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Weird Ideas That Work

By: Robert I. Sutton
Narrated by: Gareth Prosser
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Publisher's summary

A breakthrough in management thinking, 'weird ideas' can help every organisation achieve a balance between sustaining performance and fostering new ideas.

Creativity, new ideas, innovation - in any age they are keys to success. Yet, as Stanford Professor Robert Sutton explains, the standard rules of business behaviour and management are precisely the opposite of what it takes to build an innovative company. We are told to hire people who will fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instil a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture. Weird Ideas that Work codifies these and other proven counter-intuitive ideas to help you turn your workplace from staid and safe to wild and woolly - and creative.

In Weird Ideas that Work Sutton draws on extensive research in behavioural psychology to explain how innovation can be fostered in hiring, managing and motivating people; building teams; making decisions; and interacting with outsiders. Business practices like 'hire people who make you uncomfortable' and 'reward success and failure, but punish inaction', strike many managers as strange or even downright wrong. Yet Weird Ideas that Work shows how some of the best teams and companies use these and other counter-intuitive practices to crank out new ideas and it demonstrates that every company can reap sales and profits from such creativity.

Weird Ideas that Work is filled with examples, drawn from high and low-tech industries, manufacturing and services, information and products. More than just a set of bizarre suggestions, it represents a breakthrough in management thinking: Sutton shows that the practices we need to sustain performance are in constant tension with those that foster new ideas. The trick is to choose the right balance between conventional and 'weird' - and now, thanks to Robert Sutton's work, we have the tools we need to do so.

©2002 Robert I. Sutton (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
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Critic reviews

"One of the best business books of the year." (Harvard Business Review)

"Stanford professor Robert Sutton is a unique voice with an urgent message about how to generate and capitalise on new ideas." (Fast Company)

What listeners say about Weird Ideas That Work

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Quite good except the narrator.

I'm a fan of Bob Sutton's work. As a lifelong inventor, I really like the fact that he focused on ifeas for creative innovation work rather than corporate drone work.

The narrator wasn't terrible, but je mispronounced or pronounced some words strangely that made it sound amateur for a professional narrator.

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Not recommended.

This book could have been a trifold brochure. It was repetitive and uninteresting. Also very male dominated. In addition to not being a compelling read, the narrator was completely distracting. The ever-changing accent was annoying, but the nonstop mispronunciation detracted from any message that could be gleaned from this book.

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