3.0
The Circle of Innovation
ByPublisher Description
Tom Peters--brilliant, original, and perhaps the most inspiring and listened-to business thinker of our time--has a lot on his mind these days. And he wants to share it in The Circle of Innovation.
The world of business is in a permanent state of flux, he argues, a state of chaos in which constant innovation is the only survival strategy--for the individual and for the organization. And he presents here a lifesaving handbook--both provocative and practical--designed to turn any organization into a perpetual innovation machine.
In 400 seminars in 47 states and 22 countries in the last five years, Peters has reexamined, refined, and reinvented his views on innovation. Now he brings those seminars--and his passion--to the reader in a landmark book. It is meant, he writes, to both "terrify" and "enlighten." These are "times of matchless peril for those who fail to grasp the nettle...and times of matchless opportunity for those who do."
To keep us alert, limber, and ready for action, he provokes and cajoles in chapter after chapter. Among his institutions and revelations:
We Are All Michelangelos. He shows how to transform every "jobholder" into a full-fledged businessperson.
All Value Comes from the Professional Services. How to convert sluggish staff units into Vital Centers of Intellectual Capital Accumulation.
The System is the Solution. How to build great systems--which go far beyond nuts and bolts.
Create Waves of Lust. Quality is not the automatic advantage it recently was. There is a pressing need to reverse the rising tide of product and service "commoditization."
Tommy Hilfiger Knows. In a crowded marketplace, branding is far more important than ever before.
It's a Woman's World. How to capitalize on the fact that women purchase/are purchasing agents for well over half of U.S. commercial and consumer goods.
Little Things Are the Only Things. As the Blight of Sameness encroaches on market after market, design is often the best tool in services or manufacturing for sustainable differentiation.
We're Here to Live Life Out Loud. Why transformational leaders of the future must have laser-like focus, tell the truth, and live on the lunatic fringe.
The hallmarks of Tom Peters legend are an insatiable curiosity, an agile intellect, a pragmatic perspective, and an uncanny ability to gauge the global zeitgeist. These qualities are all brought to bear as Peters sets out to engage, enrage, and ultimately empower his readers, amid forces that are reshaping not only business but every aspect of human experience.
The world of business is in a permanent state of flux, he argues, a state of chaos in which constant innovation is the only survival strategy--for the individual and for the organization. And he presents here a lifesaving handbook--both provocative and practical--designed to turn any organization into a perpetual innovation machine.
In 400 seminars in 47 states and 22 countries in the last five years, Peters has reexamined, refined, and reinvented his views on innovation. Now he brings those seminars--and his passion--to the reader in a landmark book. It is meant, he writes, to both "terrify" and "enlighten." These are "times of matchless peril for those who fail to grasp the nettle...and times of matchless opportunity for those who do."
To keep us alert, limber, and ready for action, he provokes and cajoles in chapter after chapter. Among his institutions and revelations:
We Are All Michelangelos. He shows how to transform every "jobholder" into a full-fledged businessperson.
All Value Comes from the Professional Services. How to convert sluggish staff units into Vital Centers of Intellectual Capital Accumulation.
The System is the Solution. How to build great systems--which go far beyond nuts and bolts.
Create Waves of Lust. Quality is not the automatic advantage it recently was. There is a pressing need to reverse the rising tide of product and service "commoditization."
Tommy Hilfiger Knows. In a crowded marketplace, branding is far more important than ever before.
It's a Woman's World. How to capitalize on the fact that women purchase/are purchasing agents for well over half of U.S. commercial and consumer goods.
Little Things Are the Only Things. As the Blight of Sameness encroaches on market after market, design is often the best tool in services or manufacturing for sustainable differentiation.
We're Here to Live Life Out Loud. Why transformational leaders of the future must have laser-like focus, tell the truth, and live on the lunatic fringe.
The hallmarks of Tom Peters legend are an insatiable curiosity, an agile intellect, a pragmatic perspective, and an uncanny ability to gauge the global zeitgeist. These qualities are all brought to bear as Peters sets out to engage, enrage, and ultimately empower his readers, amid forces that are reshaping not only business but every aspect of human experience.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Circle of Innovation Reviews
3.0
“The premise of the book itself is good, the approach to it however felt botched and overcomplicated. Tom Peters was I believe an itinerant speaker who went firm-to-firm to deliver his pearls of wisdom, the issue with this book however is that it presumes we are already aware of his methods of preaching. The book is designed to look like his "presentation slides", with disturbing font hierarchies and ill placed visuals. He has also opted for an extremely casual narrative style that is hard to keep up with. It felt a little too much like reading a "I am way too cool to be like your regular business advisors" pamphlet :(”
“Just like how a Design Data Book is important to a Mechanical Engineer, The Circle of Innovation is a must-have handbook for all the business people out there. This book caters to a wide range of audience - from a person who is just starting out a company to the CEO of a well-established firm. To improve the readability of this review, I'd rather furnish the key takeaways from the book instead of writing them in a paragraph format.
1. First things first, the book is well structured. In fact, before you even get to the First Chapter, you are presented with a 'Readers Guide' which essentially walks you through the format of the book. Once you get yourself familiarised with it, you would find the narrative much easier to follow.
2. There are totally 15 chapters. Each and every chapter is filled with numerous quotes, case studies, data, pictures, flowcharts, and semantics alert which lists keywords of the concepts discussed in the chapter. A subtle but profound feature. I found it to be very helpful.
3. Throughout the book, the tone of Tom Peters never seems to peter out. You could visibly sense his energy, zeal, and passion towards innovation. With 400+ seminars in 22 countries under his belt, Tom is a person who clearly knows what he is doing. He brings his vast experience to the table and also curates it to suit our needs. The kind of information he dispenses clearly reflects the amount of research he did.
4. As the title suggests, this book is all about Innovation. It lays down the key steps/concepts to be pursued in order to improve or take the firm to the next level. Right from the CEO, the upper echelon of an organization to the clerk (the lower echelon), Tom has got it all covered. He stresses the fact that small, incremental changes employed in a system are as important as the R&D division which tries to come up with revolutionary ideas. Tom is the kind of teacher who would absolutely refuse to back down until you get all the core ideas and concepts etched into your mind. He repeats the keywords, notions multiple times for our benefit.
5. It was quite interesting to learn about the various strategies and tactics the top tier companies of today employed to be the front runners of the pack 12 years ago. The way the companies adapted to the fast-changing circumstances especially the advent of the Internet. (World Wide Web). Yes, as you might have guessed, this book was written in the year 1997. But that doesn't mean that the ideas and the concepts presented in the book are obsolete. As quoted in the book, "In the end, any system essentially comprises of 5% Technology - 95% psychology and attitude". If you ask me, the technology is basically a tool. A tool by itself can't bring out innovation. It requires a skilled person to make good use of it. The Key competencies any person in an organization should possess were also laid down quite neatly.
6. As mentioned earlier, because of the unique format of the book, it's very easy to comprehend his intentions and ideas which in turn makes this 500+ page read, less tedious. However, I wouldn't recommend you to read it in a single sitting. It isn't supposed to devoured that way. Reading one chapter per day is the best way to get more out of this book. Also, I'd request you to take notes whilst reading the book. I took pictures of the passages, quotes which impacted me so that I could re-read them whenever I feel stumped or hit a mental block in my quest for success.
*Review originally posted on http://www.bookishdevil.com”
About Tom Peters
Tom Peters is the co-author of In Search of Excellence (with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.), and A Passion for Excellence (with Nancy Austin), and the author of Thriving on Chaos, Liberation Management, The Tom Peters Seminar, and The Pursuit of Wow!. He is the founder of the Tom Peters Group in Palo Alto, California, and lives mostly on American Airlines, or with his family on a farm in Vermont or an island off the Massachusetts coast. Thanks to the information technology revolution he can be reached at tompeters@businessedge.net
Other books by Tom Peters
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