Introduction

In 1841, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay published an essay entitled “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds”. It is in fact a popular belief that people usually get dumb when they gather into crowds. James Surowiecki’s book discusses several situations where this is absolutely wrong, and collective perception, behaviour, or problem-solving can in fact outperform any given individual. He further stresses that, for such a “wisdom of crowds” to happen, certain conditions must be met. (more…)

‘Six Thinking Hats’ is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by forcing you to move outside your habitual ways o thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of the decision, and spot issues and opportunities to which you might otherwise be blind. (more…)

Mind Maps

Mind Mapping is an important technique that improves the way you take notes, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject and the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw facts contained in normal notes. More than this, Mind Maps provide a structure which encourages creative problem solving, and they hold information in a format that your mind will find easy to remember and quick to review.

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Do what you love. When you love your work, you become the best worker in the world.
Uri Geller - Best - Love - Work

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos - Branding - Companies (more…)

The case:

Jack Emmons, CEO of Voici Brands, is visiting a Chinese factory that produces clothes for Marquise, one of Voici’s competitors. Marquise shrunk the time from fashion design to products arrivals in stores from 50 weeks to 60 days, boosting the bottom line by 20%. Marquise gained some profits by using cheaper Chinese labor, but the main source of higher profits was coming from the faster time to market. Voici is suffering from a too decentralized supply chain; each business inside the company has its own legacy, its own suppliers, and its own management. Jack Emmons is thinking about changing the supply chain. Margie Rosen is Voici’s director (more…)

Here are my notes on the great book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath: (more…)

Few rules:

• Don’t think money! Money isn’t what drives creative people. Instead think of valuing their work, reward excellence, and minimize hassles.
• Think of variety. Don’t take the people that look similar, that have the same background, etc. Diversity is key!
• Challenge: creative people love challenges. They want to do a good work.
  Keep it simple! Don’t bother your staff with too many meetings. Let them work their way, as long as the job is done.

“If you leverage the intrinsic motivation of creative workers by stimulating their minds and minimizing hassles; if you raze barriers between managers by ensuring that your managers are creatives, too; if you tap into the creative talents of your customers instead of looking just to your nurture long-term relationships with users and employees alike, you will increase your creative capital manifold.” Says Richard Florida and Jim Goodnight in their article Managing for Creativity.

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Written by Loic Bonnaillie, http://bonnaillie.com , a blog on the best practices

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