Innovating: A Doer's Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong

by Luis Perez-Breva, Edward Roberts (Foreword by)

Overview

Discover the MIT-developed, “doer’s approach” to innovation with this guide that reveals you don’t need an earth-shattering idea to create a standout product, service, or business—just a hunch that you can scale up to impact.
 
Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there’s very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach—a doer’s approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that innovating doesn’t require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. As Perez-Breva demonstrates, “nothing is new” at the outset of what we only later celebrate as innovation.
 
In Innovating, the process—illustrated by unique and dynamic artwork—is shown to be empirical, experimental, nonlinear, and incremental. You give your hunch the structure of a problem. Anything can be a part. Your innovating accrues other people’s knowledge and skills. Perez-Breva describes how to create a kit for innovating, and outlines questions that will help you think in new ways. Finally, he shows how to systematize what you’ve learned: to advocate, communicate, scale up, manage innovating continuously, and document—“you need a notebook to converse with yourself,” he advises. Everyone interested in innovating also needs to read this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262035354
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	02/17/2017
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Luis Perez-Breva, an innovator and entrepreneur, is a Lecturer and a Research Scientist at MIT's School of Engineering and the originator and Lead Instructor of the MIT Innovation Teams Program.

Table of Contents

Foreword Edward Roberts ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xvii

Part I Anatomy of a Hunch 1

1 Being Productively Wrong 7

2 Prototyping a Real-World Problem 37

Part II Exploring in Foresight: Learning from Parts and People 75

3 Interacting with Parts 81

4 Interfacing with People 123

5 At a Small Scale, Nonlinearity Is Your Ally 145

6 A Kit to Drive Innovation, Anywhere 161

7 Operating on the Problem through Trial and Error 193

Part III Organizing What You Have Learned: Exploring Impact 223

8 Practicing Advocacy 231

9 Risk, Doing, Learning, and Uncertainty 261

10 Scaling Up an Organization 285

11 Managing Innovating Continuously 311

12 The World Is Your Lab, so You Need a Notebook to Converse with Yourself 331

Epilogue: Academic Commentary 353

Bounded Rationality and Behavioral Decision Making 353

Bridging with Artificial Intelligence 355

Iterations and the Induction Argument 357

Kits, DIY, and Experimentation 359

Kuhn versus Popper 363

Learning and Innovating 365

No Thing Is New 371

The Nonlinear Nature of Innovation 372

Organizational Theory and Computation 374

Parts and Modularity 374

People and Teams 375

Problem Solving 377

The Relationship among Scale, Execution, and Organization Building 379

Notes 383

Index 387

What People are Saying About This

Jordan W. Smoller

Luis Perez-Breva has produced a unique and essential work:a book about innovating that is truly innovative. Unlike scores of books that claim to close in on some magical formula for innovation, this book will open your thinking in ways that can truly lead you from insight to impact. Whatever your field, Innovating will change the way you approach the process of transforming a hunch into a scalable solution.

Amy Schumacher

In his unique and provocative book, Perez-Breva argues that innovating is a discipline unto itself. As someone leading a multi-generational family business, I found his approach to scaling up particularly intriguing: he shows how innovating can be used by a business to continually rebuild itselfon the foundation of its past successes.

From the Publisher

Luis Perez-Breva provides a prospective guide for how to innovate, providing the mindsets and mental models necessary to develop new ideas. These lessons can be easily applied not just by entrepreneurs, but by those leading or working in large organizations.

—Derek Norman, Head of Corporate Venture Capital, Syngenta

Innovating is an extraordinary book—whip-smart, original, and engagingly written. Filled with illuminating examples and surprising, often counterintuitive insights, this doer's guide should be the go-to book for all current and future innovators.

—Amy Chua, John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law, Yale University; author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and coauthor of The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America

Luis Perez-Breva has produced a unique and essential work: a book about innovating that is truly innovative. Unlike scores of books that claim to close in on some magical formula for innovation, this book will open your thinking in ways that can truly lead you from insight to impact. Whatever your field, Innovating will change the way you approach the process of transforming a hunch into a scalable solution.

—Jordan W. Smoller, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; author of The Other Side of Normal

In his unique and provocative book, Perez-Breva argues that innovating is a discipline unto itself. As someone leading a multi-generational family business, I found his approach to scaling up particularly intriguing: he shows how innovating can be used by a business to continually rebuild itself on the foundation of its past successes.

—Amy Schumacher, President, The Heritage Group

Endorsement

In his unique and provocative book, Perez-Breva argues that innovating is a discipline unto itself. As someone leading a multi-generational family business, I found his approach to scaling up particularly intriguing: he shows how innovating can be used by a business to continually rebuild itselfon the foundation of its past successes.

—Amy Schumacher, President, The Heritage Group

Amy Chua

Innovating is an extraordinary book—whip-smart, original, and engagingly written.Filled with illuminating examples and surprising, often counterintuitive insights, this doer's guide should be the go-to book for all current and future innovators.

Derek Norman

Luis Perez-Breva provides a prospective guide for how to innovate, providing the mindsets and mental models necessary to develop new ideas. These lessons can be easily applied not just by entrepreneurs, but by those leading or working in large organizations.