Tag Archives: The Little Black Book of Innovation

How to Avoid Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins

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There are many traps that litter the ground in front of the would be innovator.  Author and business thinker Scott D. Anthony has developed the concept of innovation’s seven deadly sins, introduced in yesterday’s post. He found the idea of the seven deadly sins had very clear parallels in the world of innovation.

7DeadlySins

Here are Anthony’s summaries on how to avoid those deadly sins today.

  • Pride – take an external viewpoint to make sure you understand how the customer measures quality
  • Sloth – release your inner Edison (who said genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”)
  • Gluttony – embrace selective scarcity – constrain resources in the early stages of creativity to enable creativity
  • Lust – focus your innovation efforts; remember that destruction often precedes creation
  • Envy – actively celebrate both the core business and new growth efforts
  • Wrath – reward behavior, not outcomes
  • Greed – be patient for growth and impatient for results

How will you avoid falling into one of these traps when faced with it this week?

Explore more on this topic in Anthony’s excellent book The Little Black Book of Innovation.

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Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins

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Innovation – something different that has impact – is both more important and more accessible than ever before

–          Scott D. Anthony, The Little Black Book of Innovation

Something different that has impact.

This simple definition of innovation by author Scott Anthony belies the deep and resonating ideas in The Little Black Book of Innovation. From this simple definition, Anthony breaks down the essential differences between various types of innovation and illuminates its vital role in organizational success and personal growth.

What better way to introduce the topic to ChurchWorld leaders than start off with a list of Innovation’s Seven Deadly Sins:

  • Pride – forcing your view of quality onto your audience; often results in overshooting
  • Sloth – having innovation efforts slow to a crawl
  • Gluttony – suffering from the curse of abundance; leads to overly lows, overly linear innovation efforts
  • Lust – getting distracted by pursuing too many “Bright, shiny objects”
  • Envy – creating an us-versus-them relationship between the core and new growth efforts
  • Wrath – punishing risk takers severely
  • Greed – impatience for growth; leads to prioritizing low-potential markets

Tomorrow: How to Avoid the Seven Deadly Sins