Reviews for Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind

The average rating for Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-26 00:00:00 Joe Wilkinson Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind Bernd H. Schmitt Harvard Business School Press What we have in this volume is a generally successful examination of how to develop a mindset that can be beneficial to -- but is not limited to -- marketing. Specifically, a mindset he characterizes as "Big Think" as opposed to "Small Think." According to Schmitt, "Where Small Think deals with the known, the pretested, and the prechewed, Big Think faces challenges creatively, reasoning about them from new angles and generating innovative ideas and actions to solve them. Bug Think does not just occur in the head. It involves action: managing people and teams, and driving organizational change. It is not simply creating something new; it is behaving differently." Throughout his narrative, Schmitt cites a number of organizations that established and then developed a culture that has avoided or overcome what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes (in his brilliant book, Leading Change) as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." These organizations include Whole Foods Market, Apple Computer, IBM, The Metropolitan Opera, Samsung, and Vodaphone. Schmitt urges his reader to think both "out of the box" and inclusively. "Big Think is a style of thinking and leading…[it] requires vision and leadership. It requires questioning deeply held [but perhaps false] assumptions about a business or an industry, considering the business or industry from a new angle, and then acting on the new insight." Big Think requires an "open" mindset, one that refuses to be confined by silos, bunkers, barriers, boundaries, etc. It is even open to the extent that it constantly seeks out "big juicy ideas" from sources that Small Think excludes. Competitors, for example.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-14 00:00:00 Andy Boy Beautifully written book, the author brings out a different approach to strategy beyond the classical models. The examples used also help to enliven what is otherwise quite a drab subject and paint a fascinating picture of what the principles/ approaches look like in a real-world example.