How an Academic Turned Innovation Expert Created Massively Successful Books

Tendayi Viki on Sounding Pretentious and Other Mistakes Authors Make

Tendayi has a background in academia as a Research Fellow at Stanford University and Research Assistant at Harvard University.

He taught at the University of Kent but after 12 years made the switch to the business world.

Now Tendayi is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer, an expert at corporate innovation, and an award winning author.

Here are some things we can learn from him👇🏽

WRITE BEFORE THE WORLD WAKES UP

Early on, Tendayi tried to write his books in the time carved out in the middle of the day. That didn't work because he'd get interrupted and his focus would be gone.

Like the other day, my wife called that my son was sick and had to be sent back home. I’m distracted now, there’s no chance I’m gonna write anything useful.

So what he did is start to wake up at 05:00 a.m. That gives him two hours of uninterrupted focus before the world wakes up.

My friend Rob Fitzpatrick does a similar thing and writes first thing, before checking email or letting the day get away from him.

While I can't money-back guarantee that this'll work for you, I think you should test it and give it a try.

See if you can block out some time before your working day starts.

A Great Book can Build Your Credibility

In my line of work, credibility is very important. I can’t cold call companies and be like “Hey, you know that those innovation programs are very important? Well, we have the best one. You can buy it now for three easy payments of 599.” Reputation matters a lot. It’s so much easier if someone comes to you. If they already respect me before we start the conversation.

There are two ways to do that,

1. The Snake Oil Salesman

This is the fake guru approach of writing a book for the sake of writing a book. The problem with that (ethics aside) is that most smart people see right through that.

That's why those books don't tend to work.

2. Have Something Authentic to Share

This is the approach Tendayi has used. In his words,

I know I need to build a reputation but I don’t want to build it on nothing. If people pull back the curtains, they can see substance.

If the book is actually useful, it'll start to get recommended when friends of the people who've read it run into the problem the book solves.

This creates the credibility that helps position you as the expert and drives inbound leads to you. It makes your life easier when people know you and respect you before you've even started the conversation.

Make it Easy to Understand!

💡Have you ever met those people that are more interested in looking clever than in teaching? That’s the problem authors face.

Btw, you might recognize this as failing to bridge the air gap between the knowledge an author has and the reader understanding it. See this article for more The Bad / Good Design Pattern for nonfiction that teaches.

Tendayi tells the story of Intuit trying to do better on the innovation front.

They hired people who’re really interested in lean startups, design thinking, etc. People who’ve been to every conference and read all the lean startup books like five times. They recruited those people, gave them the role, and the whole thing failed.

They had the best people and the whole thing failed.

So they came to the conclusion that it’s not enough to have the best people. They need to be good teachers as well. If you’re gonna recruit an innovation expert, they need to have equal interest in teaching.

💡 It’s almost better to have a person who’s mediocre at innovation but a good teacher, than a person who’s really great at innovation but hates teaching.

There's no point in writing a book that contains "the right" advice, if the reader just doesn't understand what on Earth you're talking about.

The primary job of a useful book is to solve the reader's problem. In order to do that, they need to understand the advice.

You can watch our full interview with Tendayi here.

Thanks for reading!

RJY @ Useful books