Creative People Must Be Stopped

By David Owens

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, or 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 constraint can be overcome. Every chapter concludes with a “Constraints Analysis Assessment”; these assessments are based on Owens’ research and consulting work and 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.

For more on the book, see the book’s web site.