Customer Reviews

Beep! Beep!: Competing in the Age of the Road Runner

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What a clever idea to use timeless cartoon characters to symbolize the realities and opportunities now before businesses everywhere!

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are a fun and apt way illustrate the business mindsets and methods that predominate today versus the perspectives and strategies that will prevail tomorrow. They make instant sense! And so it was easy for Bell and Harari open my eyes to the naked truth: If we stick to our outdated Coyote-like ways much longer, we will surely fail -just like Wile E. fails, time and time again. And if we follow the Road Runner's example, we are more likely to thrive in an emerging world that demands re-thinking our organizations and our roles in them.

But that's not the best of it. BEEP! BEEP! is loaded with deeper, richer insights. Bell and Harari's ideas on risk, reward, integrity, freedom, and power - to name just a few - are provocative and profound, enough to make me squirm and begin plotting my transition from a Coyote to a more Road Runner-like manager. Even better, the authors distill their insights into a handful of easy-to-grasp "rules." Then they make those guidelines even more powerful with helpful tips for real-life application plus example after example drawn from companies large and small around the globe.

This entertaining blend of fresh ideas with sound practical advice on putting them to work immediately makes BEEP! BEEP! a rare resource, one I will go back to again and again.

What a refreshing addition to my leadership library! Chip and Oren have succintly captured both the barriers inherent in the "way things are" and the opportunities that exist in the "way things are becoming". The cartoon character metaphors are right on and easily digested. As in most such books, the authors give us a prescription for success. What differentiates this book is the spirit of joy and hope that permeates each chapter. Moving from "teams" to "flocks", from "domestication" to "freedom", from "arrogance" to "wisdom and character" may just create the kind of work places we all thought were out there somewhere. No utopian society, Chip and Oren's vision melds passion and purpose with an eagle-eyed (or road runner-eyed) focus on results. This should be required reading in every executive suite in America. With any luck, we'll all be sprouting turqoise feathers!

There's much to love in this book. For one thing, it took me to a wholely different appreciation of the cartoons that I watched and wondered about for decades. Now I can apply that to how we wage our lives at work and beyond. The roadrunner and coyote are excellent metaphors for the ways we have worked vs. the way we can work once our thinking is liberated.

It's exciting to read any of these 2 guys' books because their writing is full of energy, and the cases they base their points on are robust.

I read this book as I was starting to conceive a new business--and it became the basis for how we wanted to run the entire business. It helped my partner and me think differently--like getting over our "edifice complex"!

It's an easy read. Moreover...it's a great read!

Beep Beep is refreshing - not only for its unique choice of the Warner cartoon characters whose antics serve as a metaophor and offer object lessons for business success - but also for the lessons themselves. There are loads of new ideas here - practical ways to build customer partnerships and create a more customer-focused organziation. The best part is you can apply most of them right away - and they do get results. I'm going to keep this book close by for awhile - and re-read portions particularly appropriate for my business (sales). The ideas look simple on the surface - but they gain strength as you spend time with them. Powerful stuff!

WOW...just finished reading Beep Beep. It is an amazing book. Loved the analogy of Road Runner and Wile E Coyote for 21st century business vs 20th century management. I will be using this book in the management courses I teach and in my marketing consulting business. The simplicty and power of this book are incredible. I think there's best seller here!

The Road Runner cartoons are classic. Most of us grew up laughing out loud as Wile E. Coyote encountered one challenge after another in his attempts to capture the Road Runner. The scenarios were simple. The coyote devised ways to capture lunch, never winning the competition. His tools, all products of Acme Company, backfired on him. He caused himself a great deal of difficulty, while the Road Runner went on with his life, practically oblivious to the coyote's campaign.

At the start of their book, Bell and Harari note that coyotes can run 30 miles per hour and road runners can't really fly and can only run 16 miles per hour. Wile E. Coyote has an endless arsenal of gadgets to trap the road runner, all provided by his single supplier, Acme. He's a master planner, yet continually fails . . . of his own volition. What's the problem here? Why is the Road Runner so successful? Because he's operating under different rules. The coyote may be seen as chained to conventional wisdom, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A bureaucrat. The Road Runner is more like the agile entrepreneur, competing with a whole different paradigm.

The authors take this familiar cartoon and turn it into an instructive business case. Their objective is to help us become road runners among coyotes. In page after page, they pull lessons from the cartoons that we probably all missed as kids, comparing the characters and their motivations and their results. "Wile E. Coyote is preoccupied, earnest, conniving, and grim. The Road Runner is joyful, light, and free. Wile E. does nothing but go from pursuing one meal to the next, with perpetual frustration; the bird is gleefully living life to the fullest. The results are the same: Wile E. somehow manages to dig himself into the hole of failure, while the Road Runner strides on, undeterred and unaffected by life's bumps and obstacles."

Can you imagine the authors conducting their research for this book?

As we move through the book, we learn more about the comparative principles and how to succeed in the Age of the Road Runner. Familiar names populate the pages as we are provided with examples of companies and people. A "Tail Feathers" feature spotlights ordinary people doing extraordinary things-as Road Runners. The stories are inspirational, as well as educational. "Bird Seed" sections furnish the reader with solid advice that fits the concept, but it not linked to the two main characters.

Descriptive summaries of Road Runner cartoon incidents are liberally sprinkled throughout the book, keeping the reader laughing and smiling and wondering in amazement how the coyote could keep going in this futile struggle. And therein lies the tale of this book. To survive in a Road Runner Age, you cannot continue to operate like a coyote. The book is filled with current wisdom, but just as important, it's a fun book to read. People learn more when they're laughing, so expect to gain a lot from Beep! Beep!

What a great book! If you're looking for solid information on organizational renewal and vitality this is it. It's full of practical how-to information that's obviously grounded in solid research...but without the pretentious academic fluff that so many books seem to have. Add the breezy style of the Road Runner and you have a real winner. It's thought-provoking, enjoyable, easy to read, and filled with concrete ways to promote corporate agility. If you want to move you, your team, and/or your company to another whole level of performance, buy a copy today.

Out of the mouths of toons comes ... great advice. In fact, in this case, the toon based advice is as silent as a Max Sennet caper, but nonetheless eloquent in it's simplicity and as impactful as the proverbial thousand words.

Bell and Harari have fun retrofitting the old "Road Runner versus Wily e Coyote" cartoon series from Warner Bros., as a metaphor for the "old" vs the "new" economies and the management skill differences of each.. Their theme is, basically, "old economy" skills are hopelessly out of date, and only pracicioneers of "new economy" management methods will avoid the e-world bone pile..

Whether you buy the premise..whole, part, or not at all..this facile and light hearted romp through the differences will give you a test of your beliefs. Breezy, fast and easy to digest. Should be able to complete in one flight. Time enought for any good practioner of Beep! Beep! management..

Simple, straightforward, practical, and entertaining. What more could you ask for in a book? Buy a copy today and read it tomorrow. Then use the advice to create a powerful new force in your company.

When the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were introduced by Chuck Jones in 1949, the global marketplace was certainly quite different from what it is today. For example, the economies of countries such as Germany and Japan had only begun to recover from World War II. The U.S.S.R. was solidly intact behind what Winston Churchill described as an "Iron Curtain." About that time, Thomas Watson, Sr. insisted that the entire worldwide market for computers was (at the most) seven. (According to some accounts, the estimate was five.) More than 40 years would pass before the WWW would be established. That was then. Chip R. Bell and Oren Harari suggest that we now compete in The Age of the Road Runner. As in Jones's animated cartoons, Road Runners win and Coyotes lose. Why? That is one question which the authors answer in BEEP! BEEP! Unlike real coyotes, Wile E. Coyote's human counterparts can become a Road Runner. How? That is another question which the authors also answer. Don't be deterred by the title. (I was. I feared this was another gimmicky business book with a snappy title and anorexic content. I was wrong.) On the dust jacket, Michael Dell is quoted as saying that this book is "very powerful and entertaining." That's true. Bell and Harari juxtapose two antagonists which serve as metaphors throughout a rigorous but delightful examination of the reasons for both success and failure in the global marketplace.

The authors offer some truly valuable insights into serious matters such as leadership, "competing in the terrain of the future", collaborative "flocking" (as opposed to mindless regimentation), strategic uses of speed, flexibility and adaptability, the power of honorable cultures, the "magic" of curiosity and innovation, and the importance of joy (as opposed to pleasure). I especially appreciate the inclusion of several dozen boxed items (eg "Birdseed") which supplement (indeed nourish) the narrative.

Near the end of the book, the authors briefly discuss Alan Shafer, Group Vice President of Cincinnati-based Milacron's Industrial Products division. The subject is Shafer's business philosophy which boils down to three premises: "First, push the envelope." (Harvey Mackay would certainly agree.) "Next, share the credit....Finally, have fun doing it." We all know about fun-loving cultures such as those of Milacron and Southwest Airlines. So many other companies incorrectly assume that it is impossible for them to have such a culture. According to Shafer, "Fun is how you keep your road runners motivated....Fun is how you turn your coyotes into roadrunners." Bell and Harari provide a road map and an operations manual.

They fully understand how difficult it can be for an organization to turn its coyotes into road runners. The point is, that all organizations CAN. Here is a brief excerpt in which the authors comment on speed: "The key to the Road Runner's success is that he's more than just fast. He's unpredictable, he zigs and zags, he reacts creatively real-time. In a world where linear speed is a commodity, any organization can use technologies that compress time....The key to thriving is no longer just the ability to work fast, but what [italics] you are able to do fast."

Here's one initiative I strongly recommend: purchase a book which discusses key business issues with both wit and wisdom, then apply what you have learned. How soon should you take this initiative? Beep! Beep!