How Stella Saved the Farm

A Tale About Making Innovation Happen

By: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos

How Stella Saved the Farm is a simple parable about making innovation happen. Written by the authors of the New York Times best-selling Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, Win Everywhere, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. This story resonates in organizations of all types - public sector, private sector, and social sector, from mammoth corporations to small organizations employing just a few dozen people.

The parable is about a farm in trouble. Bankruptcy, or the grim prospect of being acquired by a hostile competitor, threaten. The farm succeeds only if the team pulls together and innovates.

The main characters in the story - Stella, Deirdre, Bull, Mav, Einstein, Rambo, Maisie, and Andrea - are all like people you know, maybe even yourself. The tale includes an unexpected leadership challenge, an ambitious call to action, a bold idea, countless internal obstacles and conflicts, fears, joys, triumphs, and even a love interest. It’s a story that can be enjoyed by anyone.

How Stella Saved the Farm delivers eight simple lessons to guide innovation initiatives to success. It prepares business leaders to avoid some of innovation’s most toxic myths, teaches how to build the right kind of team, and shows how to learn quickly from experience.

©2013 Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble (P)2013 Macmillan Audio

The Parable of Innovation!

A simple, yet effective, story of how to execute innovation in a existing business or enterprise. I loved the "Animal Farm" throwback. It was a nice touch. Illustrated and explained the concepts well, but for a more thorough, in-depth explanation go to "Beyond the Big Idea."
AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY

Hilarious! and insightful too.

Any additional comments?

I have lived the innovator's life for the past ~20 years and have personally experienced every episode in this book. Coincidentally, I'm also an Alpaca farmer! So this book is shockingly on target for me. Anyone who has attempted to change a well established organization from the "inside" will relate to this book. Anyone who wants to change an organization from the inside should read this book!

Laudable effort, story was a bit lame though

This is a laudable effort to use a story to convey messages about business. There were some good business insights in there about business.

The problem I found though was that there were too few insights compared to the length of the book, and the story was so cliche - that the business authorship showed.

Excellent book and narration

This is a great book and the narration was excellent. I highly recommend for anyone on an innovation team.

Decent but not innovative

narration was excellent. content meh with only a few good take aways. Book claims to be a primer for the other side of innovation which I am hoping has more depth.. time will tell.

Entertaining and informative

The author made listening to the book fun all while the content taught some valuable lessons regarding teams, teamwork, and the process of putting an idea into action.

average book for business

This book is an ok book for at starting conversations but, in practice has little application. it's supposed to be a parable only and provide businesses relatable scenarios. however, this book does nothing but create an atmosphere of deciding which employee is which character in the book. this book discussed ideas creation and working with other departments but, it didn't touch on the hardest part, failing ideas and administrative decision making that cause departments to realign or do without certain resources. overall a very average book.

A must read for innovation leaders

I loved the analogy used throughout the book. I was able to listen to this in 30 minute increments and in between, I pondered how this has been used in my previous career and how I could use this now. It was extremely informative and entertaining.

innovation truths in a silly package

this is a childrens' book for very bright 7 year olds who what to run a business, lemonade stand anyone?