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

~ Bernd H. Schmitt (Author)
Key Phrases: idea sourcing, generic strategy types, market ecosystem, Big Think, Small Think, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Business leaders need bold strategies to stay relevant and win. In Big Think Strategy, Schmitt shows how to bring bold thinking into your business by sourcing big ideas and executing them creatively. With the tools in this book, any leader can overcome institutionalized small think the inertia, the narrow-mindedness, and the aversion to risk that block true innovation. Your reward? Big, bold, and decidedly doable strategies that excite your employees and leave your rivals scrambling.

Drawing on years of advising corporate leaders on creativity and strategy development, Schmitt explains how to infuse fresh thinking into the planning process. Through his commentary on the Trojan War, the film Fitzcarraldo, and the composer Gustav Mahler, Schmitt uncovers the essence of bold leadership and the levers of revolutionary change. Abundant examples from Apple, Whole Foods, MySpace, IBM, General Electric, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to name a few, show big think strategy in action.

Tested by daring executives in a diverse range of industries, the practical ideas and tools in this book will help you leverage bold ideas in your strategic planning and position your firm uniquely for lasting market relevance and success.

About the Author

Bernd H. Schmitt is a professor at Columbia Business School in New York. His best-selling books, including Customer Experience Management, have been published in 16 languages worldwide. Schmitt advises senior executives on strategy, creativity, and innovation.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (December 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422103218
• ISBN-13: 978-1422103210
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #263,698 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent way to jump over your competition and the industry..., February 3, 2008

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 defines your industry.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Big thinking, great ideas, standard solutions, December 8, 2007

By	M. McDonald (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Bernd Schmitt's book Big Think Strategy is the best and clearest illustration of the potential, processes and ideas behind creating an innovative - out of the box strategy for your company. Schmitt provides clear delineations between big think strategies which are characterized by creativity, visionary leadership, bold ideas, and integration and lasting impact. These are in contrast to small think which is filled with inertia, fear, narrow mindedness, risk, silos and short term focus.

Schmitt uses the next 120 pages to discuss the concepts behind big think in detail. This is the strength of the book as the ensuing chapters provide examples as well as a few well placed tools and process descriptions that can help the reader implement the ideas behind big thinking.

Chapter 1: Big Think and the Trojan Horse talks about the essence behind the need to think outside of the normal constraints and have an approach for generating the next big idea.

Chapter 2 Sourcing Ideas demonstrates the realizations that while many of the fundamentals of strategy may be the same; it does not mean that the content of the strategy needs to be generic. This chapter discusses all of the different inputs and sources enterprises and leaders can use to think big.

Chapter 3: Evaluating the ideas provides processes and approaches for organizing and sifting through potentially big ideas. Here there are a few tried and true marketing idea generation techniques and unfortunately Schmitt recommends using traditional tools such as financial impact to assess ideas. It has been my experience that those are small think tools that will limit your creativity and run counter to the ideas in a big think strategy.

Chapter 4: Turning Ideas into Strategy discusses alternative templates to traditional strategy models and value disciplines. These include: Opposition - going against the grain, Integration - bringing together things that were preciously thought to be opposites, Essence - a revision of core competencies and capabilities and finally Transcendence - creating a new ecosystem ala a Blue Ocean Strategy. This chapter is well reasoned and necessary as readers need this organization to be able o compare, contrast and enlist others in recognizing the different between Big and Little thinking.

Chapter 5 Executing Big Think looks tackle the issue of strategy implementation. This is a challenge for Schmitt as it is the place where big ideas meet the reality of actual operations - by definition small thinking in their orientation. Unfortunately in the area where people need the most help and tools, this chapter has few. Schmitt reverts back to three standard things that can be found in just about every strategy book - the need to enlist and engage the workforce, the need to be adaptable in the implementation to respond to market and company changes, and the need to generate attention and quick wins. If execution is the Achilles heel of strategy and think big is about doing new strategies in new ways, then I wish Schmitt had spent more time thinking and researching this part of the book. Relative to implementation Schmitt is well ensconced in thinking small.

Chapter 6 Leading Big Think is the final chapter that concentrates on leadership. Here again like chapter 5 Schmitt becomes a small thinker. His findings that leadership requires guts, passion and perseverance are small traditional ideas that have been well covered in other books.

Chapter 7 Sustaining Big Think covers the issue of being more than a one big thought wonder. Here Schmitt points out to have Big Thinky Heads - people who are able to maintain a child outlook and optimism that problems can be solved. His recommendation that you should keep a few iconoclasts around is interesting and I have run into a few companies with such people - unfortunately they often suffer the fate quoted by Eric Severed when he discussed how small minds attack big ideas "Its like being nibbled to death by ducks.:

Overall, Big Think Strategy is a book worth buying and reading, particularly the first four chapters as it will refresh your mind and ideas on strategy, creativity and innovation. The book has multiple examples which are strength however each is very brief and cursory. Schmitt occasionally engages in revisionism to make the actions of others fit his framework - not a cardinal sin, but something that detracts from the work. The book does lack a sense that Schmitt has been around to lead, observe or even participate in the execution of a Big Think Strategy - which is a limiting factor for the book. Again this chapter is filled with standard recommendations - eliminate silos, work with innovative people, and be entrepreneurial. All of these are ideas that have been done before and ones that are explained in small thinking terms.

I do not know Schmitt but I am sure that he is an engaging person filled with interesting stories. You can see this from the way the book is written in a conversational - travel log style as Schmitt travels the world and tells you about how those travels point out big ideas and the need for other big thinking. The travel log style - almost akin to Goldratt's books, is a nice touch but it tends to trivialize the messages and make the book appear more of a self indulgence than a discussion of new strategy techniques, This is particularly the case regarding the authors personal fixation with the idea of creating a Trojan Horse. If the style of the book was a big thought in discussing Big Think Strategy then it is moderately executed.

So, this book is recommended as are others in this area Zook's latest book "Unstoppable" and Erich Joachimsthaler's book Hidden in Plain Sight as well as Davenport and Harris's "Competing on Analytics." It's a quick and engaging read with a good balance between new ideas and the tools to formulate them.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!, February 29, 2008

By	M. Hwang - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.