The authors provide some intriguing nuggets for thought, but the lack of discussion about the usual parameters of business...
Boston Consulting Group advisers de Brabandere (The Forgotten Half of Change: Achieving Greater Creativity Through Changes in Perception, 2005, etc.) and Iny showcase their company's approach to helping organizations develop that next big transforming idea.
The authors use the idea of boxes as the frame for their presentation—not the trope of thinking outside one but rather, how to organize the process to make new ones. The boxes are mental models that they contend people use to make sense of themselves and their world. The “new boxes” represent the idea of creating ways of thinking about oneself, one's organization and the world. The authors discuss a five-step process for bringing about transformation: doubt everything, probe the limits of possibility, encourage expression of different points of view, choose the options that seem to have the most potential for success, and re-evaluate relentlessly. They buttress their presentation with thought games and exercises and examples from the Boston Consulting Group's inventory of organizational techniques, which they have used with clients from around the world (e.g., the French postal service and glass manufacturer AGC Glass Europe). The authors focus on the case of the Bic company, which transformed itself from a one-box company—the maker of low-cost disposable plastic pens—into one that would be a “designer and maker of all manner of disposable, non-expensive plastic items”—e.g., cigarette lighters and razors. An array of brain-teasing games and ice-breaking–type techniques, which they call “warm ups” and “mini-world explorations,” flesh out the approach.
The authors provide some intriguing nuggets for thought, but the lack of discussion about the usual parameters of business success, like increasing sales, revenues, productivity and profit, is glaring.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9295-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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