Crack the Code: 8 Surprising Keys to Unlock Innovation

by Kaiser Yang

Overview

In today's fast-changing, hyper-competitive market, developing your ability to creatively solve problems is mission critical. Creativity fuels growth, serves clients, and contributes to mission-based pursuits. Across every industry, organizations have an insatiable appetite to find creative problem-solvers who can crack the code to unlock innovative outcomes and drive measurable results.

The good news is that creative problem-solving is a skill set that can be developed and harnessed. It’s accessible to all of us. In Crack the Code, Kaiser Yang explores the four key mindsets shared by the most successful creative problem-solvers in the world and provides eight proven tactics they use to solve complex problems and seize new opportunities.

Using a careful analysis of the biggest challenges facing the world today and extensive research into the minds making a difference, Crack the Code is a practical guide to help you overcome barriers to innovative thinking and unlock your capacity to creatively solve problems in new and refreshing ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645435648
Publisher:	Mascot Books
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

An innovator at the forefront of the digital transformation, Kaiser has held senior leadership roles at both tech startups and large, global organizations. Kaiser served as Senior Vice President for both HelloWorld and PrizeLogic, innovating large-scale digital campaigns for Fortune 100 clients such as Microsoft, Disney, Amazon, Clorox, and Nike. He has held leadership roles at Nortel Communications and United Technologies, and he also cofounded the West End Grill, an award-winning gourmet restaurant, still in operation today.

Throughout it all, the need to creatively solve problems—to find a way, to figure it out, to do it differently—has been the one underlying commonality. Kaiser’s broad-based experience in technology, operations, sales, and marketing has empowered him with the ability to systematically unlock creativity and apply it toward productive, innovative outcomes. Currently, he is the cofounder of Platypus Labs, an innovation enablement firm focused on helping teams and organizations unleash their creative potential and crack the code.

Table of Contents

Introduction i

Mindset 1 Every Barrier Can Be Penetrated 1

Tactic 1 Deconstruction 6

Tactic 2 Rapid Experimentation 24

Mindset 2 Compasses Over Maps 43

Tactic 3 Start Small 48

Tactic 4 Start at the End 63

Mindset 3 Nothing Is Static 77

Tactic 5 The Judo Flip 82

Tactic 6 The Mash-Up 95

Mindset 4 Diversity is a Force Multiplier 107

Tactic 7 The Imbizo Group 111

Tactic 8 The Borrowed Idea 129

Connecting It All Together

A Story about Lego 145

Quick Reference Guide

The Mindsets 155

The 8 Keys to Unlock Innovation 157

10 Commandments of Brainstorming 159

References 165

Acknowledgments 179

Editorial Reviews

2021-08-05
An argument for the significance of creative problem-solving in corporate life, and an anatomy of its mindsets, beliefs, and tactics.

Debut author Yang, the CEO and co-founder of Platypus Labs, begins his paean to creativity by making familiar observations: During an age of “exponential complexity, dizzying speeds, disruptive technologies, shifting demographics and ideologies, geopolitical turmoil, and ruthless competition,” he says, there’s a burning need for companies to creatively solve problems quickly. However, he describes this urgent demand in cliché-ridden prose, which is unfortunately typical of the book as a whole: “We must defy traditions, seek fresh approaches, bounce back from missteps with more imagination, and invent and reinvent as we go. We must adapt in real time.” The author is chiefly concerned breaking down the various parts of creative problem-solving, and promises to “crack [its] code” by reducing it to its elemental mindsets and tactics. For example, he extols the benefits of “rapid experimentation” and brainstorming, counsels readers to accept that “nothing is static,” and encourages them to “avoid confirmation bias.” The best parts of Yang’s work are its constant references to concrete illustrations and examples, drawn from the world of business and beyond, as this is properly intended as a practical guidebook. However, for a work that’s so preoccupied with creativity, it’s disappointingly conventional, as the counsel feels obvious and shopworn. Also, the main conceit of the work is dubious, as it contends that creative problem-solvers can only be successful if they cultivate the perspectives and follow the methods spelled out in this text. However, a creative spirit can’t simply be willed, and following series of steps prescribed by someone else doesn’t seem creative at all.

A book about creativity that uncreatively stays within familiar bounds.

Kirkus Reviews