N-of-8 book preview: love of a story

Most of you BrandInnovator readers know I am completing my new book entitled N-of-8.

It is about using the power of creative groups for innovation. Below is a raw preview of what has kept me working many weekends for the past year to advance it.

I welcome your feedback in the comments section.
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I love words, phrases, and stories.  I love seeing a story come to life in pictures, art, and movies.  I love hearing a story put to melody and performed with harmony and rhythm.  I love reading a story and eavesdropping on the dialogue between characters, listening the intonations of their voices.

Even more I love developing a story of a new medical advancement – an effective communication of an idea that can transform health, science, and technology.  Most of all, I love a story that can accelerate the adoption of a new idea.

And “faster” is what this book is all about.

People ask me all the time, “how did you get to be so creative?” And when I was much younger and my ego was much bigger, I might answer with a favorite motivational book (like Zig Ziglar’s See You At The Top which was given to me for high school graduation by family friends, The Lincolns, and that I feel most influenced my early career).  Or later, I might refer to a course I’d taken (like a week-long seminar at the Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina, at which I learned many valuable facilitation techniques).

But by far my most “creative” ideas I’ve had came not from my mind, but from the customers’ voice.

Sometimes from an individual customer’s suggestion.

Often from a group of customers’ discussions.

Frequently from observing customers’ behaviors.

Always from listening, adapting, translating, and responding to the customers.

That is the inspiration for this tool I call N-of-8 and for this book which I espouse shifting from “focus groups” to N-of-8 groups.