The Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict

The Innovation Code
The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict

Harmony is sublime in music but deadly to innovation. The only way to create new, hybrid solutions is to clash. Innovation happens when we bring people with contrasting perspectives and complementary areas of expertise together in one room. We innovate best with people who challenge us, not people who agree with us.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos and confusion. But in The Innovation Code, Jeff DeGraff, dubbed the “Dean of Innovation,” and Staney DeGraff introduce a simple framework to explain the ways different kinds of thinkers and leaders can create constructive conflict in any organization. This positive tension produces ingenious solutions that go far beyond “the best of both worlds.”

Drawing on their work with nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies, the DeGraffs help you harness the creative energy that arises from opposing viewpoints. They identify four contrasting styles of innovator—the Artist, the Engineer, the Athlete, and the Sage—and include exercises and assessments for building, managing, and embracing the dynamic discord of a team that contains all four. You can also figure out where you fit on the continuum of innovator archetypes.

Using vivid examples, The Innovation Code offers four steps to normalize conflict and channel it to develop something completely new. By following these simple steps, you will get breakthrough innovations that are both good for you and your customers. This is a rigorous but highly accessible guide for achieving breakthrough solutions by utilizing the full—and seemingly contradictory—spectrum of innovative thinking.

Jeff DeGraff is an advisor to Fortune 500 companies—including General Electric, Coca-Cola, Google, Mercedes-Benz, and many more—and a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He has written several books, including Innovation You, Creativity at Work, and Leading Innovation, and his thoughts on innovation are regularly covered by Inc., Fortune, and Psychology Today, to name a few. He has a regular segment on public radio called The Next Idea.



Staney DeGraff is the CEO of Innovatrium Institute for Innovation, a laboratory and consulting firm with multiple locations. She works with large organizations, universities, and municipalities to create a sustainable innovation ecosystem that can grow organically and connect the dots between cutting-edge research, talent acquisition and retention, commercialization, and economic development.