Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration Review

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(More customer reviews)This will become a fundamental book for every researcher and practitioner who wishes to understand what creativity is about. It certainly does not contain all the answers (mostly still unknown), but it does present most of the relevant questions that will shape our understanding of this topic in the next two decades. Make a good investment and buy this book and/or look for these researchers' work online.

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Creativity often leads to the development of original ideas that are useful or influential, and maintaining creativity is crucial for the continued development of organizations in particular and society in general. Most research and writing has focused on individual creativity. Yet, in recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of the social and contextual factors in creativity. Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process. Most organizations increasingly rely on the work of creative teams where each individual is an expert in a particular area. This volume summarizes the exciting new research developments on the processes involved in group creativity and innovation, and explores the relationship between group processes, group context, and creativity. It draws from a broad range of research perspectives, including those investigating cognition, groups, creativity, information systems, and organizational psychology. These different perspectives have been brought together in one volume in order to focus attention on this developing literature and its implications for theory and application. The chapters in this volume are organized into two sections. The first focuses on how group decision making is affected by factors such as cognitive fixation and flexibility, group diversity, minority dissent, group decision-making, brainstorming, and group support systems. Special attention is devoted to the various processes and conditions that can inhibit or facilitate group creativity. The second section explores how various contextual and environmental factors affect the creative processes of groups. The chapters explore issues of group autonomy, group socialization, mentoring, team innovation, knowledge transfer, and creativity at the level of cultures and societies. The research presented in this section makes it clear that a full understanding of group creativity cannot be accomplished without adequate attention to the group environment. It will be a useful source of information for scholars, practitioners, and students wishing to understand and facilitate group creativity.

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Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently Review

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(More customer reviews)This book will help you to understand how your brain works and how this information can be used to think differently. An Iconoclast is a person who does something that others say can't be done. Berns uses the power of neuroscience to delve into an iconoclast mind and investigate how it works differently from a normal person's brain. Per this research, our brain has three natural roadblocks that hamper the innovative thinking:
1. Flawed Perception.
2. Fear: Fear of failure/public ridicule.
3. Inability to influence others.
Using examples of people from diverse professions and industries, backed by neuroscience, and experiments, Berns has provided a very good picture of how these three factors impact our thinking. Sometimes the text becomes too scientific and complex, but mostly otherwise, the language is easy to comprehend.
Once you understand how our brain processes information and affects our perception, imagination, and decision-making; you can find ways to think creatively and remove the above three roadblocks. There are some DOs told by Berns, in order to do so. But most of the book is centered around exploring the processes of human brain.
What I learned mainly, is that, our brain tries to maximize its efficiency by taking shortcuts in processing information. That's why, the more we do certain task, easier it becomes. For same reason, we get comfortable in our own surroundings (or work) and loose the ability to think beyond it. Hence, we need to keep exposing our brain with new situations, scenarios, information, to enhance the activity of our brain and force it to think creatively.


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Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a recent graduate of the Stanford Graduate Student of Business and have worked in the life sciences industry for many years. While at the GSB, I took the 2-quarter BioDesign class which used a beta version of this book as its text. The course - and text - has a rather ambitious aim, namely to explore the medtech entrepreneurial and innovation process and to do so in a cross-functional, comprehensive, and hands-on fashion. As one of the more popular courses at Stanford and one that has resulted in numerous new VC-funded start-ups, I think they have succeeded in this goal.
More so than entrepreneurialism in other industries, starting a new business in medical devices requires bringing together many disciplines and functions, including engineering, medicine, and business. This book takes this comprehensive view of the process. You'll learn about:
* Medical - learn about the clinical trials process for medical devices (e.g. 510k / PMA) ... learn how to put together a clinical development plan & clinical trials plan
* Engineering - learn about prototyping, produce concept definitions, R&D strategy
* Business - learn about doing a market assessment ... how to put together a reimbursement strategy ... how to do a marketing & business plan ... how build your financial models
But more than just looking at the individual disciplines, this text looks at the innovation *process*. That is, it walks through idea/concept creation and screening, researching new clinical need areas, and important early due diligence (i.e. IP searches, researching unmet medical needs, doing a stakeholder analysis). Then, once you have your concept it takes you through developing your early prototype and putting together a development and business plan. Next, it discusses how you will want to go about pitching this to VCs and obtaining funding to implement your product. And finally, it touches on operation issues and exits once your product is launched.
The book is highly readable and is accessible to a wide range of backgrounds and knowledge levels. This is because it was designed to be a text for a course that was taken by b-school students, engineering graduate students, and med school students. Additionally it is very hands-on, and discusses the tangible *things* that need to be done as you go through the start-up innovation process, and includes numerous case studies. Some chapters are rather dense but these can be skimmed until you actual need to reference the material.
On caveat is that, while I think this text can be relevant for people that are interested in innovation and start-ups in biotech or other areas of life sciences, it is clearly targeted to medical devices & medtech.
Being a successful entrepreneur in medical devices requires a thorough understanding of each of these steps in the innovation process and all of the cross-functional disciplines that are involved in bringing a new innovation to market and to patients. This textbook understands this and tackles this topic with that principle in mind.

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Recognize market opportunities, master the design process, and develop business acumen with this 'how-to' guide to medical technology innovation. A three-step, proven approach to the biodesign innovation process - identify, invent, implement - provides a practical formula for innovation. The experiences of hundreds of innovators and companies, in the form of case studies, quotes and practical advice, offer a realistic, action-orientated roadmap for successful biodesign innovation. Real-world examples, end-of-chapter projects, and Getting Started sections guide the reader through each of the key stages of the process and provide a template to create their own new medical devices. Addressing common medical, engineering, and business challenges to develop well-rounded expertise, this book is the complete package for any biodesign entrepreneur. The text is supported by valuable resources, including up-to-date industry changes: found at ebiodesign.org.

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