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UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Twelve Remarkable Innovators Tell How Intuition Can Revolutionize Decision Making by Ron Schultz

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Twelve Remarkable Innovators Tell How Intuition Can Revolutionize Decision Making

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1994
Publisher: HarperCollins

Mixing Jungian psychology and New Age physics with the homespun philosophies of successful entrepreneurs, business-writer Schultz (coauthor: Cashing Out, 1991 -- not reviewed) concludes that if you want to succeed in life, you have to be willing to follow your gut when making decisions. Interviewing over a dozen successful types from Apple's John Sculley through wine king Michael Mondavi to commodities trader R.E. McMaster, Schultz reveals the offbeat, often mystical-sounding tricks of their various trades. Sculley, who made history when he formed a partnership between Apple and its archrival IBM, says that all great marketing decisions are based on intuition. Robert Pittman, the 37-year-old MTV creator and president of Time Warner Enterprises, claims that some of the great solutions to problems first start out as jokes, while ACLU executive director Ira Glasser makes hiring decisions based upon how prospective employees play basketball. If commodities guru R.E. McMaster wants to check out the integrity of a deal-maker, he takes the guy out to meet his llamas who, he claims, are foolproof judges of character. Meanwhile, supercomputer magnate John Rollwagen makes his decisions by flipping a coin -- not to do what it says but to discover what he really wants after the coin drops. And president of Fox Children's Network Margaret Loesch claims that her willingness to make mistakes diminishes the mistakes she makes. Self-help exercises in the last two chapters promise to help budding innovators activate the intuitive process. You've heard all this New Age-speak before, but the individual stories -- most of them lively and fresh -- save Schultz's rendering from being trite.