Book Review: Sticky Wisdom

“How to Start a Creative Revolution at Work” is the subtitle of this engaging, amusing and enlightening book. It does not disappoint. The book is very easy to read and is full of case studies and advice to help do things differently. The best illustration of this is the section about meetings on pages 135-138 with five terrific ideas to make meetings more effective. I guarantee that these ideas work because I have tried them!

Sticky Wisdom is written by staff of ?WhatIf! The Innovation Company and describes the behaviours they believe are critical for innovation in six chapters: Freshness, Greenhousing, Realness, Momentum, Signalling and Courage. Each chapter starts with some questions to let you know why this chapter is for you. There is short piece of theory and explanation of the behaviour and why it is important. Then there are case studies, examples and advice on how to embed these behaviours into your daily work. The idea is not to change the way you think but to change the way you act.

Those expecting a innovation process will be disappointed. This is not a book about how to do innovation. This is a book about how to behave while doing innovation. ?WhatIf! maintain that 50% of innovation is the doing i.e. the process and 50% is the being i.e. the behaviour. They believe that innovation is best done with a smile on your face. Who can argue with that?

One of the remarkable things I have found about ?WhatIf! is their ability to convey their ideas in a way that is truly memorable. Their use of stories and visual aids helps make their message sticky. I can remember verbatim some of the stories they told me at a workshop a year ago. How often does that happen? They have managed to capture some of that stickiness into this book and like the workshop, I find myself referring to the book even though I read it some time ago.

Perhaps the best part of the book is the very last chapter “a call to arms”. If you ever need reminding why innovation is important then just read this.

Available of course on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com and on other fine online emporiums

Sticky Wisdom by Dave Allan, Matt Kingdon, Kris Murrin and Daz Rudkin