a triarchy press publication
'Inside Project Red Stripe:
Incubating Innovation and Teamwork
at The Economist'
by Andrew Carey
Publication Date: 21 October 2008
No. of Pages: 232
Book type: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9550081-6-0
List Price: £20.00
Offer price: £16.00
Inspection
Copy for lecturers
See the online version (chapters will be added periodically)
Sometimes a diary, sometimes an essay collection and always an insightful guide to the process of innovation, Inside Project Red Stripe chronicles the work of six staff members of The Economist, who were given £100,000 and six months to come up with 'the next big thing' that the company should do. The only stipulation was that it be Internet-related...
Inside Project Red Stripe unravels the many issues and dilemmas that The Economist's innovation team faced:
- How businesses should prepare for the next phase of web innovation
- How to integrate a team of complete strangers to work together seamlessly
- How to balance calls for transparency and the need for commercial secrecy
- How innovation might work in a world of online social networking and blogging
- How six people can survive in a tiny office for six months without killing each other
- How to evaluate ideas and choose the best
- How to merge technical and non-technical people on a technical project
- How well current theories of innovation work in practice
Andrew Carey draws upon the latest thinking in the areas of innovation, creativity and inspiration, team dynamics and the psychology of motivation, including Peter Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Teresa Amabile's Creativity Under the Gun, Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma and Carol Dweck's Mindset. He interweaves these theories of innovation and behaviour with particular examples from the story of the Project Red Stripe team, creating a catalogue of experience that echoes the most common challenges faced during the initial stages of any innovation project or by any new team.
For anyone involved with innovation or creativity in business or the public sector, or who is working in a media company or simply part of a team, Inside Project Red Stripe suggests new ways of approaching thorny problems and provides a wry insight into the workings of homo creativus. It also offers a fascinating look inside a small London office to show how six of The Economist's cleverest people worked at the 'bleeding edge' of technical and technological know-how but still didn't get their office door to stop slamming for the first five months.
About the author
Andrew Carey has spent his working life in publishing - commissioning, writing, editing and marketing business books, journals, magazines and newsletters. His main interest has been in emerging business improvement methodologies from TQM and SPC in the late 1980s, through Reengineering, Benchmarking, Company Self-Assessment and Business Excellence.
