The winding road to innovation

Secrets, mysteries and revelations

The road to innovation is often winding, like a mountain trail carved along steep cliffs. To reach the summit, where innovation becomes real, many different paths can be traced.

This book is not about charting those paths. It’s about describing the terrain itself, its contours, the relief and its obstacles, scattered throughout the landscape. By understanding the landscape, we gain the insight needed to draw our own map and build a viable route to success.

Many of the concepts covered in this book may sound strange, as they go completely against the status quo, that is, the way things are done in companies, for example, the use of traditional management methods, but inadequate for an environment focused on innovation, or even the way the behaviour and ambitions of entrepreneurial, creative and innovative people are treated in an operational environment.

Despite its title, the book does not directly specify what the secrets and mysteries related to innovation are, as each subject can be viewed differently by different readers. People see a subject according to their context and experience. Secrets can be seen as those concepts that are normally hidden behind the unquestionable management practices of traditional companies. Mysteries, in turn, are generally related to the functioning of creativity and the minds of innovative people. With these two ingredients, it is expected that revelations will appear before the reader, without, however, having them made explicit in the text.

This book was not planned. During the writing, I didn’t know what the result would be. Reading it may clarify the reason for this approach. The underlying concept is: instead of having a drawing of a limiting rectangle around what would be written, the field was left free and open for ideas to flow wherever they wanted.