Review: The Innovator's Mindset

This was an odd choice. I was looking for something to read on innovation and rather than take the easy route of looking for a book in my sector or field - I picked a book on developing a culture of innovation in schools.

There was some method in my madness.  

My role for the last few years has been to help drive digital transformation at the organisation where I work - and initially I took the obvious route. I read a lot of material on digital transformation.  That was good in one sense, but I soon found myself regularly coming across the same old case studies and reasons why it was a good thing (tm) but with little practical advice on how to actually do it.  It took a chance discovery of HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management to realise that leading organisational change was a well trodden path - if not in the digital transformation context. I figured it is better to read a good book on innovation than a poor one on digital innovation or charity innovation.  

Similarly, I've often got the most ideas for innovation from attending conferences that were adjacent to my sector i.e. rather than go to a digital charity conference, I'd go to a digital media conference instead.  So I chose this book because I figured it would force me to sit up and pay more attention if I was reading about how to build a culture of innovation in a completely different context. 

Sorry, this is all getting a bit meta. 

Review of The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros

This is an outstanding read on innovation.  Admittedly, I haven't read that many books on innovation but this covers building a culture of innovation in a very practical way with lots of implementable examples from getting started to building momentum.  It can be applied to yourself or an organisation. 

As a result my own copy is now battered, dog eared and full of scribbles and highlights.  That in itself is a new approach for me as previously I've regarded books as something to be kept pristine, but often found things just won't sinking in as much as I'd like.  With this book, I've highlighted bits, posed questions to the author in the margins, corrected text so it fits my context, done mini-brainstorms and generally abused this poor extract of a dead tree. 

The one downside? It contains no index. 

What I've applied (so far):

I've used the definition of innovation in a recent presentation: a way of thinking that creates something new and better. 

It's inspired a new definition of digital transformation that I will start testing out on colleagues:

Digital transformation is about recognising the opportunity and danger of rapid technological change. 

I've started using this blog as a reflective learning tool in my professional and personal life.

Proposed a project around trying out some of the ideas with to our senior leadership team. 

It has inspired a recent activity in my team around adopting a design thinking approach to creating a better learning experience for contributors to our website - including asking them what their most profound learning experience was so we can hopefully model that in any prototype we develop.

Did the Strengthsfinder 2.0 exercise (after finally digging the book out of the depths of my home library). More about this in another post.

Contributed one of George's models - 8 things to look for Today's Classroom as an example of learning best practice for the aforementioned learning experience development. 

Phew. Finally, I've used one of the quotes for an internal newsletter - and expect to mine it for a few more in the future!