Book Synopsis
Have you ever come up with an idea for a new product or service but didn't take any action because you thought it would be too risky? Or at work, have you had what you thought could be a big idea for your company--perhaps changing the way you develop or distribute a product, provide customer service, or hire and train your employees? If you have, but you haven't known how to take the next step, you need to understand what the authors call the innovator's method--a set of tools emerging from lean start-up, design thinking, and agile software development that are revolutionizing how new ideas are created, refined, and brought to market.
To date these tools have helped entrepreneurs, designers, and software developers manage uncertainty--through cheap and rapid experiments that systematically lower failure rates and risk. But many managers and leaders struggle to apply these powerful tools within their organizations, as they often run counter to traditional managerial thinking and practice.
Authors Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer wrote this book to address that very problem. Following the breakout success of The Innovator's DNA--which Dyer wrote with Hal Gregersen and bestselling author Clay Christensen to provide a framework for generating ideas--this book shows how to make those ideas actually happen, to commercialize them for success.
Based on their research inside corporations and successful start-ups, Furr and Dyer developed the innovator's method, an end-to-end process for creating, refining, and bringing ideas to market. They show when and how to apply the tools of their method, how to adapt them to your business, and how to answer commonly asked questions about the method itself, including: How do we know if this idea is worth pursuing? Have we found the right solution? What is the best business model for this new offering? This book focuses on the "how"--how to test, how to validate, and how to commercialize ideas with the lean, design, and agile techniques successful start-ups use.
Whether you're launching a start-up, leading an established one, or simply working to get a new product off the ground in an existing company, this book is for you.
Review Quotes
"Recommended reading for Creative Leaders." -- FORBES.com
"The Innovator's Method does an exceptional job of incorporating concrete research with other innovation concepts to support a holistic model that outlines an end-to-end process for creating and refining ideas and then bringing them to market." -- Research-Technology Management
"The Innovator's Method is filled with techniques that can help you define the jobs that customers will pay you to solve." -- Inc.
"Furr and Dyer present their ideas with clarity and enthusiasm, and include helpful diagrams and charts. Readers looking for a single volume on nimble innovation will find this guide indispensable." -- Publishers Weekly
ADVANCE PRAISE for The Innovator's Method:
Clayton M. Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School; author, The Innovator's Dilemma--
"This is the first book that chronicles the process of innovation from beginning to end. If one faces a high-uncertainty problem, then the tools of lean start-up and design thinking they describe are valuable innovation tools."
Steve Blank, author, The Four Steps to the Epiphany; father of the Lean Start-up Movement--
"An absolute must-read for any manager or entrepreneur."
John Donovan, Senior Executive Vice President, AT&T Technology and Network Operations--
"The Innovator's Method lays out the importance of leadership and culture change within large companies in today's age of uncertainty. The method serves as the foundation for accelerating innovation and driving change by bringing great ideas to life."
Robert I. Sutton, professor, Stanford University; Wall Street Journal bestselling coauthor, Scaling Up Excellence--
"The Innovator's Method provides complete guidance that will help every leader navigate the difficult journey from generating viable ideas to setting the stage for their success. Furr and Dyer weave together stories and principles to make crystal clear why and how leaders ought to take action."
Brad Smith, President and CEO, Intuit--
"The Innovator's Method will help leaders create a culture of experimentation that empowers teams to make decisions grounded in real experiments. The leader becomes chief experimenter, not chief decision maker, thereby enabling the company to behave like a network of start-ups."
Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com--
"There are dozens of books you could read about innovation--or you could read just this one. Furr and Dyer have synthesized the best ideas from lean start-up and design thinking to provide real, actionable insights that can help you test, validate, and launch new innovations."
About the Author
Nathan Furr is a professor of entrepreneurship at BYU's Marriott School of Management and has worked previously as a management consultant, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur.
Jeff Dyer is the Horace Beesley Professor of Strategy at BYU's Marriott School of Management. He worked previously as a management consultant, cofounded The Innovator's DNA consultancy, and is the lead author of The Innovator's DNA and numerous other popular books and articles.
