Customer Rating:  
Summary: More Interpretation, Less Problem Solving Helps Innovation
Comment: I work in a business that struggles to be innovative. There's many very smart people who are superb problem solvers. This book explains why a problem solving mindset may actually interfere with listening to customers and stimulating new ideas.
By thinking "who else should I invite into this conversation who might have another perspective," and "how can I get these people together and stimulate a deep conversation," I've begun to see another way to work with my colleagues that may help our organization push the envelope more. The authors offered very specific examples of these kinds of interpretative conversations.
This book has good case studies about garment industry, cell phone industry and biotech. Their economic argument pushing for more public spaces where interpretative conversations can occur was of less interest and I thought weaker than their company examples.
Amid mounting concern over the loss of jobs to low-wage economies, one fact is clear: America's prosperity hinges on the ability of its businesses to continually introduce new products and services. But what makes for a creative economy? How can the remarkable surge of innovation that fueled the boom of the 1990s be sustained? For an answer, Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore examine innovation strategies in some of the economy's most dynamic sectors. Through eye-opening case studies of new product development in fields such as cell phones, medical devices, and blue jeans, two fundamental processes emerge. One of these processes, analysis--rational problem solving--dominates management and engineering practice. The other, interpretation, is not widely understood, or even recognized--although, as the authors make clear, it is absolutely crucial to innovation. Unlike problem solving, interpretation embraces and exploits ambiguity, the wellspring of creativity in the economy. By emphasizing interpretation, and showing how these two radically different processes can be combined, Lester and Piore's book gives managers and designers the concepts and tools to keep new products flowing. But the authors also offer an unsettling critique of national policy. By ignoring the role of interpretation, economic policymakers are drawing the wrong lessons from the 1990s boom. The current emphasis on expanding the reach of market competition will help the analytical processes needed to implement innovation. But if unchecked it risks choking off the economy's vital interpretive spaces. Unless a more balanced policy approach is adopted, warn Lester and Piore, America's capacity to innovate--its greatest economic asset--will erode. (20050301)
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