The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business (Paperback)

~ Yoram (Jerry) Wind (Author), Colin Cook (Author) "Last week the quiet old man who lived there passed away, and you've been concerned about the arrival of the next tenant..." (more)
Key Phrases: adaptive disconnects, reshaping infrastructure, adaptive experimentation, United States, New York, Lord Simpson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

50,000 copies sold, now in paperback...If you can think impossible thoughts, then you can do impossible things!! *The power of change: create new thinking for new solutions! *Includes a new introduction demonstrating the "power of impossible thinking," plus access to exclusive book summary and authors' interview at the book's companion Web site. The Power of Impossible Thinking is about getting better at making sense of what's going on around you so you can make decisions that respond to reality, not inaccurate or obsolete models of the world. This bestseller reveals how mental models stand between you and the truth and how to transform them into your biggest advantage! Learn how to develop new ways of seeing, when to change to a new model, how to swap amongst a portfolio of models, how to understand complex environments and how to do "mind R and D," improving models through constant experimentation. Jerry Wind and Colin Crook review why it's so hard to change mental models and offer practical strategies for dismantling "hardened missile silos". Finally they show how to access models quickly through intuition, and assess the effectiveness of any mental model. Purchasers of this book gain access to audio summaries on a companion web site, along with a new half-hour interview with the authors.

From the Back Cover

50,000 copies sold, now in paperback... If you can think impossible thoughts, then you can do impossible things!!

• The power of change: create new thinking for new solutions!
• Includes a new introduction demonstrating the "power of impossible thinking," plus access to exclusive book summary and authors' interview at the book's companion Web site.

The Power of Impossible Thinking is about getting better at making sense of what's going on around you so you can make decisions that respond to reality, not inaccurate or obsolete models of the world. This bestseller reveals how mental models stand between you and the truth and how to transform them into your biggest advantage!  Learn how to develop new ways of seeing, when to change to a new model, how to swap amongst a portfolio of models, how to understand complex environments and how to do "mind R and D," improving models through constant experimentation.  Jerry Wind and Colin Crook review why it's so hard to change mental models and offer practical strategies for dismantling "hardened missile silos". Finally they show how to access models quickly through intuition, and assess the effectiveness of any mental model. Purchasers of this book gain access to audio summaries on a companion web site, along with a new half-hour interview with the authors.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wharton School Publishing; 1 edition (February 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131877283
• ISBN-13: 978-0131877283
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #211,973 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How Others' Own Perceptions Pre-Determined Their Success, March 14, 2008

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

An effective synthesis of the Steven Covey's self-help euphemisms (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and Malcolm Gladwell's real-world illustrations of psychological insights (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference), this is a smartly written, often fascinating book that delves into the power and limits of mental models in order to transform one's world. It is not so much valuable as a treatise for defining one's own personal success as it is of illustrating how key individuals recognized "strategic inflection points" to change the way the rest of us think and consequently yield a handsome profit from building unprecedented business models to support their individualism. There are many examples cited, predictable ones actually - Howard Schultz's reinvention of coffee consumerism with the creation of Starbucks, Oprah Winfrey's transformation of the talk show, Apple Computer's evolutionary push toward the iPod and away from the traditional CD. But chronicling the reasons behind their success makes for interesting reading. What becomes clear is that it's not about the product but about the way people make sense of the way they do things in their lives. The product as it exists now is almost incidental. This inversion on common thought is what makes this book particularly insightful.

Co-authors Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Colin Crook of the Wharton School define their concept of "impossible thinking" as a four-step transformation initiative:

(1) Becoming much more explicitly aware of why we see the world the way we do and what that implies in terms of opportunities and threats.
(2) Testing the relevance and compatibility of our current mental models against the changing environment.
(3) Overcoming change inhibitors by reshaping the infrastructure that supports the old models and changing the thinking of others.
(4) Generating and acting upon new models by experimenting, using intuition and continuing to assess and strengthen our models.

It all sounds easy in theory, but Wind and Crook are quick to recognize that we are living in a world of information overload and that isolating our perceptions can be daunting when competition for our attention can overwhelm us. One of the ways they feel we can deal with this is through a process of zooming in and zooming out. If one can alternate your focus between the detail and a broader view, one can see the detail and the context, the separation of the forest from the trees. By zooming in and out, there is an opportunity to benefit from the information that is out there but also put it into a broader context. It's a matter of using the information to test our own hypotheses.

The book's most intriguing sections have to do with the dot-com bubble and bust. The co-authors astutely point out that many companies (Amazon and Schwab among them) transformed themselves in fundamental ways by harnessing the power of the Internet. On the other hand, the companies that got into the worst trouble during the bust were the ones that saw this as an either/or proposition. First, they were resistant to the Internet being a key part of their business model, and upon seeing the success of others and recognizing the pressures of their customer base all too late, they jumped in completely and often disastrously. The attitude of conducting small experiments and creating a portfolio of models can help to minimize the risks of switching models, especially if one tests the models before investing too much in them. It is not a great revolution but rather a series of small experiments that leads to larger investments. The co-authors emphasize the need to create a portfolio of models and selecting one that works best for a particular situation.

At the end of the book, I have to admit I did not feel particularly empowered to change the world, but I do feel far more informed about the processes others have taken - perhaps unintentionally - to garner their transformative power. Truth be told, neither Wind nor Crook exhibit Gladwell's particularly shrewd observational skills, but Crook does provide the best line - "We think we see the real world, but we actually see what's already in our own minds." I wholeheartedly agree that I am the one most responsible for limiting my potential for success and that I need to reevaluate my mental models. As with most of their books, Wharton School Publishing includes an audio CD that summarizes the main points of the book and an interview with the co-authors.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as some of the other books out there, January 2, 2009

By	Taylor Ellwood "http://www.imagineyourreality... - See all my reviews

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This is basically a self-help book for professionals and while it does offer some good advice, it's not offering anything revolutionary or extraordinarily new that couldn't be found in books that approach the same subject more dynamically. The authors provide a couple stories and some ideas on how to go about transforming the business of your life, but they don't follow through significantly with exercises that can challenge their readers to follow through on the ideas. It's an ok book, but it's not one I'd recommend to a friend if they wanted to reinvent their life.

4.0 out of 5 stars How to make impossible ideas become tangible results, July 9, 2009

By	Rebecca Clement "Publisher, Soundview Executi... (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

The single greatest force for change is the human imagination and the ability to transform that vision into reality. Corporate examples of truly innovative business models that began as seemingly impossible ideas include FedEx, Amazon and Southwest Airlines. However, even these types of break-through business models can become prisoners to their own success if they fail to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace. This is why Soundview recommends the book "The Power of Impossible Thinking," because it provides a formalized structure that helps quantify and qualify an organization's existing "mental model." Beyond mere business applications, the systemic process explained in this book has potential for a wide-range of uses that can help each of us develop crisp insights and fresh perspectives, which ultimately empowers the pull of impossible thoughts into tangible real-world results.