Inside Project Red Stripe: Incubating Innovation and Teamwork at "The Economist" - Softcover

Carey, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0955008166 ISBN 13: 9780955008160

Publisher: Triarchy Press, 2008

Synopsis

Sometimes a diary, sometimes an essay collection and always an insightful guide to the process of innovation, 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. The group had permission to develop and launch a new business without prior approval from the Board. 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 For anyone involved with innovation or creativity in business or the public sector, or working in a media company or simply working in a team, 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 this title

Review

Innovation leadership offers great rewards, but can be a hard path to follow, as the recent case of Project Red Stripe illustrates

Anyone who has become involved in the fascinating and infuriating business of innovation will find something of interest and value in Inside Project Red Stripe, Andrew Carey's account of a much-trailed innovation project at The Economist newspaper....

So what happened to Project Red Stripe?
I think the team made a rather good fist of the challenge, and (they won't thank me for saying it) at least were a class apart from the Alan Sugar playpen version of project leadership.

You may have guessed how the story is turning out, but you should make up your mind after accessing the website, which demonstrates the emergent and dynamic features of the new electronic media and particularly the social networking elements of it.

A courageous (foolhardy) venture? Maybe, but at least it will repay a visit to the website, which is morphing and hyperlinking its creative way into existence.

Review

Immediately disappointing is the fact that the book reads rather like a set of field notes ...

I was disheartened that the bits and scraps had not been gathered together, sorted, arranged properly and presented with a coherent and explicit theme....

I was not greatly impressed...

I will refrain from saying that personalized interpretations have their own kind of pretentiousness, or may simply be an excuse for intellectual laziness; but, it takes some conscious self-restraint to do so...

Carey admits (or boasts) that he wants to "avoid a chronological narrative," and has cobbled together his chapters in a "rather arbitrary" manner. There is an explanation that this will allow readers to take their "own path through the text and dip in and out at will." I suppose this directive is rooted in some sort of literary anarchism, but it does not so much free readers to sample as the mood directs as it permits some essential points to be obscured or avoided...

Edition details

• Publisher: Triarchy Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0955008166
• ISBN 13: 9780955008160
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232