Overview

There are relatively few books on Imagineering.  I believe that is not a problem because in my opinion if you pick the right books you won’t need a whole lot of them. It would not be a bad idea to acquire about half a dozen books on the subject, but if you want to minimize your reading you can confine your attention to the two best books on Imagineering and still be quite well informed.  I see these books as being both individually excellent and highly complementary.  They are briefly described below.

Imagineering: How to Profit from Your Creative Powers

Michael LeBoeuf, Ph.D.

Michael LeBoeuf taught business management at the University of New Orleans for 20 years and retired at age 47 in 1989.  In 1980 he wrote this excellent book on Imagineering.  It covers both creativity and completivity.  It is detailed, well-organized, and easy to read.  It is written as a schoolbook and is both positive and relatively complete on its subject.  It is the best book of this type that I have found, and I have surveyed at least 50 books.

Imagineering: Illustrated by Ships That Have Wings

Joseph Chadwick, Ph.D.

I was an acting Imagineer rather than a schoolteacher.  I carried out Imagineering from 1950 to 2000.  My most important area of interest was marine engineering, and one of my early subjects was ship stabilization using wings.  The design coming out of that work is still in operation today, 60 years after it was first put into operation.  It is a required feature on almost all large cruise liners.

My book is a story book about this development.  Many key aspects of Imagineering can be found in the story.  And in the book I have added some other aspects as well.  So the book provides a rather full discussion of most of the issues in Imagineering.  And of course it puts you right down on the ground where the invention if actually taking place.

Complementary Nature of These Two Books

The approaches to the subject taken by these two books are quite different, and they are also very complementary.  LeBoeuf’s textbook is a very well organized, careful, and complete overview of the subject.  It is very easy to read and study.  It is very easy to browse for topics of interest.

My storybook on the other hand, has to accept the story as it happens, so it is in a sense not quite as well organized.  But by its nature it is very close to the ground and full of adventures and realities.  It provides a more vivid view of the chances and circumstances that are sometimes beyond your control when you undertake Imagineering.  It also inherently puts more emphasis on failures, and the importance of knowing how to deal with them.  That is very important.  And it actually and fully illustrates the tangled web of innovations.  I doubt you will see that reality anywhere else.

These two books are very complementary.  Together they add up to significantly more than either book alone.  They can tell you pretty much of what it takes to understand Imagineering.  At my blogsite I plan to discuss something on the order of 12-18 books on Imagineering, but these two are the best.

The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Henry Petroski, St. Martin’s Press, 1982

Overview

This is a very important book because failure is a very important factor in successful innovation.  Since innovation is about new inventions that are not yet fully understood, failures are an almost inevitable part of the process of innovation.  They cannot be avoided.  We can work hard to keep them small and to learn from them.  That is very important.  So we should expect failures and learn how to deal with them.  If we do that failures are a very valuable part of successful design.  We need to test, and test, and re-test.  The object is to have all failures occur during the process of design, and not after the design has been completed.  Petroski discusses and explains these issues in detail.  Since the book has been around for quite a while you can get a copy for a penny plus the shipping charge.

A Book about Bridge-Building Failures

Petroski was very interested in bridge-building, so this book primarily deals with failures in that innovation area.  Therefore the details are not perfect for everyone, but the principles tend to be general.  I think that a good way to use this book would be to buy it, keep it, and read a chapter every now and then.  There are not very many books dealing with the super important subject of failures.

Contents of: To Engineer is Human

1. Being Human
2. Falling Down is Part of Growing Up
3. Lessons from Play; Lessons from Life
4. Engineering as Hypothesis
5. Success is Foreseeing Failure
6. Design is Getting from Here to There
7. Design as Revision
8. Accidents Waiting to Happen
9. Safety in Numbers
10. When Cracks Become Breakthroughs
11. Of Bus Frames and Knife Blades
12. Interlude: The Success Story of Crystal Palace
13. The Ups and Downs of Bridges
14. Forensic Engineering and Engineering Fiction
15. From Slide Rule to Computer: Forgetting How it Used to Be Done
16. Connoisseurs of Chaos
17. The Limits of Design

Five Chapters That I Especially Recommend

I especially recommend the following five chapters because they are the most general, and do not focus primarily on bridge design and failure.

Preface

Design as Revision

Forensic Engineering and Engineering Fiction

From Slide Rule to Computer

The Limits of Design

Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success

Carmine Gallo, McGraw-Hill, 2011

Overview

Since Steve Jobs is one of the most innovative Imagineers of modern times it is obviously worthwhile to try to understand his approach to invention.  One positive side of this is that his innovation methods are not really insanely different but rather are fairly simple and central to the field of innovation methods.  It is Steve Jobs who was insanely different.  Gallo discusses seven key principles in Jobs’ approach to invention.  You can get this book for about one dollar plus 3 dollars shipping.

1. Do What You Love

Steve dropped out of college because he could not see the value of it.  But he grew up in Silicon Valley with a great interest in electronic design.  That area in effect became his substitute for college.  He had a great passion for electronic design, and that became his life’s work.  You are much more likely to be successful when you do what you love.

2. Put a Dent in the Universe

Steve Jobs was not the initial inventor of any of his early innovations.  But he was very good at seeing over the horizon and evaluating what the long term impact of a given innovation might be.  He concentrated on those innovations that were likely to have the most serious impact.

3. Kick-Start Your Brain

Creativity is primarily connecting things.  When you ask creative people how they did something they feel a little guilty because they really didn’t do it: they just saw something.  That’s because they were able to connect various experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.  You need to have a diversity of experiences to maximize your creativity.

4. Sell Dreams, Not Products

The dreams talked about here are the dreams of your customers.  Your purpose needs to be to make their lives better, not just to sell them products.  Listen to your customers, but even more important know your customers.

5. Say No to 1,000 Things

According to Steve Jobs, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  He said “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do”.  Focus on keeping the innovation simple and elegant, and avoid it being cluttered and confusing.  Try to put the majority of your effort on projects that advance your core purpose and fulfill your passion.

6. Create Insanely Great Experiences

Look outside your industry for ideas on how to stand out from your competition.  Hire with cultural fit in mind, and train everyone to be an expert in that “culture”.  Have fun.  Passion is contagious.  If your employ-ees aren’t having fun, your customers won’t be either.  That sure seems like a good idea.

7. Master the Message

Tell your story early and often.  Make communication a cornerstone of your brand every day.  Make your brand story consistent across all aspects of your program.  Think differently about your presentation style.  Study Steve Jobs, read design books, and pay attention to awe-inspiring presentations and what makes them different from average.  Rising to the challenge requires a dedicated commitment to improvement and an open mind.

Michael LeBoeuf, Berkeley Books, 1980

Overview

This is one of the earlier books on Imagineering, and it is also one of the best.  And because imagineering is almost timeless it is just as useful today as the day it was written.  It is directed to you as someone working toward becoming an imagineer.  It covers all aspects of successful innovation, including creativity, completivity, myths, and teaming.

Since the book is very old it is also very cheap.  You can get a copy for one cent plus shipping costs of about three dollars, but it is worth a whole lot more than that.  The main areas of discussion are as follows.

Redesigning Your Imagination Foundation

The Creativity Gap – where LeBoeuf talks about how the brain takes on creativity and also discusses more than a dozen of the myths and traps that are common in creativity thinking.

Deciding What You Want – Here he emphasizes how important it is to decide what you want, and create your goals.  And he outlines some helpful ways and means to do this.

Generating and Processing Ideas

Understanding and Igniting Your Creative Abilities – with a couple of dozen pages of good advice.

Team Up for Super Imagineering – Here LeBoeuf takes up the value of team work, including teams of two, and teams of more than two.

Ask Questions to Spark Your Imagination – Here LeBoeuf discusses the importance of questions and suggests a good number of specific questions that can be used.

How to Evaluate Ideas – This section provides a lot of good advice on how to evaluate ideas once they have been produced and come to the fore.

Clearing the Hurdles Between Imagination and Realization

Now we are getting into the Completivity side of Imagineering.  LeBoeuf covers a number of topics.  Included are:

Getting People Behind Your Ideas – this is obviously a very important subject, and includes your teammates and your desired audience.

Situational Hurdles – LeBoeuf discusses the problem of hurdles, real and imaginary at great length with almost 20 pages of discussion.

Following Through to Successful Reality

Learning to Use Time – LeBoeuf is an expert on time management, and he provides here a lot of good advice on how to do that—about 20 pages of expert suggestions.

The Word is Action – Here LeBoeuf states in no uncertain terms that to be an Imagineer is to be a man or woman of action.  It takes action and plenty of it to turn your ideas into realities.

I very strongly recommend this book.