Fire Up Innovation: Sparking and Sustaining Innovation Teams
Helene Cahen
Strategic Insights Press (2023)

Channeling Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or can’t be creative, you’re  probably right.”

Tom Kelley and David Kelley share these thoughts in Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All (2013): “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 agree and so does Helene Cahen.

Based on decades of wide and deep experience working with innovation teams in all manner of organizations, she shares what she has learned about high-impact collaboration. More specifically, she focuses on initiatives that include these:

o sparking innovation by seeing through a “new lens”
o shining a light on what is invisible
o viewing and understanding innovation as a process
o using diversity as thed “fuel” for high-impact innovations
o supporting collaborative diverse teams
o utilizing principles of applied innovation
o assembling the “basic toolbox”
o maintaining continuous crea . tivity and innovation
o “fanning the flames” o creativity on innovation teams
o responding effectively to “The Five-Week Innovation Challenge”

Personal note: I also have extensive prior experience with high-impact teams and soon realized that one of the greatest challenges is to get team members to think creatively and innovatively about creativity and innovation. Here’s another: most limitations are self-imposed. That’s what Henry Ford had in mind years ago when suggesting, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

I commend Helene Cahen for the high quality of the information, insights, and counsel that she provides in abundance. She makes creative and informative use of several reader-friendly devices that include mini-commentaries, checklists, mini-assessments, multi-colored key points and questions, “Practice” exercises, step-by-step application sequences, boxed summaries and reminders, and a “Tips” sections in several chapters.

Fire Up Innovation is a brilliant achievement. Bravo!

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Here are two other suggestions to keep in mind while reading Fire Up Innovation: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to questions posed in exercises throughout the narrative. Pay special attention to the end-of-chapter insights and  calls-to-action. Also, be sure to check out the OR code on Page 6 in order to download a journal with all the practices in the book so that you can write in your answers.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.