Dad of Divas' Reviews: Book Review - The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Book Review - The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand




About the Book

In The Heart of Innovation A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia come together to reveal the secret of uncovering authentic demand to build successful innovations.

Books on innovation mostly focus on how to nurture innovative cultures and brainstorm ideas. The Heart of Innovation is the first popular book to concretely delve into what innovations really are and how to create them. Many attempts at innovation fail because customers turn out to be indifferent. The key to success is to uncover unmet authentic demand; what customers cannot be indifferent to. Through fresh case studies, ranging from how SoulCycle revolutionized the fitness industry, to how IBM built an $8 billion business on the Web, to a single mother ending abuse in a slum in Africa, The Heart of Innovation explores how authentic demand is often hidden or taken for granted.

The first half of the book explores cases where people accidentally found their way to meeting an unmet authentic demand—or failed to. The second half of the book provides a field guide to methodically identifying and building products, services, and businesses around authentic demand.

At Georgia Tech, IBM, and elsewhere, the authors have worked with scores of startups and large companies, developing a unique methodology that unpacks the “black box” of authentic demand and shows innovators how to search for it, recognize it, and create situations for their customers that catalyze it. They explore the differences, and different challenges, to the three types of innovation—incremental improvement, company transformation, and radical “formative” innovation.

Authors Chanoff, Furst, Sabbah, and Wegman take innovators and people who work with them on a new journey through innovation. Their fresh case studies, from IBM’s entry to the Web, to a single mother in a slum in Kenya, make The Heart of Innovation as obsessively readable as it is informative.

If customers are already pulling your innovation from your hands, you don’t need this book. Otherwise, reach for The Heart of Innovation.

My Take on the Book
In this book the author challenges you to step back and work on the things that block you from coming up with and moving forward with creating new ideas. One of the things that I loved about the book is that the author has made it practical with actionable steps that you can use right away. As you read this you will leave the book with so many strategies and lessons that will move you beyond yourself. Get ready to get unstuck with this great book!

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