Creative People Must Be Stopped: 6 Ways We Kill Innovation (Without Even Trying)

Praise for Creative People Must Be Stopped "Innovation is about asking the right questions! Dave Owens describes a fresh way to ask and answer the questions that really make a difference in successful innovation."—Chad Holliday, chairman, Bank of America; retired chairman and CEO, DuPont "Ever wonder why your company can′t seem to succeed at breakthrough innovation? Or why your team′s big idea never goes anywhere? Or why you aren′t able to generate more creative solutions to problems? Creative People Must Be Stopped will help you answer these questions, diagnose what′s behind these underperformances, and get unstuck. Combining solid insights and theory with practical approaches and compelling stories, Owens brings clarity to a topic that is often misunderstood."—Todd A. McCullough, partner, Monitor Group; adjunct faculty, Institute ofDesign at Illinois Institute of Technology; managing director, Doblin Inc. "Owens writes as he teaches, with humor, candor, and surprisingly sophisticated theoretical underpinning. The result is an engaging and very accessible book filled with practical tools for leaders interested in advancing their innovation agendas."—Lisa C. King, vice president, insights and innovation, Newell Rubbermaid "This is essential and timely reading for leaders in the field of arts and culture. Dave Owens is able to clearly convey the barriers to innovation and how to overcome them. His insights about how to make good ideas actually result in positive change are invaluable to any leader seeking to strengthen an organization, and offer a fresh and clarifying approach to the whole concept of innovation."—Russell Willis Taylor, president and CEO, National Arts Strategies " Creative People Must Be Stopped explores why so many great ideas never make it to market, and why some do. It is rich in real–world examples and provides straightforward tools to unleash your innovation potential. It is essential reading for anyone who thinks that they might have something to do with innovation, and especially for those who don′t."—Neil A. Willcocks, vice president, research and development, Mars Petcare

Introduction: Creative People Must Be Stopped! 1 1. The Context of Innovation: Why Everyone Wants Innovation but No One Wants to Change 3 2. Why Most of Us Are More Creative Than We Think: Individual Innovation Constraints 25 3. Why a Brainstorm Meeting Can Be Worse Than No Meeting at All: Innovation Constraints in Groups 57 4. Why You’ll Never Be a Prophet in Your Hometown: Organizational Innovation Constraints 95 5. If It’s Such a Great Idea, Why Isn’t Our Competitor Doing It? Industry Innovation Constraints 125 6. Why My Innovation Means You Have to Change: Societal Innovation Constraints 157 7. How to Take a Really Hard Problem and Make It Completely Impossible: Technological Innovation Constraints 187 8. When Failure Is Not an Option: Leading an Innovation Strategy 223 Appendix A: Using the Assessment Results 249 Appendix B: Innovation Team Contract Guidelines 255 Appendix C: An Innovation Bookshelf 259 References 261 Acknowledgments 267 About the Author 271 Index 273 This book is dedicated to my lovely ladies, Jennifer, Charlotte, and Adelaide

David A. Owens is professor at Vanderbilt′s Graduate School of Management. He specializes in management, innovation, and product design, and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and NPR′s Marketplace . Recently he served as CEO of Griffin Technology Inc.

“ Creative People Must Be Stopped is among the best books ever written about human imagination in the workplace. David Owens is a master innovator, having practiced his craft as a product designer, researcher, teacher, creativity coach, and executive.  The breadth and depth of his experience fills every page of this little gem, which is chock full of hundreds of big and little steps that you can take right now to do more creative work and to lead more innovative teams and organizations.” — Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor Author of the New York Times bestseller Good Boss, Bad Boss “ This is no rarefied academic treatment on innovation as an abstract ideal, but a nuts and bolts handbook to dissecting our thought patterns about innovation. Owens dispels the myth that innovation is a binary trait that either exists or does not in a given product, process or business model. Creative People Must be Stopped addresses the myriad ways that novel ideas can fail in the marketplace. Working through a combination of thought experiments and real world examples, the book demonstrates how failures in understanding the context for innovation can prove every bit as deadly to progress as failures of imagination.” — Mark Rowan, President Griffin Technology Inc. “ Dave Owens has delivered the survival guide every would–be innovation team requires before entering the fracas battle of bringing ideas to life. Read ‘6 Ways We Kill Innovation’ if you are serious about making stuff and making stuff happen in this dangerous world for good ideas and the creative people who love them.” — Peter Durand, Alphachimp Studio Leading expert in graphic facilitation