Weird Ideas That Work: 18 Ways to Build Companies Where Innovation Never Stops

There is a growing concern - even obsession - with creativity in the workplace. But few of us have a clear idea about what it is. Bob Sutton's book begins by demystifying creativity at work and goes on to show how companies have managed and mismanaged the creative potential of their staff. His conclusions, drawn from close study of dozens of successful companies and hundreds of case studies, will come as a shock to anyone who thinks you can 'just add creativity' to a business and watch the profits roll in. Because not only is creativity messy and noisy, it is almost always useless. And that's if you're doing it right.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Why the weird ideas work: why these ideas work, but seem weird; what is creativity, anyway?. Part 2 The weird ideas: hire "slow learners" (of the organizational code) - weird idea no.1; hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike - weird idea no.1 1/2; hire people you (probably) don't need - weird idea no.2; use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates - weird idea no.3; encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers - weird idea no.4; find some happy people and get them to fight - weird idea no. 5; reward success and failure, punish inaction - weird idea no.6; decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain - weird idea no.7; think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, then plan to do them - weird idea no.8; avoid, distract and bore customers, critics and anyone who just wants to talk about money - weird idea no.9; don't try to learn anything from people who seem to have solved the problems you face - weird idea no.10; forget the past, especially your company's successes - weird idea no.11. Part 3 Putting the weird ideas to work: building companies where innovation is a way of life.

About the Author :
Robert Sutton is the bestselling author of The No Asshole Rule, on building civilized workplaces, which has sold 800,000 copies around the world, Good Boss, Bad Boss and Scaling Up Excellence. A professor at Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering, he co-launched the Designing Organizational Change Project, which develops evidence-based and useful ways to change organizations for the better. He is a fellow at IDEO and has published over 150 articles in academic journals and outlets such as the Harvard Business Review, the McKinsey Quarterly, and the Financial Times. Sutton was named as one of 10 B-School All-Stars by BusinessWeek, described as professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia. He tweets @work_matters