A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business - Hardcover

Morgan, Adam; Barden, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118899016 ISBN 13: 9781118899014

Publisher: Wiley, 2015

Synopsis

An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations into opportunities

A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today―lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how―and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35 personal interviews from such varied sources as Nike, IKEA, Unilever, the U.S. Navy, Formula One racecar engineers, public school teachers in California, and barley farmers in South Africa. Underpinned by scientific research into the psychology of breakthrough, the book is a practical handbook full of tools and tips for how to make more from less. Beautifully designed and accessible, A Beautiful Constraint will appeal beyond its core business audience to anyone who needs to find the opportunity in constraint.

The book takes the reader on a journey through the mindset, method and motivation required to move from the initial "victim" stage into the transformation stage. It challenges us to:

• Examine how we've become path dependent―stuck with routines that blind us from seeing opportunity along new paths
• Ask Propelling Questions to help us break free of those paths and put the most pressing and valuable constraints at the heart of our process
• Adopt a Can If mentality to answer these questions―focused on "how," not "if"
• Access the abundance to be found all around us to help transform constraints
• Activate the high-octane mix of emotions necessary to fuel the tenacity required for success

We live in a world of seemingly ever-increasing constraints, driven as much by an overabundance of choices and connections as by a scarcity of time and resources. How we respond to these constraints is one of the most important issues of our time and will be a large determinant of our progress as people, businesses and planet, in the future. A Beautiful Constraint calls for a more widespread capability for constraint-driven problem solving and provides the framework to achieve that.

About this title

About the Author

ADAM MORGAN is the author of Eating The Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, the international bestseller that introduced the concept of challenger brands to the world of marketing. His ideas have been widely cited as a key influence by a new generation of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world. He is founder of eatbigfish, a renowned marketing consultancy that works with clients to develop their own breakthrough strategies, from Helsinki to Hanoi.

MARK BARDEN runs the west coast business for eatbigfish in the US. Over his career he's won the Platinum Award for direct response marketing, taken a dot com public, warmed up a crowd for Ellen De Generes, and played a Buddhist monk in a Kleenex commercial. His advice on how to create breakthrough thinking with outsize results is much sought after. He is a popular speaker, world class facilitator and occasional coach.

From the Back Cover

"AN AMAZING BOOK"
Dan Wieden

HOW DO YOU TURN YOUR LIMITATIONS INTO OPPORTUNITIES?

Drawing inspiration from cases in fields as diverse as education, automobile engineering, supply-chain management, agriculture and breakthrough marketing campaigns, A Beautiful Constraint provides simple and practical tools to help almost anyone use constraints as a source of inspiration rather than asphyxiation. With clearly signalled chapter summaries allowing the time-constrained reader to grasp the whole book in 21 minutes, this is an easily digestible guidebook for all of us who need to make more from less.

"A Beautiful Constraint is a worldview changer."

Seth Godin, Author, What To Do When It's Your Turn

"A Beautiful Constraint is a book you can arm-wrestle with. Come at it with a traditional mindset and it will come right back at you with forceful arguments that will stimulate your thinking. The book offers us all a beguilingly simple way of looking at new approaches to grow and prosper in a new world order where the overriding preoccupation of business is scarcity of resource in all its forms. Read it and be inspired."

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Unilever

"I'm a huge believer in the power of constraint. Less is often better. This book beautifully explores the question of how to approach constraints, both as individuals and as organizations and provides pragmatic frameworks for how to implement in every day life. In the end, this is not a business book, it is essential reading for personal happiness and entrepreneurship."

Fabian Pfortmüller, Co-Founder, Holstee

"Through its compelling real world examples and observations, A Beautiful Constraint has encouraged me to challenge time-worn assumptions, and enlightened me to the concept of asking tough propelling questions to both our creative teams and our sales and marketing organization. As an added bonus, ABC has been assembled in an easy-to-digest format perfect for short attention span readers like me."

Scott Rohde, SVP Product Development, Sony PlayStation Worldwide Studios America

"An amazing book. A well-written, lucid survey of how businesses succeed by figuring out how to use their limitations. A business book that doesn't read like one. I think these guys nailed it."

Dan Wieden, Co-Founder & Chairman, Wieden + Kennedy

"Adam and Mark have not only thought deeply about how to turn lemons into lemonade, they've also thought about how to make the wealth of ideas in their book easy to digest and use."

Nancy Duarte, CEO, Duarte, Inc.

"I started Samuel Adams in 1984 on a shoestring, but I never felt constrained. I felt focused and clear about every decision. We bootstrapped and innovated to compensate for lack of financial resources, and that creative culture serves us well even now, 30 years later. A Beautiful Constraint is a great addition to the entrepreneur's bookshelf. The antithesis of the ill-fated 'burn rate' calculations used by VCs during the dot com boom, the lessons in A Beautiful Constraint give the reader the tools to stay true to the company's core values and the confidence to let constraints be a powerful ally."

Jim Koch, Chairman & Founder, The Boston Beer Company

From the Inside Flap

A BEAUTIFUL CONSTRAINT

This is a practical handbook about everyday inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. Underpinned by the latest research from social science, the authors interviewed individuals and teams in disciplines as varied as marketing, supply chain, race car engineering, design, agronomy and education, all of whom had turned apparent constraints into sources of possibility and advantage.

This book transforms these learnings into a tool kit to help you make more from less, describing the mindset, method and motivation required to make constraints beautiful. It challenges us to:

Examine how we've become path dependent stuck with routines that blind us from seeing the opportunity in our constraints

Ask Propelling Questions to break free of our old ways and put the most pressing and valuable constraints at the heart of our process

Adopt a Can-If mentality to answer these questions focused on 'how,' not 'if' this can be possible

Rediscover resourcefulness, and the ability to create abundance in the face of scarcity

Activate the high-octane mix of emotions necessary to fuel the tenacity required for success

We live in a world of seemingly ever-increasing constraints, driven as much by an over-abundance of choices and connections as by a scarcity of time and resources. How we respond to these constraints is one of the most important issues of our time, and will be a large determinant of our future progress as people, businesses and citizens of our planet. A Beautiful Constraint calls for constraint-driven problem-solving to become a much more widespread capability and offers an original framework to achieve that.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1118899016
• ISBN 13: 9781118899014
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288