A Work of Art Creating a business masterpiece takes a palette of different ideas.
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Want the next great idea in business to be yours? Put together ateam of people with differing ideas, viewpoints and experiences.Consultant Frans Johansson studied successful idea-generators frombusiness, science, the arts and elsewhere and found thatcross-cultural and cross-disciplinary combinations were far moreeffective at producing revolutionary insights than lone inventorsor groups of people with like backgrounds.
In The Medici Effect (HBS Press, $24.95)Johansson expands on this observation by showing how to overcomeproblems and improve the results of idea-generating campaigns. Toexpand the range of your ideas, for example, try assumptionreversal: Start with a fact about a business, and reverse it. Doall restaurants have menus? Assume that your restaurant has nomenus, and see where it leads you. The book's title is inspiredby the Renaissance-era Italian family that sponsored Leonardo daVinci. If you can't read it and come up with at least a minorMona Lisa or two, you're not trying.
East Meets West
Millions have read sun tzu's classic, The Art of War, but do exceptionalcompanies really practice its strategies? In The Art of Business (Zero Time, $19.95),University of Texas, Austin, researcher Raymond T. Yeh finds thatluminaries such as Dell, Intel, Medtronics and Southwest Airlineshave done so and, in the process, created a new art of businessthat merges Eastern and Western concepts. For example, he says,their Western-style mission statements also contain theirorganizational Tao-a Zen Buddhist concept, which, in this context,Yeh says, consists of a company's vision, purpose and values.This isn't the easiest book to read, but those who make itthrough won't be quite the same when they've finished.
Mark Henricks is Entrepreneur's "SmartMoves" columnist.
