A framework for overcoming the six types of innovation killers Everybody wants innovation or do they? Creative People Must Be Stopped shows how individuals and organizations sabotage their own best intentions to encourage "outside the box" thinking.

Introduction: Creative People Must Be Stopped! 1 1. The Context of Innovation: Why Everyone Wants Innovation but No One Wants to Change 3 2. Why Most of Us Are More Creative Than We Think: Individual Innovation Constraints 25 3. Why a Brainstorm Meeting Can Be Worse Than No Meeting at All: Innovation Constraints in Groups 57 4. Why You’ll Never Be a Prophet in Your Hometown: Organizational Innovation Constraints 95 5. If It’s Such a Great Idea, Why Isn’t Our Competitor Doing It? Industry Innovation Constraints 125 6. Why My Innovation Means You Have to Change: Societal Innovation Constraints 157 7. How to Take a Really Hard Problem and Make It Completely Impossible: Technological Innovation Constraints 187 8. When Failure Is Not an Option: Leading an Innovation Strategy 223 Appendix A: Using the Assessment Results 249 Appendix B: Innovation Team Contract Guidelines 255 Appendix C: An Innovation Bookshelf 259 References 261 Acknowledgments 267 About the Author 271 Index 273

While most organizations give lip service to promoting innovation and creative ideas, they all too often sabotage “outside-the-box” thinking among the rank and file. In this book, David Owens has identified the six dominant types of constraints (individual, group, organizational, industry-wide, societal, and technological) that can keep creative new ideas from being formulated, developed into marketable products and services, or adopted by the intended users. Creative People Must Be Stopped organizes these innovation killers into a conceptual framework that demystifies what innovation is, how it happens, and how we stop it without even trying. This proven framework has been used to diagnose the primary causes of innovation failure within hundreds of organizations that have gone on to develop strategies that foster innovation rather than stopping it in its tracks. Filled with illustrative examples from real-world organizations, the book explores each type of constraint in detail and shows how it operates and why. This analysis is followed by a discussion of ways that particular constraints can be overcome. Every chapter concludes with a “Constraints Diagnostic Survey.” These asessments are based on Owens’s research and consulting work, and they provide a pointer to the most urgent and potentially limiting constraints an organization may be facing. In addition, Creative People Must Be Stopped contains an exercise tool designed to help move leaders toward action to overcome the constraints that have been identified. Owens also explores the big-picture issues that can arise when spearheading an innovation team and discusses the steps needed to help organizations become more strategic about innovation. Creative People Must Be Stopped gives leaders the tools they need to foster an atmosphere of creativity and innovation.

"Creative People Must Be Stopped is among the best books ever written about human imagination in the workplace. David Owens is a master innovator, having practiced his craft as a product designer, researcher, teacher, creativity coach, and executive.  The breadth and depth of his experience fills every page of this little gem, which is chock full of hundreds of big and little steps that you can take right now to do more creative work and to lead more innovative teams and organizations."—Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor, Author of the New York Times bestseller Good Boss, Bad Boss "This is no rarefied academic treatment on innovation as an abstract ideal, but a nuts and bolts handbook to dissecting our thought patterns about innovation. Owens dispels the myth that innovation is a binary trait that either exists or does not in a given product, process or business model. Creative People Must be Stopped addresses the myriad ways that novel ideas can fail in the marketplace. Working through a combination of thought experiments and real world examples, the book demonstrates how failures in understanding the context for innovation can prove every bit as deadly to progress as failures of imagination."—Mark Rowan, President, Griffin Technology Inc. "Dave Owens has delivered the survival guide every would-be innovation team requires before entering the fracas battle of bringing ideas to life. Read '6 Ways We Kill Innovation' if you are serious about making stuff and making stuff happen in this dangerous world for good ideas and the creative people who love them."—Peter Durand, Alphachimp Studio, Leading expert in graphic facilitation