Best Practices Are Stupid

Well-intentioned leaders are inadvertently destroying innovation in their attempts to boost innovation.

What if almost everything you know about creating a culture of innovation is hindering your progress? What if the way you are measuring innovation is choking it? What if your market research is focusing on the wrong metrics? It's time to innovate the way you innovate.

Innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition.

Best Practices Are Stupid offers forty counterintuitive yet proven strategies for boosting innovation and making it a repeatable, sustainable, and profitable process at the heart of your company's culture. They include:

Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential.

Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Instead, define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers.

Don't think outside the box. Instead, find a better box. Rather than giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output.

Stop glorifying failure. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine and minimize failure.

This compact book shows that non-stop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

"Don't let its compact size-or snarky title-fool you. It's a worthwhile read. Unlike so many other books in this particular genre, it doesn't disguise otherwise straightforward concepts with overwrought explanations. Shapiro gets straight to the point with 40 often counterintuitive tips on how to strengthen your innovation muscles, served up with respect for your time and intelligence."

- Jake Sorofman, Gartner Group