Innovate or Die!: A Personal Perspective on the Art of Innovation

I really recommend this book and Jack Matson's approach. Just today, I was advising a student who said: "We tested our design and no one interacted with it the way we expected." I said, "That's great!" and she was incredulous. Then, we figured out how to strengthen her team's project before they had gotten too far into building it.This book has helped me be very enthusiastic and supportive of low-fidelity testing. I really push my students to build and test early. I've gone out and learned even more techniques from multiple fields, such as computer science, graphic design, interface design, and architecture.The book leaves out some practical questions about applying prototyping. What to prototype? Methods of prototyping? When to prototype? But these questions come from experience. The less experience, the more prototyping and more consulting you need to do. Someone else has the experience! I think the book would be strengthened with more research driven studies of failure and risk-taking in action, but such information is a current topic in research. More research needs to be done, in general, on understanding the balance between learning from mistakes, exploring the negative space, and the realm of successes.I think the book is a great companion to other current topics, as in Taleb's Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

I had the pleasure of taking Dr. Matson's Civil Engineering Course in 2002 at PSU that used this book as the required literature. I really appreciate how embracing failure and taking risks in an intelligent and FAST manner allows the creative process to evolve and become something successful. This book is a wonderful compilations of fast failure situations and scenarios and also highlights the importance of the collection of information to turn from failure into success. I have since picked up the book again to share with one of my management course as a Masters Student in Nutrition. The learning concept of IFF can be used in nearly every profession and this is a quick and motivational read.

This book has a different take on innovation through its most common ground, failing. The fact we fail doesn’t mean we’re a failure. It means we’re innovators, of matter how long it takes to get it. This is some of what you can learn with this book.

This looks like it was typeset by a local kids club. Every other page appears to have come from a copy machine made in about 1965. The rest maybe arrived at the printer by fax?The typesetting is good compared to the content. Save your money, This book is awful. There are so many typos it's difficult to read. There isn't much of value in this book unless you've never heard of innovating.Can't recommend.

Great fun read!

...whether 'tis nobler to overlook the problems of this book's physicality and gloss through the pages seeking insight or to pass by it on the bookshelf...The print-on-demand quality of this book is atrocious and there are many spelling errors that reflect poorly on the scholarly author. The ideas are reiterated to the point of weariness and give the appearance of serving as page-fillers. An updated edition with good editing and inclusion of new thoughts on innovation would vastly improve this book (written in 1996). This is an easy-to-read book and might interest someone interested in innovation as a beginner, perhaps suitable for a young adolescent. The highlights of this work are the Title and great Cover Design. That's what made me want to buy it. The other book I purchased at the same time, "Wild Scholars: Designing a learning system for educating Scholars toward their passions and purposes," was a much better read.

A wonderful book! Time to realize the positive side of failure--its among the best ways to learn. Rather than bottling up the bile of failure, distill it and learn from it. And, with that you can accelerate personal and professional growth.Leif SkoogforsLansdale, PA

Not the greatest book I've ever read. It paints with very broad strokes stating the obvious but unfortunately is short on original ideas.

I read before other books about creativity. I like Jack Matson promoting fast failing and explaining different aspects of innovation.I enjoyed life stories of people who use creativity to solve their problems.Book is short easy to read.

Downloaded this book in preparation for coursera course on InnovationThe book is excellent, however, the formatting to Kindle format is appalling - it starts off OK and then is like reading a photocopied version of the book - good job I could zoom in!

Ich habe das ebook gekauft, weil es mir in einem Online Kurs empfohlen wurde. Die einfache Sprache, allerdings in Englisch, erleichtert ungemein das Lesen. Jack Matson ist Professor an einer renomierten Uni in den USA und schöpft in diesem Buch aus seinem scheinbar grenzenlosen Erfahrungshorizont. Wenn also jemand wissen möchte wie man gewohnte Paradogmen brechen und Neues wirklich mit öffentlicher Akzeptanz erfindet, dann unbedingt dieses Buch lesen. Neben einer kurzen Einführung wie der Autor selbst zu innovativer Arbeit kam, setzt Jack Matson sehr viel auf Beispiel, vortrefflich aus dem Ingeniuerbereich, aber nicht nur. Er gibt dem Leser Methoden zur Ideengenerierung an die Hand und liefert weiter um diese zu spiegeln, umzusetzten und zu verfeinern.Für mich ein sehr gelungenes Buch und immer noch aktuell.

Very sober in its presentation, the book containing a wealth of ideas and inspiration to increase creativity and integrate it into their personal and professional lives everyday.A book easy to read, for everyone.

Good read and appropriate as a text for the creativity and innovation course run on Coursera by Penn State.