Two of my favorite books on innovation are The Innovator's Dilemma and -- you guessed it -- The Innovator's Solution. However, not all is well and good in the world when it comes to my relationship with these books: my dilemma is that I am lacking a good solution in terms of influencing people around me to actually read them. Short of actually taking a class with Clay Christensen and reading the books because you're so afraid he's going to cold call you on the day when you've forgotten to memorize the killer chart on when to spin a venture out versus leaving it inside, I can't imagine a motivational technique for encouraging each and every page to be read (me, I've read each ten plus times... but I'm a geek that way).
But maybe it's more about getting people to a disruptive state of mind? Maybe it's about getting them on the bus? If convincing folks to read either edition of Innovators is tantamount to dragging old wild horses to water and teaching them a new trick, then I can't help but admire this alternative solution from the Boulder office of CP+B:
A Disruptive Thinker Transport! Why didn't I think of this? I find this fantastic piece of graphic design particularly funny, but then I grew up in Boulder and suffer from a bit of that locale's typical twisted (or is that disruptive?) sense of humor. When this thing makes its way up to Gunbarrel, massive seas of Legacy Outbacks part and make way. Make way for disruption! Yield to the low end, Volvo 240 wagons of the world!
Read more about it at John Winsor's fine blog.
Diego, thought I'd tell you I just ordered the two books so that you know that you are influencing some people to read them! And I will definitely be passing them along as well.
Posted by: Katie Konrath | 24 June 2008 at 03:02 PM