Eat, Sleep, Innovate: A book review by Bob Morris

Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization
Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchau, and Andy Parker
Harvard Business Review Press (October 2020)

How to build a workplace culture where the behaviors that drive innovation success come naturally

As I began to read this book, I was reminded again of the process by which pressure can reach a point when it is either positive and productive (e.g. steam-driven transportation) or negative and destructive (e.g. spontaneous combustion of flammables within an area without ventilation). The same can be said of creative energy: manage it effectively and it can produce innovations; stifle and suppress it and it can produce pressure, then stress, and finally explosive behavior.

That is my take on why Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchau, and Andy Parker co-created this book.

Anthony speaks for all of them throughout the narrative but ghedirs is clearly a team effort of the very highest order. For example, in the Introduction, he explains that their book “is about how to make innovation a day-to-day habit in your organization. You eat every day, you sleep every day, and today’s quickly changing world means you you shouldc innovate every day. Hence the title Eat, Sleep, Innovate. This book is a practical guide for building a culture of innovation where the behaviors that drive innovation success comes naturally.”

All of the information, insights, and counsel in this book can indeed help readers to release immense creative energy inside their organizations from wherever it is contained and constrained so that it can drive continuous improvement.

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Eat, Sleep, Innovate:

o What Culture Actually Means (Pages 19-23)
o Five behaviors that drive innovation process (24-25)
o The Benefits of Creating a Culture of innovation (30-32)
o Lessons from Habit-Change Literature (64-68)
o BEANs [behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges] at Innosight (68-71)

o Table 3-1: Our favorite BEANs (74)
o Day Two: BEANstorming (102-110)
o Table 4-4: Culture change stages (113)
o Tables 5-1 and 5-2: Full and Partial BEANs for discovering opportunities (120-121)
o Tool: Curiosity Quotient, and, Table 5-3: Assessing your curiosity quotient (135-136)

o BEAN Booster: Piuxar’s Braintrust (141-143)
o Table 6-3: Discovery question “cheat sheet” (150)
o Tables 7-1 and 7-2: Full BEANs and Partial BEANs for assessing and testing ideas (154)
o BEAN Booster: Psychological Safety (159-163)
o BEAN Booster: Chameleon Leadership (163-166)

o Tool: Ther Innovator’s Checklist (170-172)
o BEAN Booster: Innovation Amplifiers (181-183)
o Case Study: DBS’s Systemic Support (187-191)
o Tool: Zombie Amnesty (191-192)
o Lessons from NO-DETs [normal organizations doing extraordinary things] (194-198)

According to Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchau, and Andy Parker, “The central argument in Eat, Sleep, Innovate is that the world’s biggest untapped source of energy isn’t the wind, water, or sun. It is inside existing organizations, which are brimming with innovation energy. Today that energy is largely constrained and contained. You need to release, harness, and amplify it. This book will show you how.”

* * *

Those who share my high regard for Eat, Sleep, Innovate are urged to check out Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, co-authored by David Kelley and Tom Kelley and published by Currency (October 2013). The Kelleys explain how almost anyone can develop a creative, human-centered mindset and help achieve breakthrough innovations

The Kelleys challenge all manner of misconceptions, such as the common refrain “I’m just not creative.” In fact, they suggest, “As brothers who have worked together for thirty years at the forefront of innovation, we have come to see this set of misconceptions as ‘the creativity myth.’ It is a myth that far too many people share. This book is about the opposite of that myth. It is about what we call ‘creative confidence.’ And at its foundation is the belief that we are all creative…Creative confidence is a way of seeing that potential and your place in the world more clearly, unclouded by anxiety and doubt. We hope you’ll join us on our quest to embrace creative confidence in our lives. Together, we can all make the world a better place.”

I highly recommend reading Eat, Sleep, Innovate and Creative Confidence in combination. Both are a “must read” for those at all levels in every organization, whatever its size and nature may be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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