Innovation Book Club

It's the end of another season. Alex and Wais take some time to reflect.

Empathy, empathy, empathy, it's the heart of innovation. Apparently. The problem with empathy is that innovators don't truly empathise, instead, they pick and choose feedback that meets their own preferences rather than the broader picture that better reflects the needs of the user. Indi Young addresses this by providing a better understanding of empathy and offering some approaches to utilising it without falling into familiar traps. Alex and Wais dip in to learn how to empathise...

There are many creative agencies but only one of those agencies is called IDEO, the granddaddy of them all, which traces its history back to 1978, the year after Star Wars was released. IDEO became a named entity in 1991, since which time they've popularised the idea of human-centred design, a process that seeks to empathise with users and embed the understanding that falls from this within the product design process to create better innovations. That's not what this book is about, but it is written by one of IDEO's elder statesmen, Tom Kelley, who believes that innovation requires ten different kinds of people, each of whom contributes in different ways. Alex and Wais discover who they are and get lost in a lot of stories.

Way back in the mists of time, before even the first iPhone was released and kickstarted a seismic shift in digital innovation, Scott Berkun wrote The Myths of Innovation, in which he explores why we have innovation all wrong. Alex and Wais dip into the book and find out what innovation looked like before lean startups and business model canvases were a thing.

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club, Alex and Wais follow up their previous episode about Business Model Generation with a look back at Osterwalder's follow-up, Value Proposition Design.

If our recent fixation with innovation started anywhere, it was with Osterwalder & Pigneur's Business Model Generation which popularised the idea of business model innovation through the introduction of the business model canvas. Alex and Wais reflect on the book's legacy and relevance to the innovation landscape today.

In this episode of the Innovation Book Club Alex and Wais take on the beast that is ChatGPT and consider how it's going to change how we use the web, our work and our lives. This conversation was recorded in January 2023.

In this final episode of the second season of the Innovation Book Club, Alex and Wais reflect on the ideas they’ve discussed over the previous seven episodes and how it’s helped to widen their understanding of innovation. They also talk about trainspotting briefly.

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In this episode, Alex and Wais discuss an academic paper, ‘Ideas are born in fields of play: towards a theory of play and creativity in organisational settings’ by Charalampos Mainemelis and Sarah Ronson.

The premise of this article is that play is used in organisations in two ways, either to divert us from the tedium of work or to engage us at work and promote our creativity. Play, therefore, is key to innovation, but the authors argue that we don’t know how to harness play effectively or consistently to promote innovation.

You can buy the paper here (but you probably don’t want to): shorturl.at/eCTY0

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