The Innovation Formula. Imber Amantha

p>Amantha Imber

      The Innovation Formula

      THE

      FORMULA

      THE 14 SCIENCE-BASED KEYS FOR CREATING

      A CULTURE WHERE INNOVATION THRIVES

      DR AMANTHA IMBER

      First published in 2016 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

      42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064

      Office also in Melbourne

      © Inventium Pty Ltd ATF Inventium Trust 2016

      The moral rights of the author have been asserted

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

      Cover design by Wiley

      Light bulb cover image by © Chones/Shutterstock; formulas and equations cover image by © BORTEL Pavel – Pavelmidi/Shutterstock

      Cover art direction by Lars Wannop

      Disclaimer

      The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

For Shannon. And for Frankie, our joint (and best) innovation

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Dr Amantha Imber is an innovation psychologist, a best-selling author, and the founder of Australia's leading innovation consultancy, Inventium. Inventium has been recognised as one of Australia's fastest growing companies in the BRW Fast 100 list, and was also awarded the BRW Client Choice Award for Best Management Consultancy in Australia.

      With a PhD in organisational psychology, Amantha has helped companies such as Google, Coca-Cola, Disney, Lego, Red Bull, American Express, McDonald's, Virgin Australia, Commonwealth Bank and many others innovate more successfully. Amantha was a finalist in the 2015 Telstra Business Women's Awards.

      Amantha is the cocreator of the BRW Most Innovative Companies list, an annual list compiled by Inventium that ranks Australia's top innovators. She has written for publications including The Australian Financial Review, BRW, Australian Business Solutions and Smart Company and is the author of the best-selling book The Creativity Formula: 50 scientifically proven creativity boosters for work and for life.

      Amantha had an international record deal for her debut album Like Samantha without the S, prays to the God of Kevin Spacey and claims to have once been freakishly good at table tennis.

      Visit inventium.com.au to find out more about Amantha and her team at Inventium, what they do and what they've been thinking about lately. You can also find Amantha on Twitter (@amantha) and via her website at www.amanthaimber.com.

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I don't know about you, but I am the sort of person who loves reading the Acknowledgements section of books! As such, I spent an inordinate amount of time writing this section because a) books don't get written without a lot of help and support from others and b) because I am a big fan of Acknowledgements sections.

      First, you would not be reading this book if it were not for Kristen Hammond at Wiley. Kristen, thank you for believing that people would be interested in what I had to write and for being so liberal with your compliments and encouragement along the journey. Thanks also to the rest of the amazing team at Wiley, including Ingrid Bond, Chris Shorten, Alice Berry, Peter Walmsley and Theo Vassili.

      Thank you to Jane Thompson, my amazing editor, who made me sound way more succinct and articulate than I actually am!

      A big thank-you to Chad Dickerson, Dae Mellencamp, Stuart Smith, Barry Gold, Christine Gilroy, Megan Kachur, Derek O'Donnell, Hugh Molotsi, Mike Finch, Neil Christie, Kirsten O'Doherty, Evan Cohen, Mariah Monaghan, Tiziana Bianco and Wendy Mayer. I am indebted to you for your generosity with your stories and your time. The examples you gave me about what you are each doing in your organisations was inspiring to me, and I am sure are just as inspiring to the book's readers.

      Thanks to Jason Fox, who introduced me to the wonderful team at Wiley in the first place, and for being someone I could moan to about the stress of writing a book and running a busy consultancy at the same time.

      Thank you to the hundreds of researchers cited in this book. Without the countless hours and mammoth effort that go into conducting research, this book would have consisted of shoddy advice that may or may not have worked. And thank you to my research assistants, Kash and Themis, for helping me uncover a lot of the great research that went into this book.

      A huge thank-you to my team at Inventium. You are my favourite part of what I do and I learn so much from you all every single day. I look forward to Mondays because it means I get to hang out with such an amazing, diverse, quirky, funny and clever gang of people. An extra-special thank-you to Michelle Le Poidevin and to Shelley Logan. Mish, you are the best personal assistant anyone could ever hope for – and damn you for being so good that I had to promote you. Shell, you have taught me so much in the three years we have worked together and I can't wait until you are back from sailing around the world so we can continue the journey.

      Thank you to Inventium's clients, who allow my team and I to apply our research and methodologies. You truly are the best group of clients that consultants could ever hope for – you are smart yet humble, and are true innovators yourselves.

      A massive thank-you to my mum, Doris, who gave me the writing gene in the first place. Thank you for editing the very first draft of this book and making it infinitely better with all your suggestions. Thank you to my dad, Martin, who also fastidiously looked over the very first draft of this book and put all of his and Mum's changes into a Word document (which was no small feat, considering my mum is computer ‘challenged' and there were a lot of red marks over the first draft of this book). Thank you both for being my biggest fans, for bringing me up to have a passion for both science and creativity, and for instilling in me that I could be anything I wanted to be.

      Thank you to my amazing husband, Shannon, who walked to get me chai lattes every single Saturday and Sunday morning as I sat at home on my MacBook working on this book while our daughter, Frankie, slept soundly. Thank you for being one of those rare men who truly does treat parenthood and household chores as a partnership, which in turn has given me the time to run Inventium and write a book and be a mum (and also a wife, somewhere in the mix!). What I do would simply not be possible without you.

      And finally, thank you to the most amazing little girl a mum could ever hope for. Frankie, you make me laugh and smile so much every single day. And without your amazing superpower of being the world's best and most predictable little sleeper, this book would most definitely not have been written.

      INTRODUCTION

      My very first ‘adult' job – and by ‘adult' job I mean that it was not the one that involved dressing up as a witch waitress at Witches in Britches, or the job sewing hats for a local clothing store, or the job singing and playing guitar for people who had consumed a few too many