Look at More

A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change

Jossey-Bass, 2011

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

Companies that inspire their employees create an atmosphere where innovation can flourish.

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Editorial Rating

Qualities

Innovative
Applicable

Recommendation

This fascinating book on innovation meets the primary criterion of any guide on the subject: Be innovative. You would expect no less from Andy Stefanovich, the “chief curator and provocateur” at Prophet, a strategic branding, marketing, innovation, and design consultancy. His message: To develop a truly innovative concept, go sit in a park, or confer with your building’s custodian, or ask your team for the worst possible idea for a project. Over the past 20 years, Stefanovich has established a reputation as an extremely disruptive consultant – in a good way. He guides his clients to shun traditional thinking, pat answers and clichéd responses. He insists that they think not just outside the box, but far away from wherever they left the box. Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Nike, GE and other corporate giants follow his idiosyncratic, creative recommendations. If you want to learn to cook, find a chef, says getAbstract, which recommends the idea that if you want to learn to innovate, perhaps you should find a provocateur.

Summary

Hairdresser Becomes Eco-Champ

In March 1989, Phillip McCrory, a Madison, Alabama, hairdresser, was as shocked as everyone else by the Exxon Valdez’s 11-million-gallon oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. McCrory watched a CNN news report showing a rescue worker trying in vain to clean oil from a distraught otter’s fur pelt. The oil seemed almost chemically bonded to the fur. Then the proverbial light bulb switched on above McCrory’s head: “If fur can trap and hold spilled oil, why shouldn’t human hair work equally as well?” As a hairdresser, McCrory knew that most beauty salons sweep up about a pound of hair every day, so “millions of pounds” of hair end up in landfills. His brilliant idea: Collect all that hair and use it to contain oil spills. To test his theory, McCrory collected five pounds of hair from his salon. He stuffed it into a pair of pantyhose and tied the feet together to create a ring. He floated the ring in a plastic swimming pool and poured motor oil into its center. The oil quickly adhered to the hair and soon vanished from the water.

McCrory found that hair adsorbs (not absorbs) oil, which “clings to the hair rather...

About the Author

Andy Stefanovich, the “chief curator and provocateur” at Prophet, a branding, marketing, innovation, and design firm, is a visiting professor at Duke, Dartmouth, and other prestigious universities.

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A. 10 years ago

The summary mentions the idea of leaving the office and the meeting room now and then to improve creativity and thinking. What I like about Stefanovich is that he really does what he says, at least in this respect. I once attended an event on which Stefanovich had a speak. Instead of putting the attendees to sleep with PowerPoint in a windowless conference room, he insisted on having his talk at the open air hotel bar with a nice view onto the sea. That was very refreshing.
S. B. 1 decade ago

How can the rating be 9 when the level of expertise is only 1?
Thanks, Susan Bales

Susan Bales
President and CEO
Bales Consulting Group, LLC
Wilmington, NC and Washington DC
slbales@balesgroup.com or slbales@aol.com
- 1 decade ago
  
  Dear Susan,
  
  Many thanks for your comment. Our level-of-expertise rating refers to the amount of prior expert knowledge a reader must have to grasp the concepts within a book. We found that this book would be accessible to a reader who has no prior knowledge of any innovation concepts. The language within the book is straightforward and easy to understand. Thus, we felt the book warranted a low level-of-expertise rating. This rating does not contribute of our final overall rating; it is just an indicator to our customers of the difficulty of the original text.
  
  We base our overall rating on three determinants: applicability, innovation and style. Look at More rates highly in each of these three categories: It offers practical advice, it contains fresh case studies and anecdotes that we haven't seen elsewhere, and it is well structured and well written. These factors led to a high overall rating.
  
  Having reviewed the summary again, we increased the level-of-expertise rating to 2, since 1 may indicate an overly simplistic book, which this is not. It is a useful guidebook for businesspeople.
  
  I hope this explanation addresses your concerns. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact me at deirdre.cody@getabstract.com.
  
  Kind regards,
  Deirdre Cody
A. M. 1 decade ago

The Education system needs an injection of such "disruption". Creative and innovation mindsets are necessary ingredients in the new economy.

Andy Stefanovich