Barnabas File

The authors of this book begin by paraphrasing Frederick Buechner: “being an innovator means being called to where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”    They develop the argument that developers get stuck, and innovation fails often “because innovators pay too much attention to their deep gladness and not enough to the world’s deep hunger.”   At the heart of innovation is the focus on authentic demand, people buying and using something because it becomes part of their lives.  For example, no one knew they needed a phone that could do everything until Steve Jobs led Apple to create one.  Now no one can live without such a device. It has become part of our lives.    They identify three forms of innovation:  Informative, Transformative, and Formative. Informative innovations provide more of the same with incremental change and some increased value.  Transformative innovations change the user’s perception a...