Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation [Hardcover]

Robert I. Sutton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2001

Creativity, new ideas, innovation -- in any age they are keys to success, but in today's whirlwind economy they are essential for survival itself. Yet, as Robert Sutton explains, the standard rules of business behavior and management are precisely the opposite of what it takes to build an innovative company. We are told to hire people who will fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instill a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight, and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture. Weird Ideas That Work codifies these and other proven counterintuitive ideas to help you turn your workplace from staid and safe to wild and woolly -- and creative.

Stanford professor Robert Sutton is an authority on innovation and a popular speaker. In Weird Ideas That Work he draws on extensive research in behavioral psychology to explain how innovation can be fostered in hiring, managing, and motivating people; building teams; making decisions; and interacting with outsiders. Business practices like "hire people who make you uncomfortable," "reward success and failure, but punish inaction," and "decide to do something that will probably fail, and then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain" strike many managers as strange or even downright wrong. Yet Weird Ideas That Work shows how some of the best teams and companies use these and other counterintuitive practices to crank out new ideas, and it demonstrates that every company can reap sales and profits from such creativity.

Weird Ideas That Work is filled with examples of each of Sutton's 11 1/2 practices, drawn from hi- and low-tech industries, manufacturing and services, information and products. More than just a set of bizarre suggestions, it represents a breakthrough in management thinking: Sutton shows that the practices we need to sustain performance are in constant tension with those that foster new ideas. The trick is to choose the right balance between conventional and "weird" -- and now, thanks to Robert Sutton's work, we have the tools we need to do so.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Who'd have thought fighting with each other would be good for employees? Or that ignoring superiors would be a wise business practice? Sutton, consultant and professor at the Stanford Engineering School, advocates taking a nontraditional approach to innovation and management in this quirky business manual. He advises taking unorthodox actions, suggesting managers should forget the past, especially successes; hire people who make them uncomfortable and hire slow learners. According to Sutton, these unconventional steps are particularly important when companies are dealing with unusual problems or stuck in a rut. Standard management policy may work for routine work matters, but weird ideas are far more effective when employees are trying to use innovative techniques. Sutton uses many real-life examples, like Tetley's pioneering round teabags, to show readers how his suggestions can work. But he observes that even companies such as IBM, Lucent and GE, which have been praised for their innovation, devote only a small percentage of their annual budgets to testing new products and services. Sutton's writing is clear and persuasive, and his book takes an insightful look at innovation. (Nov. 13)

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A professor at the Stanford Engineering School and a consultant who has worked with innovative firms, Sutton shows how "weird" ideas, many of which go against accepted management practices, can promote innovation and success in companies. Here he describes 11Ù weird ideas that work. Among these ideas are hiring "slow learners" of the organizational code; using job interviews to get new ideas and not just to screen candidates; rewarding both success and failure and punishing inaction; forgetting the past, especially a company's past successes; and encouraging people to ignore and/or defy their superiors and peers. Each idea is described thoroughly, and specific guidelines for putting them to use are included. These ideas are based not only on research but on interviews with employees representing all levels in various companies and are illustrated by specific case studies. This thought-provoking book is recommended to both practitioners and business students and should be purchased for academic management collections. Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1st edition (October 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743212126
• ISBN-13: 978-0743212120
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #485,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies innovation, leadership, and civilized workplaces. Sutton has written five books including New York Times bestseller "The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't," which won the Quill Award for the best business book of 2007. His new book "Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best ....and Learn from the Worst" will appear in September 2010. Sutton was named as one of 10 "B-School All-Stars" by BusinessWeek, described as "professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balancing Organizational Creativity and Productivity, October 30, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (Hardcover)

Weird Ideas that Work takes an unusual perspective. Professor Sutton is focusing on how companies can be more creative for tomorrow, while still being effective at delivering today's products and services. Think of this book as what to read after finishing The Innovator's Dilemma.

His perspective combines the concepts of evolutionary biology with behavioral psychology to provide key principles, 11 1/2 ideas for implementing those principles, and 9 guidelines for day-to-day management practices. The key points are supported by examples drawn from organizations that have experienced at least some periods of unusual effectiveness in creating new products and services. He chooses to call these ideas "weird" to get your attention, and to acknowledge that the ideas may not send too obviously correct to you the first few times you hear them.

The three key principles are:

"(1) increase variance in available knowledge,

(2) see old things in new ways, and

(3) break from the past."

The 11 1/2 "weird" ideas for implementing those principles are paraphrased below:

(1) Hire smart people who will avoid doing things the same way your company has always done things.

(1 1/2) Diversify your talent and knowledge base, especially with people who get under your skin.

(2) Hire people with skills you don't need yet, and put them in untraditional assignments.

(3) Use job interviews as a source of new ideas more than as a way to hire.

(4) Give room for people to focus on what interests them, and to develop their ideas in their own way.

(5) Help people learn how to be tougher in testing ideas, while being considerate of the people involved.

(6) Focus attention on new and smarter attempts whether they succeed or not.

(7) Use the power of self-confidence to encourage unconventional trials.

(8) Use "bad" ideas to help reveal good ones.

(9) Keep a balance between having too much and too little outside contact in your creative activities.

(10) Have people with little experience and new perspectives tackle key issues.

(11) Escape from the mental shackles of your organization's past successes.

Where most books on creativity focus on how the reader can make her- or himself more productive, this ones takes on what leaders and managers can do to establish an environment where more ideas will be generated and tested. There's no assumption that you can find ways to make few mistakes. In fact, you are encouraged to simply make more and different mistakes, and quit spending behind the ones that aren't working sooner.

Professor Sutton leaves you with a challenging thought. "What if these are ideas are true?" The only way you can find out is to try them.

I thought that the book's best advice was to fill the organization with "people who are passionate about solving problems." In my experience, it is hard to find people who are filled with "playfulness and curiosity" about the focus of a particular company. Once you have that situation, you need to "switch emotional gears between cynicism and belief." In reading this material, I was reminded of the section in Built to Last that encourages people to turn "or" choices into "and" situations.

Although this book will not be enough to guide your company into being more creatively productive, I think it is an important addition to the literature on corporate creativity. I thought that the book's main weakness is that it made little attempt to differentiate among the techniques that might be used to solve different classes of problems. For example, creating the concept for a new service is fundamentally different from finding a better way to provide an existing one. From my own research, I am also convinced that creating a new business model is a different type of task from any other that companies do. I also think that acquisitions and mergers can either help or hurt corporate creativity. This book did not do enough to address that special circumstance. Perhaps Professor Sutton will follow up this interesting book with a series that looks more narrowly at different classes of problems that respond well to more creativity.

How can your organization vastly increase its flow of new ideas, test them more rapidly and less expensively, and more certainly pick out the best ideas to implement? How much time are you spending on thinking about these important questions?

Be open for and prepared to search far and wide for new variations to test!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More unorthodox than weird, but vibrant and smart, January 2, 2003

By 

Max More "Max More" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (Hardcover)

Even if you've already read Bob Sutton's "The Weird Rules of Creativity" in Harvard Business Review, don't deprive yourself of the pleasure and benefit of reading his book. While you may not find Sutton's ideas especially weird (more like unorthodox and perhaps contentious), when considered together they definitely push the reader to challenge their assumptions about the corporate conditions conducive to creativity and innovation. Filled with gripping stories from far-flung contexts, Sutton conveys his ideas with verve and passion. These are also some of the qualities that support creativity. As Sutton notes, playfulness, curiosity, and zeal are hallmarks of the innovative company culture. Some books are stuffed with stimulating stories but leave the brain empty. Weird Ideas that Work weaves its tales into a rich fabric of ideas. For instance, Sutton makes the vital distinction between routine work and innovative work. Applying the methods of one to the other can only be disastrous. Related to this, Sutton looks at the issue of whether and when to separate innovation efforts from the mainstream organization. He also makes the distinction (which seems to be catching on more widely) between invention and innovation. Whereas invention is rather like science in that it involves creating something truly new, innovation is more like engineering in that it finds new applications for existing inventions. Grab a copy of this book, kick back for a couple of hours, and see if you can come up with another three and a half weird ideas of your own. One of them might just unlock latent value in your company.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring book whose ideas will be referenced often, November 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (Hardcover)

I had read Sutton's earlier book on the "Knowing-Doing Gap," and I was looking forward to this latest book. I am happy to say that "Weird Ideas that Work" is a terrific complement to this earlier work (and to any management bookshelf in general, I would say), as it presents a compelling case for several innovative management practices. Sutton challenges the reader to take some risks, and looking back at my last challenging management position, I wish I had had this text on-hand to help me take a leap in trying some of these counterintuitive practices (for example, I should have stuck to applying Weird Idea #1, keeping a "slow learner of the organizational code" longer in my group). I also appreciated the mix of management (and psychological) theory with examples that are easy to understand and recall, such as how the practice seeing something old as something new, at times a disadvantage, can in fact lead to innovative products, from round tea bags to new designs for palm computers. In summary, an inspiring book that will be referenced often.