 | Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas |
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Product Description
Change the way you think about new ideas by steering your creativity in new and more productive directions.
Ideas. Whether the goal is to create a billion-dollar business, fix a broken process, reduce expenses, or simply find the perfect gift for that special someone, we all need a steady stream of breakthrough ideas—and we've all learned from experience that traditional brainstorming doesn't generate them.
Former McKinsey consultants Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne have spent more than a decade developing a better approach—Brainsteering—that takes brainstorming and other outdated ideation techniques and "steers" them in a more productive direction by better reflecting the way human beings actually think and work in creative problem-solving situations. By introducing just the right amount of structure into the process, and asking just the right questions, Brainsteering has helped Fortune 500 companies, small not-for-profits, and individuals alike generate ideas they previously could never have imagined.
Peppered with thought-provoking and entertaining examples drawn from the workplace and popular culture, Brainsteering can help anyone develop breakthrough ideas, whether working alone on a one-time problem or turning an entire organization into an ongoing "idea factory." And getting started is easy: simply ask the right questions, and good ideas will follow.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #8672 in Books
- Published on: 2011-03-01
- Released on: 2011-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Tired of interminable brainstorming sessions dominated by a few bloviating blowhards--and rarely resulting in a usable idea? Good news: it's not only frustrating, it's been proven to be ineffective. While we all need a regular influx of breakthrough ideas, there's got to be a better way of sparking that creativity--and the brothers Coyne present a cogent way of doing it. They introduce readers to techniques for asking the right questions and sparking more powerful ideas. The concept underlying "brainsteering" is to encourage users to focus, to look into an idea deeply rather than ricocheting around, brainstorming-style. The Coynes present a number of real and proposed business cases, including successes like Forever Stamps and Jiffy Lube. Their logical thinking exercises will help readers to maximize their ideation skills, both by systematically exploring every possible nook and cranny of an issue to find new ideas, and by systematically evaluating and honing the results. (Mar.)
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Review
"The authors pepper their narrative with [...] idea-sparkers, with an appendix that is worth the cover price… [I]f the book evokes a few creative ideas, it will have done good service." (Kirkus Reviews )
"[The Coynes'] logical thinking exercises will help readers to maximize their ideation skills, both by systematically exploring every possible nook and cranny of an issue to find new ideas, and by systematically evaluating and honing the results." (Publishers Weekly )
About the Author
Kevin P. Coyne is a senior teaching professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a former senior partner and leader of the worldwide strategy practice at McKinsey & Company.
Shawn T. Coyne is a management consultant with twenty-five years of experience in strategy, marketing, and organizational leadership at Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, and other leading firms.
Kevin and Shawn are the managing directors of The Coyne Partnership, a boutique consulting firm serving senior executives and boards of directors in both the private and public sectors. Their articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Sloan Management Review, and on BusinessWeek.com, and they have been featured throughout the media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, CNBC, NPR, and Fox Business News.
Customer Reviews
Great book- wish I'd known this stuff sooner
Great book. Heard about it on Gabe Wisdom's talk show as I was driving home from work last week, and now that I've read it I wish I'd known this stuff sooner. After wasting way too much time in corporate brainstorming sessions over the past 20 years, I can relate to all the problems they describe, and their new approach makes perfect sense. Also like the fact that they offer so many tips on how to think up new ideas even if I'm working by myself. Two favorite sections are Part I about "asking the right questions" and Part IV about "how to create your own billion-dollar idea". And there's tons of examples -- favorite one was the Harvard swimmer who first invented the dolphin kick and went from freshman squad nobody to Olympic gold medal winner.
How to come up with new and better ideas all day, every day, and even on demand?
Kevin Coyne and Shawn Coyne respond to that question by providing in this volume an abundance of valuable information, insights, caveats, and recommendations that quickly identify the "what" and then focus intensively on the "why" and "how" of what they characterize as "a better approach to breakthrough ideas." Heaven knows there are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of books already in print that make the same claim. My own opinion is that the Coynes' approach is comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective...and one of the best I have as yet encountered.
Their approach is research- and results-driven, based on two core principles: (1) "If you ask the right questions, answers and good ideas soon follow" and (2) "The right process for consistently generating breakthrough ideas looks very different from what [most people have] probably been taught." In other words, asking the right questions and following the right process will "steer" the brain to the right answers.
It is worth noting that the material provided is based on revelations generated by more than 200 McKinsey client projects, refined further by other real-world applications of insights and practices. The Coynes come across to me as being diehard pragmatists who are determined to share everything they have learned about establishing and then sustaining a process by which to generate new and better ideas all day, every day, and even on demand.
The exemplary breakthroughs they cite include easily portable personal computers (How to create one that fits into an overhead bin on an airplane?), direct sales of personal computers (How to by-pass costs and complications of the retail channel?), and large-scale "category killer" stores (Can hardware and office supplies be sold the same way Toys R Us sells its merchandise?) The visionary founders and co-founders of the most successful start-ups (e.g. Apple, Google, Facebook) all claim that they knew which questions to ask, how to answer them, and then how to apply effectively what the answers revealed.
The Coynes organize their material within four Parts: First, they explain how to know what the right questions are and how/where to answer them; next, they explain how to maximize what they call "personal ideation skills" such as MECE (see Pages 72-73) and using analysis to identify anomalies; then they explain how to "lead others to great ideas"; and finally, in Chapter 10, they explain how to develop "your own billion-dollar idea." They identify and then discuss four principles that can help to guide and inform the development of a breakthrough idea, whatever its monetary value proves to be.
Along the way, the Coynes explain what differentiates the Brainsteering approach from any others. For example, they note that it "exploits two tendencies that cause most people to miss certain kinds of insights. The first tendency is to be biased toward believing that any well-functioning process doesn't bear questioning...The second tendency is to simplify a complex world through norms and averages. People's lives are complicated. In fact, every element of their lives seems complicated."
I think the Coynes were shrewd when they decided to frame their material within a series of questions that serve two separate but related and especially important purposes: They stimulate, indeed require disciplined thinking by their reader and thus encourage the reader to interact with the material; also, the questions serve as examples of the kinds of questions - and sequences of questions - that must be asked and then answered, not only about how to generate breakthrough ideas but also about a book such as this that claims to offer a better process to do that.
Intellectual Candy
A book showing how to do something needs to have two things: ideas that really work and a style that interests and intrigues. Brainsteering has both of these characteristics. The authors' step-by-step processes are sound and will stimulate a wide range of great ideas. Their writing style is fun to read, exciting at points. Their stories illuminate the concepts and make them sound like something most readers could do. They present good and practical ideas in a way that's easy to absorb. I'm looking forward to trying some of this out.
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