The Ten Faces of Innovation: Strategies for Heightening Creativity [Paperback]

In an earlier work, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, Kelley shares IDEO's five-step methodology: Understand the market, the client, the technology, and the perceived constraints on the given problem; observe real people in real-life situations; literally visualize new-to-the-world concepts AND the customers who will use them; evaluate and refine the prototypes in a series of quick iterations; and finally, implement the new concept for commercialization. With regard to the last "step", as Bennis explains in Organizing Genius, Apple executives immediately recognized the commercial opportunities for PARC's technology. Larry Tesler (who later left PARC for Apple) noted that Jobs and colleagues (especially Wozniak) "wanted to get it out to the world." But first, obviously, the challenge was to create that "it" which they then did.

In this volume, as Kelley explains, his book is "about innovation with a human face. [Actually, at least ten...hence its title.] It's about the individuals and teams that fuel innovation inside great organizations. Because all great movements are human-powered." He goes on to suggest that all good working definitions of innovation pair ideas with action, "the spark with fire. Innovators don't just have their heads in the clouds. They also have their feet on the ground." Kelley cites and then examines several exemplary ("great") organizations which include Google, W.L. Gore & Associates, the Gillette Company, and German retailer Tchibo. I especially appreciate the fact that Kelley focuses on the almost unlimited potential for creativity of individuals and the roles which they can play, "the hats they can put on, the personas they can adopt...[albeit] unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."

Because individuals and organizations constantly need to gather new sources of information in order to expand their knowledge and thereby grow, Kelley recommends three "Learning Personas": The Anthropologist, The Experimenter, and The Cross Pollinator.

Because organizations need individuals who are savvy about the counterintuitive process of how to move ideas forward, Kelley recommends three "Organizing Personas": The Hurdler, The Collaborator, and The Director.

Because organizations also need individuals and teams who apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen, Kelley recommends four "Building personas": The Experience Architect, The Set Designer, The Caregiver, and The Storyteller. Note both the sequence, interrelatedness and, indeed, the interdependence of these ten "personas."

I am reminded of comparable material in A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. Specifically, Roger von Oech's discussion of what he calls "The Four Roles of the Creative Process" (i.e. Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior). Also Six Thinking Hats in which Edward de Bono explains the need for a creativity "wardrobe" comprised of several hats. Specifically, white (rational, logical, and objective), red (emotional), black (negative), yellow (positive, hopeful, optimistic), green (creative and innovative), and blue (ordered, controlled, structured).

What Kelley achieves in this volume is to develop in much greater depth than do von Oech and de Bono what are essentially ten different perspectives. He does so, brilliantly, by focussing the bulk of his attention of those who, for example, seek and explore new opportunities to reveal breakthrough insights...and while doing so wear (at least metaphorically) one of de Bono's hats (probably the green one). Kelley devotes a separate chapter to each of the ten "personas," including real-world examples of various "unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."

Two final points. First, most of those who read this book can more easily identify with "unsung heroes" such as those whom Kelley discusses than with luminaries of innovation such as Thomas Edison or with celebrity CEOs such as Andrew Grove, Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch, all of whom were staunch advocates of constant innovation in their respective organizations. Also, presumably Kelley agrees with me that those who read and then (hopefully) re-read his book should do so guided by a process which begins with the curiosity of an anthropologist and concludes with the empathy of a caregiver. This is emphatically not an anthology of innovation recipes. Rather, it offers an intellectual journey whose ultimate value will be determined, entirely, by the nature and extent of innovative thinking which each reader achieves...and then uses the breakthrough insights to drive creativity throughout her or his own organization.