Weird Ideas That Work Views

General Goods

After my last post, I got several inquires about the complete list of weird ideas that work, from my 2002 book, Weird Ideas That Work. I have a soft spot for this book, perhaps because it was the first book I wrote myself, and also because it resulted from a talk that I gave for six or seven years before I wrote it up. I can still see – in my minds-eye – all the reactions that audiences had to the ideas as I developed them, the excitement in some cases, the boredom in other cases, the disdain for the most absurd, and the fantastic arguments that people had with me and each other.

I picked ideas that would – from logical standpoint – increase the range of ideas (or variance) in a company, that would enable people to see things differently, and break from the past. I also emphasized that increasing variance and the like is great if you want creativity (say developing a new product or service) and awful if you want to do something tried and true (say building or flying a 747). There is a Harvard Business Review article called the Weird Rules of Creativity you can buy if you are interested (although it costs about half of the whole book), but if you want free stuff, check out my interview on tompeters.com, download this article from the Ivey Business Journal, or see Polly LaBarre’s Fast Company article.

Second, creativity happens when an organization, through some means, brings in varied ideas, sees the same old things in new ways, and breaks from the past. These are just some ways to make it happen; they may help you or may not work in your organization at all. My suggestion is not to view them as a recipe, but as a menu. I suspect that if you tried to do all of these in one organization, it would be nightmare. Like eating the entire menu instead of meal at restaurant, it will make your organization sick. But there might be four or five that will work for you, at least for the places, people, and periods when you need creativity.

fra" Weird Ideas That Work from Manage To Change In 2002, Robert Sutton published the book Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation. His ideas, perspective and style immediately got my attention. It was the first time I read anything that described crea... [Read More]