Filed under: books, innovation, inspiration, irishblogs | Tags: Levitat, Cork, pursuit of wow, tom peters, inspiration, irishblogs, innovation, solution, problem, ideas, day off, different, productivity, improvement, job, rekindling, payoffs, perspective
An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:What if we managers put rebirth at the top of our agendas? … suggestions:
- Do something different. One company gives its telemarketers a whole day “off” each week to work on productivity-improvement projects. In addition to rekindling energy for the primary job, project payoffs have more than covered the costs of the extra staffing required. I can imagine such an approach applied almost everywhere.
My own thoughts on this? I think getting people to work on ‘new’ areas, not even necessarily directly related to their work, is hugely beneficial. It makes people think about different problems; which leads them to look at problems in a different way. Who knows what they will find when they then bring that new way of looking back to their old problems…
Filed under: Design, Invention, inspiration, irishblogs, technology | Tags: Levitat, Design, Cork, Ireland, tech, irishblogs, mobile phone, quest, sell, dream, early adaptors, imagine, man, moon, mobile, ultimate, phone, promise, support, style, laid
A mobile phone that:
- lets you make free calls (over the Internet)
- lets you surf the web at high speed
- takes high resolution photographs and video
- stores and plays all your music
- works as a satellite navigation system
- is a mobile games console
- is a mobile PC
- is a mobile video player; even connecting wirelessly with your home cinema projector and transmits high resolution video with surround sound
- is easy to learn and simple to use
That’s the phone I want. That’s the phone that has been promised to me since mobile phones first became popular. That’s the phone that we are fast approaching. But that is not the phone that has been in my pocket all these years.
What I don’t understand is how the phone companies managed to sell us this dream while supplying us the unreliable, expensive and under-delivering phones we have all been buying for the past 10 years.
We bought mobile phones before the networks that let them work were fully developed… We bought camera phones before the pictures they took were recognisable…
I want to know how they did it. How can I replicate it? How can I sell a product that I can conceive now, but won’t be able to deliver fully until 10 years from now?
I can see the tech-loving “early adaptors” buying something new for the excitement of what it is to become; but how did the mobile phone companies drag the rest of us along for the ride?
Imagine what could be created if every under-developed idea was supported like this… A man on the moon is nothing.
Filed under: books, innovation, inspiration, irishblogs | Tags: Levitat, Cork, pursuit of wow, tom peters, inspiration, irishblogs, often, innovation, break, pause, refresh, copier, coffee, sleep, solution, problem, ideas
An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:
What if we managers put rebirth at the top of our agendas? … suggestions:
- Take a serious daily break. I’m worried about my new, high-speed Canon copier. What will I do now for a break? I find - seriously - that many of my best ideas have come while I stood by my old copier, feeding in 75 pages, one at a (slow) time. Planned coffee breaks are one (good) thing, but I’m talking about something else, a real pause to refresh or redirect our brain waves.
My own thoughts on this? I never had that slow a copier, but I do often find that I think up a solution as soon as I stop thinking about the problem. Unfortunately, it is usually just as I’m about to fall off to sleep and I have to wake myself up to write it down incase I have forgotten by morning!
Filed under: books, innovation, inspiration, irishblogs | Tags: Levitat, Cork, pursuit of wow, tom peters, inspiration, irishblogs, fail, small, often, innovation, fear of failure, success, inactivity, learn, michael schumacher, john watson
An extract from ‘The Pursuit of WOW!’ by Tom Peters:
‘69. “To learn, fail… If nothing ever breaks, you don’t know how strong it is. Strike out fear of failure… Reward success and failure equally - punish inactivity.” David Kelley, IDEO‘
My own thoughts on this? I remember John Watson (F1 commentator) pointing out how Michael Schumacher didn’t just drive to the edge of what the car could do, he drove beyond it. He was constantly pushing the car a little too much and correcting it. That way he knew he was always at the limit.
It’s the same in everything you do. You have to go beyond the limit to know where that limit is. But equally, you don’t want to go so far that you can’t catch it once you find that limit. I think you should be like Schumacher, fail small and often.
Filed under: books, inspiration | Tags: book, business, inspiration, Levitat, pursuit of wow, tom peters
“The Pursuit of WOW!” by Tom Peters is one of my favourite ‘business’ books. It’s packed full of inspiration. I often pick it up at any page and read a few words of wisdom. I’ll probably post a few extracts from time to time.
It’s not illegal for me to do that is it?
