This is no "ivory-tower" management tomb -- as you read through each chapter, you can't avoid the fact that Sutton had to actually get out of his office to go prowl the trenches of the product development world in search of these 11.5 ideas. No pontificating here; these are real-world lessons gleaned from watching world-class firms like IDEO, Handspring, and 3M go about the difficult task of innovating on a routine basis.
Weird though they may be, Sutton's 11.5 ideas are pragmatic, actionable, and will take your business to where you want it to be. Buy this book. Give it to your boss, and your boss's boss, and to anyone who thinks 6-sigma is the only answer to the world's problems.
Most of Sutton's ideas are well packaged and delivered, but theycannot be easily applied in the Age of Corporate Downsizing andJob Insecurity. In addition, not only most Old Economy Companies ( rather than New Economy Companies) will find the recommended ideas hard to be applied in the real world settings, most non-Western companies in the East will also find those ideas not easy to be applied in a relatively more conservative and less free flowwork setting in the oriental countries.
For reality check reasons, readers can try out Sutton's ideaswithin a week at work, and see what will happen. Guess they willfind his ideas cute but weak in real world applications. Basically Sutton wrote too much about principles on Corporate Creativity, rather than about skills and detailed case studies on how to make Coporate Craetivity really work.
