Eat, Sleep, Innovate’s appendix provides the following reference materials and tools:
The following “bookshelf” contains the authors’ favorite literature related to the topics in Eat, Sleep, Innovate.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker (1985). Rereading Drucker is always amazing. He was way ahead of his time.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank (2005). Not as widely known as Eric Ries’s 2011 book The Lean Startup, but Blank served as Ries’s mentor and serves as the originator of the translation of academic research by Rita McGrath, Henry Mintzberg, and others into the world of startups.
Change by Design by Tim Brown (2009). A very useful overview of the principles and practices of design thinking by IDEO’s longtime CEO.
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur (2010). A practical, visual guide to business models and a great companion to Reinvent Your Business Model by Innosight’s Mark Johnson (2018).
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen et al. (2012). Clearly, many Christensen books could make this list, but this is the most accessible guide to his core research.
Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath (2019). Many McGrath books and articles could make this list as well. This is her most recent feature-length book and provides a good overview of her other work.
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (2003). This book showcases the concept that, by focusing on energy and not on time, one can achieve peak performance and get more done by doing less.
Mindset by Carol Dweck (2006). Dweck’s research and cogent writing on fixed-versus-growth mindsets has influenced everything from organizational design to school curriculums.
Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (2007). This book is academically rich while also driving real practical impact; it helped, for instance, to inform the formation of the “nudge unit” (formally known as the Behavioural Insights Team) in the UK government.
Switch by Chip and Dan Heath (2010). Like all the books by the Heath brothers, this is very accessible, providing a practical guide to behavior change.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011). The seminal work by the person who many consider the intellectual founder of behavioral psychology.
Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein (first published in 1985). Schein’s work—particularly that on breaking culture down into artifacts, espoused values, and shared assumptions—has defined the field for two generations.
Change the Culture, Change the Game by Roger Connors and Tom Smith (2011). This book details how organizations can build and then sustain a new culture by fostering accountability across all levels and by considering the relationships between experiences, beliefs, actions, and results.
Collective Genius by Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback (2014). A powerful book that details how “creative abrasion” can unleash innovation.
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace (2014). The Pixar story told in this book is compelling and serves as a practical guide to creating a culture that spurs creativity.
The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson (2018). This is a great book that showcases how psychological safety encourages risk-taking and innovation.
Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982). A timeless classic that shaped the quality movement, which informed agile development, the lean startup, and more.
Managing to Learn by John Shook (2008). One of Paul’s nominees, this book goes deep into “A3 thinking,” one of the pillars of lean management. Paul’s review: “Amazing.”
Building a Growth Factory by Scott D. Anthony and David S. Duncan (2012). This is the shortest of the eleven books written by members of Innosight’s leadership team, and, dare we say, the dullest. But it provides (in our view!) a clear, cogent overview of how to think systematically about innovation.
Scaling Up Excellence by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao (2014). A useful, scientifically grounded guide to what it takes to scale and spread good ideas in established organizations.
Measuring What Matters by John Doerr (2018). This recent book is an accessible guide to the ideas that longtime Intel CEO detailed in the classic book High Output Management, most notably the power of OKRs (objectives and key results).
There is no shortage of advice for the culture-change-seeking leader. The word cloud that follows (shaped like a butterfly to indicate “change”) resulted from an Innosight team analyzing twenty-two articles on culture change. The articles were published between 2014 and 2019 in the Harvard Business Review, the Sloan Management Review, and the McKinsey Quarterly, and in literature by design consulting company IDEO. Ten of the articles had some variant of the word “innovation” in the title. Ten themes appeared across multiple articles and stand as reasonable principles for driving culture change:
Are your Happy Harrys fearful of expressing themselves? Have they broken through their individual shackles but lack the skills to successfully innovate? Or is there yet another barrier standing in the way of creating a culture where the behaviors that drive innovation success come naturally? The culture of innovation diagnostic goes through five areas to help you answer these questions.
The perception battery has twelve items:
Respondents are given seven answer choices for the above questions:
The total score for this section ranges from 12 to 84.
This battery asks respondents about the degree to which they individually possess fourteen specific skills that help to drive innovation success.
For more information on these skills, see The First Mile, The Lean Startup, Discovery-Driven Growth, and The Innovator’s DNA.
Respondents are given four answer choices to use for the questions above:
The total score for this section ranges from 0 to 70.
This section asks respondents about the last time they engaged in twelve specific innovation practices.
Respondents are given four answer choices:
The total score for this section ranges from 0 to 60.
This section asks respondents about their work experiences to gauge the presence of fifteen specific innovation enablers.
The answer choices are the same as those in the perceptions section. The total score for this section ranges from 15 to 105.
The section asks five questions about the degree to which a company’s innovation efforts are creating value.
The answer choices are the same as those in the perceptions section. The total score for this section ranges from 5 to 25.
Our culture of innovation score gives equal weight to perception, skills, behaviors, and enablers. Performance is not part of the score. To calculate the score, we divide each section by its maximum score, and multiply by 25. See the table below for an example calculation.
Section score |
Max section score |
Percent of max score |
Weighted score (out of 25) |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Perception |
50 |
84 |
59.5% |
14.9 |
||||
Proficiencies |
35.5 |
70 |
50.7% |
12.7 |
||||
Practices |
49 |
60 |
81.7% |
20.4 |
||||
Enablers |
48 |
105 |
45.7% |
11.4 |
The resulting score in this case is a 59.4 out of 100.
The full survey also asks basic demographic questions around an individual’s geographic base and job role. Adding on customized choices, such as a division or home office, allows an analysis of how culture-of-innovation scores vary across an organization.
The survey is available on this book’s companion website (www
The culture of innovation diagnostic is still an emergent instrument and not the result of rigorous academic research. As such, the results, particularly if the survey is self-administered, should be viewed as directional and illustrative.
The culture of innovation diagnostic is a serious instrument. And innovation—something different that creates value—requires a serious ongoing commitment. But many leaders who think they are seriously committed to innovation are really just flirting with it. There’s nothing wrong with flirting—or even with taking the next step and having an innovation fling—as long as leaders recognize that they aren’t likely to get significant returns without making a more serious commitment.
Unfortunately, because innovation is so frequently confused with creativity or the generation of ideas, many companies dramatically overestimate their commitment to innovation. That leads to disappointment when creative ideas don’t translate into impact. The short quiz below, inspired by the somewhat tongue-in-cheek quizzes that populate fashion magazines, is a simple way to assess your organization’s commitment level to innovation.
A Fling |
Committed |
|||||
Who is working on innovation? |
What’s innovation? (If this is your answer, you might want to stop the quiz now!) |
Some people spend bounded time on innovation (like on Free Thinking Fridays). |
We have dedicated resources who eat and sleep innovation. |
|||
What are the backgrounds of the people working on it? |
Some of our best performers. |
Internal employees who have demonstrated a history of successful innovation. |
A blend of internal talent and external hires who have a proven track record. |
|||
What are they working on? |
Nothing specific—it takes a thousand flowers, right? |
All hands are on deck for a single make-or-break “bet the company” initiative. |
We have a portfolio of efforts ranging from day-to-day improvements to more strategic opportunities. |
|||
Where does the money come from? |
Our budget is focused on operating priorities, so there isn’t any money for it. |
We don’t have a budget for innovation, but we find money when we need it. |
We have a dedicated budget for innovation. |
|||
What’s in it for them? |
Suffering—it’s their job. If they screw up, they’ll feel it. |
Glory—the spotlight shines bright when they succeed. |
Riches—we have specific incentive programs for innovation. |
|||
What is leadership’s role? |
Get out of the way—we don’t want to constrain it. |
We have a special quarterly meeting where senior leaders talk about it. |
We have a member of the executive committee or board who owns it. |
|||
Word association: “Innovation is …” |
Random! We just hope for the best. |
Fun! We support it but don’t constrain it. |
A discipline! We approach it systematically. |
Give yourself a point for every answer in the left column, three points for every answer in the middle column, and five for every answer in the right column. Use your total score find where you stand on the scale below.
BEANs are behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges that hack habits, encourage innovative ways of working, and drive cultural change that sticks and scales. This book included detailed writeups of these forty-two BEANs.
Organization and BEAN name |
Description |
|
Adobe—Kickbox (chapter 3) |
A physical box with step-by-step experiment guides and a prepaid $1,000 debit card |
|
Airbnb—Live from Day 1 (chapter 7) |
Direct encouragement to push code to the website on a coder’s first day |
|
Amazon.com—Empty Chair (chapter 6) |
The ritual of leaving an empty chair to remind meeting participants of the importance of the customer |
|
Amazon.com—Future Press Release (chapter 3) |
The practice of describing ideas via “future press releases” from a customer perspective |
|
Asana—No Meeting Wednesday (chapter 8) |
Guidelines to have one day a week where employees can do “deep work” |
|
Atlassian—Premortem (chapter 7) |
Team discussions over what factors could lead projects to fail, helping them to anticipate issues before they happen |
|
BNP Paribas—Innovation Book and Awards (chapter 6) |
An idea contest where the best ideas are collated into a book |
|
Boehringer Ingelheim—Lunch Roulette (chapter 3) |
An easy-to-use website to set up “lunch dates” with new people |
|
Bridgewater—transparent employee ratings (chapter 7) |
An employee-rating mechanism to publicly determine each employee’s strengths and weakness and to share ratings on virtual “baseball cards” |
|
Danfoss—Man on the Moon (chapter 5) |
An innovation competition to encourage expansive thinking |
|
DBS—Culture Canvas (case study after chapter 3) |
A ritual where a team fills in and then signs a poster-sized template with business goals, team roles, and norms |
|
DBS—Culture Radar (chapter 7) |
A mechanism to visualize and track experiments related to culture change. |
|
DBS—Gandalf Scholarship (chapter 3) |
Employees can receive S$1,000 (US$740) to study any topic of interest, as long as they teach it back to the organization |
|
DBS—Joy Space (chapter 8) |
An open infrastructure to encourage agile ways of working and to spark collaboration |
|
DBS—Kiasu Committee (chapter 8) |
A mock courtroom in which any employee can “sue” the owner of a policy or process that is unnecessarily standing in the way of getting things done |
|
DBS—MOJO (case study after chapter 2) |
A way to bring greater discipline and inclusivity to meetings by routinely designating a Meeting Owner (“MO”), who sets the agenda and ensures wide participation, and a Joyful Observer (“JO”), who intervenes if people are distracted and provides public feedback to the MO |
|
DBS—70:20:10 (case study after chapter 3) |
A framework borrowed from a similar program at Google suggesting that developers spend 70 percent of their time on day-to-day work, 20 percent on work-improvement ideas, and 10 percent on experiments and pet projects |
|
DBS—Team Temp (case study after chapter 3) |
Teams use a web-based app to gauge a project team’s mood, both quantitatively and qualitatively |
|
DBS—Wreckoon (chapter 7) |
A PowerPoint slide randomly appears during meetings, with questions to prompt candid discussions |
|
Google—Bureaucracy Busters (chapter 5) |
Organization-wide ideation sessions to source ideas for reducing organizational red tape |
|
Google—#MonkeyFirst (chapter 7) |
A mantra and ritual to focus attention on the hardest problem first |
|
HubSpot—Unlimited Free Books (chapter 5) |
A program through which anyone can get any book free of charge |
|
Innocent—Just Go with It (chapter 7) |
A practice in which employees who are 70 percent confident in an idea are encouraged to try it out |
|
Innosight—Innosight Different (chapter 3) |
Visible cartoons and an annual award to reinforce following values like humility and collaboration, supported by a regular survey that nudges leader role-modeling |
|
Innosight—First Friday (chapter 3) |
A monthly ritual where the organization gathers, thoughtfully designed and supported to spur collaboration |
|
Intuit—innovation catalysts (chapter 8) |
Trained employees who act as coaches for up to 10 percent of their time |
|
LinkedIn—InDay (chapter 8) |
A ritual where employees invest one day a month on themselves and their passion projects |
|
MetLife—LumenLab Wall of Customers (chapter 5) |
A structured way to help employees better relate to customers |
|
Nordstrom—“Yes, and …” (chapter 6) |
The practice of having critique come in the form of “Yes, and …” |
|
Optus—Close-Ups (chapter 5) |
A program where people spend a day in a store with the customer relations team |
|
Pixar—Braintrust (chapter 6) |
A group of diverse thinkers who ritualistically provide honest critiques on work-in-progress movies |
|
Pixar—intersection-supporting infrastructure (chapter 6) |
Office design with open infrastructure that encourages chance meetings and spurs creativity |
|
Pixar—Plussing (chapter 6) |
The practice of making sure critique is balanced with constructive suggestions |
|
Qualcomm—My Pain Points (chapter 5) |
A ritual where individuals share interesting articles or experiences to spark creativity |
|
Qualcomm—Stumping Google (chapter 5) |
A ritual of enabling creativity by trying to design a Google query that returns no results |
|
Singtel—WITCH (chapter 4) |
The ritual of regularly asking, “Who is the customer here?” “What is their concern?” and “What is the conclusion?” to reinforce customer-centricity |
|
Spotify—Bets Board (chapter 8) |
A centralized database containing all of Spotify’s innovation bets that all employees can access |
|
Supercell—Cheers to Failure (chapter 7) |
The standard process of celebrating success with beer and failure with champagne, with stories shared publicly |
|
Tasty Catering—Great Game of Business (chapter 8) |
A weekly game that associates play to learn more about how the business operates |
|
Tata—Dare to Try (chapter 3) |
An annual prize and public recognition for teams that failed but learned something valuable |
|
Toyota—A3 Report (chapter 6) |
A succinct communications tool in which essential information is captured on a single A3-sized page |
|
Toyota—Andon Cord (chapter 8) |
A mechanism by which employees are empowered to stop production when they see a problem |
Innosight has collated another fifty-nine BEANs, which are detailed below.
Organization and BEAN name |
Description |
|
3M—Thou Shall Not Kill a New Product Idea |
A management policy never to immediately reject new ideas proposed by employees |
|
Airbnb—Elephants, Dead Fish, and Vomit |
A common vocabulary to catalyze honest two-way conversations (“elephants” are big things no one is talking about, “dead fish” are incidents from a few years back that people can’t get over, and “vomit” represents issues that people just need to get out of their systems) |
|
Alibaba Group—Aliway |
An internal, rewards-based communications platform to solicit honest firmwide feedback on ideas |
|
Alibaba Group—Kung Fu Nicknames |
The practice of giving employees kung fu nicknames (founder Jack Ma’s was Feng Qingyang) to break down barriers and encourage collaboration1 |
|
Amazon.com—Disagree and Commit |
A principle to encourage debates during decision-making but to give 100 percent commitment to the decisions made |
|
Amazon.com—Institutional Yes |
Formal mechanisms to discourage rejection of ideas without an explanation or suggestions to improve it |
|
Amazon.com—memos over slides |
The practice of sending memos for prereading instead of using PowerPoints during meetings to encourage focused discussions |
|
Amazon.com—The “?” Email |
A process in which CEO Jeff Bezos forwards customer complaints to relevant employees with a simple “?” as the subject line, with an expectation that a response will come in a few hours |
|
Amazon.com—Two-Pizza Rule |
A mantra and principle to keep teams small enough to be fed by two pizzas, in order to encourage collaboration and agility |
|
Amazon.com—WOCAS Reports |
An automated process to extract customer insights (“What our customers are saying?”) from contact centers and share them with the relevant departments |
|
Apple—Monday is Review Day |
A ritual to ensure an efficient and lean decision-making process during time-critical product-development cycles |
|
Asana—Polish Week and Grease Week |
A practice where employees spend a week each to improve customer experiences (polish) and back-end processes (grease) |
|
Atlassian—Innovation Week |
A weeklong hackathon to create a feature or prototype for a bounded strategic area |
|
Atlassian—Shipit |
A dedicated twenty-four-hour hackathon to question the status quo and create something new |
|
Bank of America—data-based employee experience design |
A program to collect behavior data using wearable devices and use that data to create better employee experiences, such as common lunch hours to facilitate knowledge sharing |
|
Conductrics—Best Case, Worst Case |
The practice of accelerating decision-making by articulating the best and worst outcomes for each idea |
|
DBS—3S 1R |
People presenting ideas need to have three suggestions (3S) and one recommendation (1R), which encourages divergent thinking and empowerment |
|
Evernote—The Dialogue Box |
A weekly ritual where senior leaders dedicate an hour to chat with employees |
|
Facebook—Faceversary |
An annual ritual of celebrating employee anniversaries |
|
Google—café for interactions |
An infrastructure to encourage interactions and collaboration |
|
Google—Fixit Sprints |
A twenty-four-hour sprint dedicated to fixing a specific problem |
|
Google—Googlegeist |
An annual firmwide survey to solicit feedback on a range of topics |
|
Google—GUTS |
A mechanism by which employees raise issues using the Google Unified Tracking System (GUTS) and leaders prioritize issues worth solving |
|
Google—Noogler Hat |
The ritual of making new employees feel welcome and at ease during their first firmwide meeting by having them wear a funny hat saying they are a new Googler, or “Noogler” |
|
Google—Nooglers, Xooglers, and Spooglers |
Standard terms used to refer to employees and their families: a Noogler is a new employee, a Xoogler is a former employee, and an employee’s spouse or significant other is a Spoogler |
|
Google—OKR sharing |
Product-development teams publicly share objectives and key results to create alignment and accountability |
|
Google—Tech Talks |
A series of talks on diverse topics to infuse diversity in thinking and curiosity |
|
Google—10X Thinking |
A guiding principle and ritual that encourages people to think about what it would take to come up with something ten times better than current solutions |
|
HubSpot—JEDI: “Just Effing Does It” |
An award to recognize an ownership mindset and proactive actions |
|
HubSpot—Unlimited Free Meals Program |
A fully sponsored lunch program to encourage curiosity and collaboration |
|
HubSpot—SFTC: “Solve for the Customer” |
A mantra and guiding principle to encourage customer-centricity |
|
IBM—Innovation Jam |
A large-scale online platform to solicit opinions and suggestions on varied topics |
|
IDEO—Tea Time |
The ritual of sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas over sponsored tea and snacks |
|
Jobvite—Rookie Cookies |
A ritual in which new-hires bring cookies on their first day to share with colleagues and encourage introductory conversations |
|
Johnson & Johnson—Creative Engagement Community |
A community program and tools to encourage employees to develop themselves and their ideas |
|
Kraft—Foodii |
A online employee community for conducting market research, generating ideas, and testing new concepts |
|
LinkedIn—company all-hands |
Biweekly full-company meetings to encourage open communication and collaboration |
|
LinkedIn—Space Lift |
An annual workplace decoration competition to encourage humor and a sense of belonging |
|
Nestlé—reverse mentoring |
A reverse mentoring program, where insights and business concepts are exchanged between young and senior executives |
|
OOG Rotterdam Eye Hospital—Team-Start Huddles |
A daily team huddle to encourage open communication and collaboration |
|
OXO—Glove Wall |
Lost gloves, signifying the different hands that touch OXO’s products, are displayed on the wall to nudge customer-centricity |
|
P&G—Heroic Failure Awards |
An award ceremony to recognize intelligent risk-taking and failures |
|
Pixar—effective postmortems |
Data-informed after-action review sessions to capture learnings |
|
Pixar—Failure Gallery |
Artifacts from failed projects that are displayed in a gallery to celebrate failures and nudge experimentation |
|
Pixar—Incomplete Works |
The ritual of sharing unfinished work at team meetings to catalyze creativity |
|
Pixar—Notes Day |
An all-hands-on-deck day dedicated to improving operational efficiency |
|
Porch—Around-the-Porch |
A weekly ritual of discussing experiments and their outcomes |
|
Porch—Mr. Sparkles |
A ritual in which employees who try something big and bold but spectacularly fail proudly display a stuffed animal, named Mr. Sparkles, on their desks for a week |
|
Qualcomm—Flux |
An employee-driven ideation ritual where diverse groups spend ninety minutes every two weeks to discuss user needs worth solving |
|
Rite-Solutions—Mutual Fun |
A gamified employee upvoting system to prioritize projects and make investment decisions via an internal ideas stock market |
|
Spotify—experimentation weeks |
Weeklong “unbounded” hackathon events to drive experimentation and risk-taking |
|
Spotify—Fail Wall |
The ritual of showcasing and discussing failures to capture learning and encourage risk-taking |
|
SWA—Culture Wall |
A physical wall with photos of people, inspirational ideas, trends, news stories, and current work projects to remind employees of the world beyond their desks and office |
|
Toyota—5 Whys |
A ritual of arriving at the root cause of the problem by asking “Why?” five times |
|
Toyota—TCISS |
A platform called Toyota’s Creative Idea and Suggestion System (TCISS) to collect ideas augmented by an award ceremony to recognize the best ones |
|
Toyota—Impossible Goals |
The practice of setting audacious goals to inspire employees and encourage expansive thinking |
|
Twitch—new-employee videos |
An employee onboarding process in which new-hires share a video about themselves at companywide events |
|
Twitter—weekly launch meetings |
Weekly team meetings where experiment data is used to drive launch decisions |
|
Vivint—full-scale model home |
A large-scale physical replica of a customer’s home to support customer-centricity |
|
1. We’re not sure this counts as a kung fu nickname, but a team once gave Scott a bobblehead with his head on the body of Yoda from the Star Wars movies, leading to the nickname … wait for it … Scoda. |
You can see more complete descriptions of the 101 BEANs listed here and download BEANstorming cards from our companion website at www
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