Overcoming the Innovation Killers

How to Innovate Products that Thrill Customers and Break Through the Chaotic Marketplace

By: Jeff Jones, Dennis Devlin

Narrated by: Jeff Jones

Length: 1 hr and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

A huge number of products come to store shelves every year. But many experts estimate 90 percent of them fail and leave the shelves just as quickly. Why the unpredictability? Why the failures? We believe it’s the absence of clarity, and clarity comes when all participants are willing to be vulnerably honest about their needs. The Consumer Clarity Approach is specifically designed to create the clarity required to create great ideas that meet the consumer’s real needs, and can break through the chaos in the marketplace.

©2020- Jeff Jones (P)2021 Jeff Jones

Excellent primer on modern product innovation!

This short book is a superb introduction to the perils and pitfalls of product innovation, the marketplace realities that innovators face , and strategies on how to overcome all of these hurdles. The text is a balanced combination of what companies must face when innovating new breakthrough products and forward-thinking solutions to getting the best out of your marketing or innovation teams. All in all, this book can actually act as a primer and ideation outline for how to approach innovation in a practical and productive way. The authors definitely know what they're talking about and are clearly pulling from decades of real world experience. Highly recommended!

Important perspective and approach for innovation directors and managers

So often the consumer gets left on the sidelines while internal debate, politics and egos take the limelight. This book combats that with a pragmatic and proven approach that allows for meaningful and successful innovation because it addresses true consumer needs. It gives high level background and insight while also drilling down into the approach so teams can get to work immediately and with confidence.

Finally! An Innovative Book On Innovation!

In their new book Overcoming the Innovation Killers, authors Dennis Devlin and Jeff Jones look at innovation from an enterprise-level perspective, encouraging companies to navigate the innovation process with the aid of a nifty Roadmap and the cure for what ails typical one-off innovation initiatives that are common to businesses today.

Unlike most other books on innovation that simply list the ways to identify innovation fails (or how to learn from successful innovators), Overcoming the Innovation Killers refreshingly provides the therapeutic remedies to each of the three main “Killers” (Product Similarity, Competition Sprawl, and Marketplace Static).

The remedies come in the form of Contextual Clarity, Creative Clarity, and Competitive Clarity. This is the key recommendation for this book. The solutions presented are actionable vs. broad generalizations. An innovation in this category of book all by itself!

If you’ve already determined that business-as-usual (the processes, expectations, goals, strategies) and a risk-averse culture have slowed your innovation projects down, reach for Overcoming the Innovation Killers. Especially if innovation “tools” such as Six Sigma and Lean have perpetuated the same old/same old cycle, rather than opening up your firm to embracing innovation as a capability.

This book’s advice could potentially spare you from a “career killing” blunder, while becoming just the accelerator to the product innovation you need.

As useful as the information contained in this book is, you will also find it a joy to read. It’s also a joy to hear on Audible with author Jeff Jones’ folksy mastery of storytelling propelling the material forward with equal parts self-deprecation and enthusiasm. In other words, the coolest college professor you ever had. Either way, rather than bog down its concepts in dry business-speak, you’ll be delighted with its many entertaining (and relevant) nods to pop culture.

With quotes from jazz great Charles Mingus (“Weird is easy, but you have to be simple”), to Dr. Suess (“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”), Overcoming the Innovation Killers serves up practical game-changing frameworks for increasing your innovation odds, while keeping you engaged from start to finish.

And “Consumers don’t shop like Brand Managers” may be one of the most essential nuggets you’ll see in a business book this year. From the C-suite to middle managers and everyone in between, if you’re ready for a book on innovation that focuses on the solutions, this one is “killer.” Bonus Points for admitting they don’t have ALL the answers, too. Highly recommended.

Modern look at Innovation and delighting customers

The authors obviously have a lot of experience in product innovation and working with big and small clients. There is both a synthesis of the practical application of proven methods like Jobs To Be Done and an original framework describing how to break through in today's marketplace. The quotes throughout are very helpful in delivering their message and examples bring great context to illustrate the points being made about how to overcome the innovation killers which lead to the failure of most innovations. Highly recommended.