Creative People Must Be Stopped: essential insight into the idea process

The Yale University professor David A Owens examines "six ways we kill innovation without even trying".

Creative People Must Be Stopped David A Owens Jossey-Bass Dh129

The title – Creative People Must Be Stopped – refers to the motives of many unscrupulous management boards who seek to quash any iota of originality that might jeopardise their sales figures. Jokes aside, Vanderbilt University's Professor David Owens lists "six ways we kill innovation without even trying" and is serious enough about those issues to write a whole book devoted to them.

The six areas cover the scope of individual, group-centric, organisational, industrial, technological and societal concerns associated with innovation – or rather the lack of it. Drawing on his own experience as a consultant for organisations that include Nasa and Nissan, Owens is able to provide a range of case studies to illustrate the problems that occur in each sphere of idea design.

Aside from identifying them, the book aims to help resolve these issues as practically as possible. Along with describing alternative solutions, each chapter dedicated to the problem areas mentioned contains a prototype survey that can be implemented as the reader sees fit. As such, this text makes for essential reading in the business and marketing fields.