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Making Stone Soup: How to Jumpstart Innovation Teams
Making Stone Soup is a colorful and entertaining how-to guide for jumpstarting innovation teams.
In the classic children's story, Stone Soup, three hungry strangers come to a wary village and set an empty cauldron in the town square. Using only their imagination, cleverness, and ability to improvise, they quickly enlist the skeptical townsfolk one by one until each has contributed a little something to the sumptuous feast. The story is a lesson on how to use a little creativity to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Making Stone Soup shares this simple and clear recipe for making collaborative innovation happen in four simple steps:
1. Setting high quality targets
2. Enlisting deep and diverse domain experts
3. Taking multiple shots on goal
4. Learning from experience and experiments
Making Stone Soup is short, fun and to the point. It's an excellent guide for anyone launching an innovation team, leading a creative project, or developing a novel solution. It's easy to understand and follow.
Making Stone Soup is filled with free resources to help you get started:
- A how-to jumpstart innovation video
- An innovation leadership assessment
- Access to a wide array of articles on innovation
Making Stone Soup gives you everything you need to make collaborative innovation happen.
In the classic children's story, Stone Soup, three hungry strangers come to a wary village and set an empty cauldron in the town square. Using only their imagination, cleverness, and ability to improvise, they quickly enlist the skeptical townsfolk one by one until each has contributed a little something to the sumptuous feast. The story is a lesson on how to use a little creativity to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Making Stone Soup shares this simple and clear recipe for making collaborative innovation happen in four simple steps:
1. Setting high quality targets
2. Enlisting deep and diverse domain experts
3. Taking multiple shots on goal
4. Learning from experience and experiments
Making Stone Soup is short, fun and to the point. It's an excellent guide for anyone launching an innovation team, leading a creative project, or developing a novel solution. It's easy to understand and follow.
Making Stone Soup is filled with free resources to help you get started:
- A how-to jumpstart innovation video
- An innovation leadership assessment
- Access to a wide array of articles on innovation
Making Stone Soup gives you everything you need to make collaborative innovation happen.
- GenresBusiness
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 8, 2014
2 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Degraff
40 books14 followersJeff DeGraff is the Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He teaches MBA, EMBA, BBA, and Executive Education courses on leading creativity, innovation and change. Jeff’s research and writing focuses on innovation strategy, change and innovation competency development, creativity and innovation practices and methods, creativity communities and innovation networks, and leadership development.
He is an author and co-author of the books Innovation You, Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen, Leading Innovation: How to Jumpstart Your Company’s Growth Engine and Competing Values Leadership: Creating Value in Organizations. His book, Making Stone Soup, is a finalist for several book awards. In his newest book Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict, he argues that diversity of thoughts is an essential to innovation. He urges everyone to practice constructive dialogue and work in diverse teams to find hybrid solutions and develop unique approaches to solve difficult problems. In “The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skills that Empower Innovation,” he and his wife, Staney, give all readers practical techniques and tools to be creative. It will be published in September 2020.
Jeff’s mission is “the democratization of innovation.” He brings innovation to everyone, every day and everywhere through his books, his public television program (Innovation You), columns (Inc.) and radio program (The Next Idea). His articles and thought leadership on contemporary business matters have been covered by Business Week, US News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few.
Jeff’s client list reads as a ‘who’s who’ within the world of innovators, including, among many others, General Electric, Coca-Cola, American College of Surgeons, and Google. In working with these prominent firms, he has developed a broad array of widely used change and innovation methodologies and tools. Jeff’s creative and direct take on making innovation really happen have made him a world renowned thought leader and have prompted his clients and colleagues to dub him as The Dean of Innovation.
Jeff is a Managing Partner of Innovatrium, an innovation center and consulting practice that specializes in helping organizations make change and innovation happen. He serves as an advisor to think tanks and governments. He has worked all over the world, with significant experience in Europe and Asia, and in most industry and market segments.
Jeff was a member of the executive team at Domino’s Pizza when it was one of the fastest growing businesses in the world in the 1980’s. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more information visit www.jeffdegraff.com.
He is an author and co-author of the books Innovation You, Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen, Leading Innovation: How to Jumpstart Your Company’s Growth Engine and Competing Values Leadership: Creating Value in Organizations. His book, Making Stone Soup, is a finalist for several book awards. In his newest book Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict, he argues that diversity of thoughts is an essential to innovation. He urges everyone to practice constructive dialogue and work in diverse teams to find hybrid solutions and develop unique approaches to solve difficult problems. In “The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skills that Empower Innovation,” he and his wife, Staney, give all readers practical techniques and tools to be creative. It will be published in September 2020.
Jeff’s mission is “the democratization of innovation.” He brings innovation to everyone, every day and everywhere through his books, his public television program (Innovation You), columns (Inc.) and radio program (The Next Idea). His articles and thought leadership on contemporary business matters have been covered by Business Week, US News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few.
Jeff’s client list reads as a ‘who’s who’ within the world of innovators, including, among many others, General Electric, Coca-Cola, American College of Surgeons, and Google. In working with these prominent firms, he has developed a broad array of widely used change and innovation methodologies and tools. Jeff’s creative and direct take on making innovation really happen have made him a world renowned thought leader and have prompted his clients and colleagues to dub him as The Dean of Innovation.
Jeff is a Managing Partner of Innovatrium, an innovation center and consulting practice that specializes in helping organizations make change and innovation happen. He serves as an advisor to think tanks and governments. He has worked all over the world, with significant experience in Europe and Asia, and in most industry and market segments.
Jeff was a member of the executive team at Domino’s Pizza when it was one of the fastest growing businesses in the world in the 1980’s. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more information visit www.jeffdegraff.com.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 16, 2018
So my mentor recommended me this book and it really got me thinking. First off, it had actual helpful content, and it was fun to read. The author made everything simple by bolding important information and including lots of color-coded graphs and diagrams. The author also gave tips to get motivated and went to into 4 groups of people, and how they deal with innovations. The yellow group who collaborate. The green group who creates. The red group who controls. And the blue group who completes. Looking in on the perspectives on all these groups was quite interesting! Overall, a superb read!
December 2, 2021
A distillation of the competing values framework to make team development and change management as practical as possible.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews