I just finished listening to Tom Kelley’s “The Ten Faces of Innovation.” Kelley is the General Manager of IDEO, one of the World’s foremost innovation and ideation consulting companies. The book discusses IDEO’s 10 faces, or personas which are utilized in their projects to gain a full, insightful and original view of any challenge, situation or problem.

As the book goes over each of the 10 personas, I felt more like Kelley was writing about individuals at IDEO as opposed to roles which could be hired or fostered at other companies, like ours. I found that I could easily identify with several of the roles Kelley discussed, yet I didn’t identify with any of them 100%. As I looked harder, I could see multiple personas in the people here at Imulus, yet I couldn’t fully pigeon-hole anyone into a single persona.

Perhaps I missed it, but I felt like Kelley should have focused more on how these personas could be applied to anybody in an organization at anytime, and not just stuck in a single persona 24/7. Depending on the type / topic of a meeting I may be a better “Experimenter” then an “Anthropologist.”

I found the book to be inspiring, and I often drifted off thinking of how these personas could be used at Imulus on various project. I didn’t know what to fully expect from this book, however it did spawn many creative ideas. Everything from how we handle client collaboration to encouraging creativity and how to avoid stifling criticisms.