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

by Bernd H. Schmitt

Business leaders need bold strategies to stay relevant and win. Schmitt shows how to bring bold thinking into your business by sourcing big ideas and executing them creatively.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1422103218
• ISBN13: 9781422103210
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Good read

Entrapping. If you are interested in overcoming limitations of tactical thinking, breaking out of the box, or creative/strategic thinking, read this book.

Big Think Strategy----Bernd Schmitt

Bernd Schmitt does it again with his Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind book. I read Schmitt's book on a plane ride from New York to Beijing and was captivated by it. Throughout the entire read, I was applying Schmitt's frameworks to my own industry and line of business and was frantically writing down all the ideas that emerged. Big Think Strategy is also not written like a traditional textbook which is quite refreshing in that regard. Overall, I see many types of professionals really getting alot out of Schmitt's new work (not just traditional executives). Schmitt's Big Think Strategy makes you think differently in whatever line of business you are in and I plan incorporating his frameworks within my unit and team immediately. Schmitt does it again with his Big Think Strategy book. BRAVO SCHMITT!!! BRAVO!!!

A Must Read!

A must have for any business manager! This book is a perfect read for anyone looking for simple and creative ways to bring innovative changes to their company. Schmitt has a great skill of combining business strategies with interesting anecdotes and humor, which makes the book an easy and fun read.

Excellent way to jump over your competition and the industry...

While it's possible to run a successful business by incrementally improving your product and service, you'll forever be trying to defend your turf from others doing the same thing. The way to break free and win big is to "think big". Bernd H. Schmitt takes a look at that strategy in his book Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind. It's an unconventional style business book to create unconventional products and services. Contents: Big Think and the Trojan Horse Sourcing Ideas - Steaks and Sacred Cows Evaluating Ideas - How to Dig for the Gems Turning Ideas into Strategy - What Would Mahler Do? Executing Big Think - How to Pull the Ship over the Mountain Leading Big Think - Guts, Passion - or Just a Robot? Sustaining Big Think - From Sisyphus to Odysseus Epilogue Notes Index About Schmitt The first thing you notice about this book is that it's not the typical scholarly look at some management theory that sounds good on paper but probably wouldn't translate to real life. Schmitt digs right in and relates his ideas and actions that have been developed from many years of working with companies. Many of the applications of these ideas weren't part of some strategy session or formal "brainstorming" gathering, but rather the result of conversations on the train or over steaks with the leaders of companies that were struggling with these very issues. As such, the whole presentation of the concepts has a "real" feel to them. I liked that... The book centers around three leadership qualities and four strategy types you can use to move your company from small think to Big Think. The styles involve guts, passion, and perseverance. You have to stick with your ideas even though others might be against you. Your passion over the idea needs to translate into persuading others to buy into it. And most of all, you can't be the type to throw in the towel at the first sign of resistance. The strategy types are opposition, integration, essence, and transcendence. Opposition involves looking at the market and trying something that is in direct contrast to where others are blindly following. Integration is the art of bringing together ideas that on the surface may not seem to be complementary, but that once combined causes a whole new market paradigm. Essence means taking the core of an idea and taking it further than anyone else has. And finally, transcendence seeks to destroy the boundaries that current define the industry or market that you're in. But Schmitt doesn't just throw out ideas without examples. He brings together companies that embody these ideas. Look at companies and brands like Dove, Apple, Whole Foods, etc. It's really good stuff... Most anyone in business can easily read and benefit from this book. You owe it to your business and yourself to really think about what you're doing and where you're going. It may be that by changing your mindset, you may well become the next company that def

The Power and Possibilities of an "Open" Mindset

In his previous books (e.g. Marketing Aesthetics, Experiential Marketing, and Customer Experience Management), Bernd Schmitt focuses his attention almost entirely on the aesthetics and dynamics of the purchase experience. What we have in this volume is a substantive, thought-provoking 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. Here are several of the questions to which Schmitt responds, with rigor and eloquence: 1. What are the strategy tasks of Big Think? 2. Which idea sourcing tools tend to be most productive? 3. By what process can an organization benchmark outside of its industry? 4. By what process can Big Ideas be identified, evaluated, and selected? 5. What are the four types of Big Think strategy? 6. How to formulate a strategy for a Big Idea? 7. How to executive that strategy effectively? 8. What are the most common hurdles to implementing it? 9.Viewing Big Think as a sprint, how to "jump over" these hurdles? 10. How to "weave Big Think into the fabric" of an organization? Early in his book, Schmitt notes that psychologists have divided the creative process into four phases: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. "The first and last phases are analytical phases. In the first phase, you prepare the facts and immerse yourself in the problem," preferably a Big Problem. "In the fourth phase, you evaluate and verify the creative [i.e. desired] outcome. The actual creative ideas, however, are generated in the two middle phases of incubation and illumination." Schmitt recommends a number of "tools" to make connections in the brain during the process of formulating a Big Idea and the strategy needed to execute it effectively. He asserts (and I agree) that this process must involve everyone within the given organization but also anyone else (including customers) who can help to provide whatever information, perspectives, questions, and suggestions that may be needed. This is a key point, one that Graham Wallace, Friedrich Hayek, and Henry Chesbrough (to name but three) st