Fantastic read! Innovation is such a vital topic. This book is packed full of helpful tips on leading teams to dare more greatly. Very relevant and up to date too. Great addition to the subject.

Great book, shows a plethora of tips and insights on improving your body, mind, and business, would highly recommend, Can't wait for more books from this author.

The book majorly highlights behaviour changes needed to become an innovative organization in a very practical way with book basis from research in organizations. Lots of practical inputs abound in the book: Hacking habits with BEANs is a good tip. Fear and inertia as the major blocks to innovation in organizations resonates very well with what one sees in the field. The organization is itself a big obstacle in the way to innovation. Shadow strategy - keep doing what we have been doing all this time!

The book Lists 5 behaviours that drive innovation.. however one of them seemed problematic to my view. Customer obsession? Is that a necessary dimension? This narrows down to a product/service piece only? Apart from this I did not have any disagreements.

DBS and Singtel examples are very nice and detailed case studies of actually running the ideas presented in the book

The style of the book is very appealing. Chapter summaries at the end of the chapter are useful to remind the reader of the learnings and key takeaways. I loved the style of writing with very informal and cheeky footnotes at most places. Also loved the doodles in each chapter. I think the use of Bean shape in the images reinforced subtly the BEAN model for change. BEAN SPROUT - now that was another super way to actually practice the idea on the reader Of the book itself. A rich appendix with all categorical theme-based sources of the references made in the book makes it a well designed handbook.


Final word: I think this is a great book on practicing innovation in organization - both identifying and generating innovation!

It is a book about innovation. In a well formatted prose book describes why innovation is necessary and what are factors that hinder it, alongwith possible solutions.
At the end of each chapter there is brief summary of things learnt.
It is exhaustive and has stories related to how few companies focus on innovation and win.
I just felt there is conscious effort of promoting certain companies like DBS Bank through this text as it features at multiple pages.
A good book but it could have been more entertaining and little less exhaustive.
I liked the book and will recommend to readers interested in business books.

I thoroughly enjoy the tons of innovative ideas the authors shared in this book. Innovation is truly the name of the game these days and this book does a lot to help organizations whether in business or non-profit sector unleash the creative juices of their people.

I learned a lot about BEANs (behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges). These are the items organizations need. It helps me to have a framework on how to start cultivating an innovative culture in a company.

And also I enjoyed the writing style as well. This is not a boring book. I often found myself amused with the witty footnotes sprinkled all over the pages.

Innovation should be fun and this book walk (well not literally) the talk.

Innovation is something different that creates value but it is an unnatural act in most of the organizations. This book is about innovation and how to make it a day-to-day habit in any organization. This book can be used as a practical guide for building a culture of innovation in any organization. The book suggests to ingrain certain habits by using behaviour enablers, artifacts, and nudges.

The book is divided into two parts - the first part sets the foundation and The second part provides practical tools and tips and inspiring stories to help drive cultural change.

The approach that the book suggests is the convergence of four streams of research -
-- Organizational culture
-- Habit change
-- Innovation enabling behaviors
-- Innovation enhancing structures and systems

Let’s talk about how organizational culture impedes or enables the innovations to fail or succeed.
Organizational Culture
Now the first thing, How do you bring cultural change in any organization that enables innovations to succeed ? The enemy of innovation inside most organizations is institutionalized inertia that is reinforced in systems and norms.

Cultural change is not a paint-by-number exercise. The solution for your organization needs to be tailored to your unique goals, current context, and history.

How to create a culture of innovation ? the authors say - don’t bring foosball tables at the workplace. Don’t run useless campaigns exhorting people to give their new ideas on a particular day called “Free thinking friday” . Don’t do all these things. The authors suggest use of BEANs to hack habits. Beans are inspired by habit-change literature. A bean is - behaviour enabler, artifact and nudge.

The organization will have to work at the ground level with the employees where they will have to define specific behaviours that succeed in enabling innovation. those behaviours are like -
-- Innovators are curious,
-- Innovators are customer obsessed
-- Innovators collaborate,
-- Innovators can work efficiently even if there is ambiguity in the system or work space.
-- Innovators feel empowered.
-- Innovators think about future requirements while addressing the current needs.

Now how to ingrain these behaviors into any organization ? The book says that success requires focussing on changing people’s daily habits through a series of interventions, and then ensuring that the new habits stick and scale.

How Do you change a habit ?
Habit change requires engaging people’s rational, logical side and their emotional and intuitive side.
Habit change requires a multi front battle which uses a combination of mantras, nudges, and social interaction to change people’s behavior pattern.
To Reinforce the desired behavior - goal setting and achievement and social comparison and encouragement can be used.

Here the authors suggest use of BEANs to change the impeding behaviour and engrain new habits which enable innovation to succeed.

What are the behaviour enablers - these are the direct way to change behaviour -
-- Developing a daily ritual
-- Building a wider community
-- Having access to a coach and counsellor
-- Create simple checklists or user guides.

Artifacts are physical and digital reinforcers that connect the first two ideas. Artifacts include -
-- Prizes and trophies
-- Physical Avatars that reinforce the desired changes
-- Picture and visuals that serve as background reminders
-- Physical objects that sit on desks or in conference rooms.

What are nudges that can be used to change behaviour ? nudges are an indirect way to change the behavior.
Making the desired behavior default.
-- Having reminders.
-- Creating and sharing stories
-- Using physical office design to facilitate specific behaviour.
-- Providing some form of comparison

The book also talks about a case study where it provides a step by step guidance on how to conduct a six week sprint to develop practical interventions and catalyze a group of change agents for innovation to succeed.


PART II

Part II contains practical tips and tools and inspiring stories to help you drive culture changes that sticks and scales. Short sections are organized into chapters tied to the phases. A phase is what a would be innovator should follow :-

Phase 1 - Discover Opportunity by Being curious and customer obsessed. In this phase you discover the problem that you want to solve.


Phase 2 - Blueprint compelling ideas by being collaborative and customer obsessed. In this phase you come up with tangible idea that solves the problem that was identified in phase 1

Phase 3 - Assess and test ideas By being adept in ambiguity and by being empowered. This phase involves picking up an idea, looking at it from multiple angles, separating facts from assumptions, testing rigorously and adapting quickly.

Phase 4 - Move ideas forward by being empowered and collaborative

For each phase the book talks about 4 things -
beans that include behaviour enables, artifacts and nudges. The book lists around 101 BEANS used by various companies and book talks about around 40 of them in detail in this book.

, There are also bean boosters that help maximize the impact of selected beans.

Each section has one or two inspirational case studies.

Each chapter has a tool to help. For example in phase 1 - Being curious is a must for being innovative. The book suggests a tool called - curiosity quotient which can give you an idea of how curious you or your team are ?

Finally, the verdict. The book is good. It has a lot of examples in the form of beans, case studies. This book gives a fair idea of how to inculcate the habit of innovation in your team at granular level by using various tools. It can be started with a small team and then scaled to the whole organization. I liked this book and certainly learnt that building an innovation oriented team may not be that difficult.

Fantastic read from Harvard Business Press as always! Innovation is the key to progress in my opinion. This book provides helpful tips on how you can lead your team to innovate within the workplace. Anyone can apply the tips and I am excited to start thinking more with an innovative mindset. Driving bysiness, innovation and collaborative spirit forward will support businesses and economy.

EAT, SLEEP, INNOVATE, by Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud and Andy Parker, is forthcoming this Fall from Harvard Business Review Press. Cobban is based in Singapore working for DBS Bank and the other three authors are executives with the growth-strategy consulting firm Innosight. They collaborated to explore "How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization" and the text has a slightly playful, irreverent tone, perhaps meant to reinforce the idea of creative freedom, which is fun at first. I loved the footnote that includes: "And hello, footnote reader. We are glad to have you with us." It does wear after a bit, though, as they actually recognize when another footnote says, "we're going to stop doing this soon." Overall, there are plenty of serious suggestions to help businesses. In Part I (over four chapters with three companion case studies), they lay out a series of definitions, discuss why organizations struggle with innovation, and then introduce and explain the idea of BEANS (behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges). Part II, filled with "tips, tricks and tools" focuses on the more practical application. In an appendix, they also provide a "Culture of Innovation Bookshelf" with titles they consider most influential. While a bit jargon-y, it is a luxury to stretch one's brain and spend time with this text. It is certainly relevant; as the authors point out, "uncertainly increases the need for innovation." Visit their website plus pick up EAT, SLEEP, INNOVATE if you are looking for ideas about how to make innovation more of a "habit of mind" and daily focus.

Link in live post to their website: https://www.innosight.com/insights/

This book is a great read for those needing motivation to innovate, especially during Covid-19. The book addresses Covid-19 and gives helpful tips to innovate within the workplace throughout the book. Anyone can apply the tips and I am excited to start thinking more with an innovative mindset.

Thanks to Harvard Business Review Press and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Throughout the book, the authors reveal dozens of hacks and habits they've collected from workplaces across the globe that will unleash the natural innovator inside everyone. In addition to case studies of "normal organizations doing extraordinary things," they provide readers with the tools to create their own hacks and habits, which they can then use to build and sustain their own models of a culture of innovation.

Thankyou Netgalley and publisher for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.