Book Review: The Innovation Equation: Building Creativity and Risk-Taking in Your Organization

Abstract

The Innovation Equation: Building Creativity and Risk-Taking in Your Organization. Jacqueline Byrd and Paul Lockwood Brown. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003, 195 pages, $36.40.What is your equation for innovation? In this book, the authors make the case that creativity and risk-taking are the essential variables in the innovation equation (Innovation 5 Creativity 3 Risk-Taking). The authors define creativity as "the ability to develop new ideas" and risk-taking as "the ability to drive new ideas forward in the face of adversity."This book is one title in the Practicing Organization Development series published by Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. The series is intended to provide practical, stateof- the-art, innovative approaches to organization change and development. Key contributions of the book include perspectives on innovation and how to assess innovation capacity at the individual, team, and organizational levels. There is an excellent discussion of the drivers of creativity and risk-taking, and how the stop signs to innovation relate to these two factors. Finally, there are several innovation leadership tips, tools, and resources that managers and consultants can use to accelerate the development of innovation cultures.Not everyone perceives themselves as creative, and some people are riskaverse. So how do we assess people's innovation orientation? Of particular value in this book is a short innovation orientation assessment. A more detailed innovation assessment called The Creatrix® (n.d.), based on several years of research, generates an Innovation Orientation profile (http://creatrix.com/rix /servlet/creatrix).An innovation orientation score is calculated based on the cross-impact of creativity and risk-taking, resulting in one of eight innovation orientation profile types. For example, challengers are high risk-takers who are low in creativity. Sustainers are practical, reality-oriented people who value control and standardization. Innovators are self-motivated and on the lookout for breakthrough creations. Dreamers are high in creativity and low in risk-taking. Modifiers make things better, and are moderate in creativity and risk-taking. Practicalizers are moderately creative and high risk-takers. Synthesizers can blend ideas together and are quite creative and moderately high in risk-taking. Planners want creative ideas to be doable, and thus are low-risk, moderately creative types. As you can imagine, each of these types can create value as well as restraints for an organization.Knowing one's innovation orientation is the first step in realizing how to develop skills and strategies to master the polarities associated with what the authors identify as the seven drivers of creativity and risk-taking. …