly the tasks of their users (awful word, but you get the idea) in new ways. Highly recommend to anyone involved in product development or corporate leadership.

This book is clearly written and well organized. For all its lack of pretension, it is a place to go when a vexing problem becomes a vexation. I am a manager and business owner. I rarely have time to think about how to solve problems, as opposed to thinking about problems. This book gives me a useful tool to focus on the former, instead of the latter. I especially liked the author's task linkage and net utility concepts. These practical steps provide the most important test of any problem solution, identifying whether I have asked the right question. It is evident that the author has faced the formidable task of identifying a problem, seeing a solution, determining whether the solution is worth the bother, and kicking enough ingrained resistance out of the way to put the solution to work.

This book is well worth reading for those who choose to become and remain competitive,especially in today's globalized economy, where value added is what distinguishes quality from mere cost competition.

This book's greatest value lies in the thoughtful exercises Hauptly puts you through at key junctures. They clearly show how to think through the innovation process and produce something really new and useful. The exercises and the excellent examples he gives to illustrate his points are what makes the book different from the others I've read that claim to share the secrets of innovation. This was a fun and informative guide to designing something that gives customers what they actually need. That is really new.

A nicely written book that can help conventional thinkers become more innovative. Some nice ideas too.

Denis Hauptly's SOMETHING REALLY NEW: THREE SIMPLE STEPS TO CREATING TRULY INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS offers a three-step approach to creating and marketing new products in any industry, covering the basics of how product ideas are obtained, placed into production, and marketed. From understanding needs and filling them to strategies for getting colleagues and executives to support a new product venture, SOMETHING REALLY NEW offers inspiration based on real-life marketing experiences.

The focus of this book is on analyzing what your customers are really trying to accomplish and seeing how either your current product or product extensions can better serve this need. Better is defined by the operation of the task in terms of complexity, number of steps, and overall time/expense - rather than "shine" on the product.

I liked his work in carefully observing customers and drawing a contrast to companies that just continue to chug along in either the "make it cheaper" or "add the obvious glut of features" dimensions of product analysis. I was also impressed with the number of concrete examples and exercises provided in the book.

The biggest area where this book could have been improved was in information on how to assess whether your product actually worked better for real customers. In previous jobs, I found nothing more useful (and humbling!) than seeing your new product in the hands of customers in a usability lab.

Along these lines, there are more to purchasing decisions than just reducing the number of steps in a task or the complexity in it. Even if you make the job easier (i.e. hanging a picture, as in the book), if the customer enjoys aspects of the task, doesn't have room for an additional tool that doesn't fit in a simple toolbox, or just thinks the product is an "unmanly" way to hang pictures, you will run into sales issues derived from product development issues you should've thought about before getting to the sales/marketing phases.

Something Really New implicitly makes a commitment to the reader that innovation can be a process that is accessible by many in an organization. There are three simple questions that the author takes the reader through to frameup how innovation can be both impactful and fun. Products and services fall onto a spectrum of iterative to innovative. Value to the corporation can be seen through a compilation of many iterative improvements but real game-changing, and thus value-affecting offerings need to be innovative to the marketplace. Something Really New offers the formula to demystify innovation in an organization. The book shares how ideas and products can be judged against this iterative/innovative continuum. I have already applied this formula in my work and the exercise of working through these questions has given me a new level of confidence around what would work in my market.

Too many books on innovation get bogged down in theory or assume that coming up with new ideas is both the point of innovation and its most important step. In contrast, Denis J. Hauptly cuts through the nonsense with a focus on the customer. Originality, in and of itself, isn't enough, Hauptly says. He encourages innovation that results in useful, beautiful, interesting and profitable products, providing ideas and procedures you can use right away. He also provides "innovation workouts" that ask you to come up with products that solve common problems, and a list of readings. His book could be better organized, but getAbstract recommends it to product developers, for whom it will provide useful tools, and marketers, who must deal with a culture intoxicated by the next big thing.

An excellent guide for the creative/inventor person or persons. A very readable conscience raising study of what it takes to not only formulate utilitarian ideas, but what is needed for successful marketing of these products. The word "niche" comes to mind in the formulation of product ideas. Mr. Hauptly has hit the vein of innovation and invention. Anyone who has had a "bright idea" should read this book.