Non-Bullshit Innovation

September 9, 2019

I’ve been reading a fun book by David Rowen about innovation, ” Non-bullshit innovation “. David has toured the globe interviewing so-called innovators and dividing the blaggers from the true innovators. A few weeks back he stopped off in Battersea to met a bunch of journalists, entrepreneurs and myself to tell us of his favourites and explain his book.

Innovation is something that everyone thinks they understand but it is often misrepresented. Allie Weber @RobotMakerGirl explains it much better than I could so I’ve included her tweet below.

Non-bullshit innovation starts by visiting some innovation experts and highlighting what David sees as the bullshit side of the topic. He then picks some great examples to explain what he sees as innovation.

David’s examples all have two common themes. Firstly that they are all successful organisations and secondly that unless you were close to them, you may not have even heard of them. For example, none of them are from the West Coast of America.

There is also something else that they have all done which is to think outside the box. In some cases that means spinning off a separate department or company. But for all of them it means stepping back from what they thought they were all about and looking at their core values to determine what is needed for the future.

David’s writing is enjoyable and having heard him speak you can get a sense of that in the book too. The organisations all have an interesting story and David pulls no punches when examining their businesses. Each chapter follows a theme and uses examples to illustrate that theme. In a summary section following the chapter, David asks you to reflect on the topics discussed.

By Andy from Workshopshed One Comment

  Posted in: Books and Magazine Reviews Tags: innovation