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Wide-Angle Vision: Beat Your Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees
 
 
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Wide-Angle Vision: Beat Your Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees [Hardcover]

Wayne C. Burkan (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August 1996
Praise for Wide Angle Vision

"In this book, Wayne Burkan shows us that the vantage points from which we view and act can earn us critical advantages if we are willing to stretch our thoughts and practices beyond the edge of conventional thinking." - Robert W. Galvin Chairman of the Executive Committee and former CEO of Motorola

"Wayne Burkan's Wide-Angle Vision is a very pragmatic and useful guide to dealing with and implementing change. His concept of 'edge' as it relates to customers, employees, and competitors should help many organizations struggling with the rapidly changing marketplace and the endless panaceas being promoted." - David R. Stamper Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, Latin American Division

"At Southwest Airlines, we redefined air transportation by utilizing 'edge thinking.' Wayne Burkan is offering a 'flight plan' that if studied, understood, and followed, will improve your bottom line for the long term. If you really want to be on the 'leading edge' for your product or service, this is the place to begin." - Howard Putnam Speaker, author, and former CEO of Southwest Airlines

"Wayne Burkan has brought our attention to a great source of potential opportunities for profitable growth if we take his advice and really listen to those challenging customers, potential customers, small competitors, and unhappy employees whom we often want to dismiss as difficult." - D. H. Davis President and Chief Operating Officer, Rockwell International Corporation

"Strategically thought-provoking! It's just what busy leaders need to ensure they are focused on gaining a competitive edge. An easy-to-read wake up call for organizations and managers. Wayne Burkan challenges us to confront the perils of tunnel vision and the promise of a wider perspective. So simple, so clear, so right!" - Donald Himelfarb

President, Thrifty Rent-A-Car System, Inc.

Conventional business wisdom says to get close to your best customers, watch your biggest competitors, and reward your model employees. This controversial book offers a contrarian viewpoint and introduces a dynamic new way to compete-by broadening your focus beyond mainstream thinking to spot the critical opportunities at the edge of your core business. Wide-Angle Vision opens your eyes to the "edge," from "little guy" competitors preparing to take over the market to disgruntled customers and maverick employees whose complaints can lead to great ideas for change.

Listening to complaining employees pays off. That's where the idea for Java(r) , Sun Microsystems' successful Internet programming system, came from. With Wide-Angle Vision, now you can learn how to use "edge" groups to sharpen your competitiveness by reducing surprise, increasing innovation, and satisfying customers.

Filled with compelling examples from a range of industries and drawing on Wayne Burkan's extensive consulting experience with IBM, Ford, and others, Wide-Angle Vision equips you with specific action techniques that can enable you to:
* Anticipate crises before they occur by using "splatter vision," scenarios, and benchmarking
* Find breakthrough solutions to difficult problems by looking outside your field
* Create powerful, flexible teams that work-from "edge" teams to ideal teams
* Reduce resistance to organizational change through skillful timing, finding perfect change agents, and more
* Reengineer with lower risk and greater efficiency, using an effective seven-step plan for change
* Avoid tunnel vision by broadening your perspective-to the edges of what's happening in the mainstream

In today's rapidly changing marketplace, opportunities are all around you. Wide-Angle Vision gives you the power to look them in the eye and develop the daring skills you need to be a leading-and lasting-"edge" competitor.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

According to Wayne Burkan, companies suffer when they fail to see the big picture. And they can't, the professional trainer and speaker contends, if they are too narrowly focused on consumers already happy with their products or services. In Wide-Angle Vision, he shows how to shift attention to "fringe competitors, lost customers, and rogue employees." They provide insights that satisfied constituents never will, Burkan writes, and help businesses avoid mistakes like those now threatening Apple Computer.

From Library Journal

Burkan, a consultant, speaker, and author (Executive Information Systems: From Proposal Through Implementation, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991), contends that businesses fail to remain competitive due to their focus on the mainstream of their customers, employees, and affiliates. Instead, he argues, companies should have wide-angle vision and look toward "the edge" of their businesses for possible innovative ideas from their insignificant competitors, former customers, and rebel employees. Burkan presents his arguments in a convincing manner, taking examples from major U.S. corporations. While other recent works, such as Jonathan Barsky's World-Call Customer Satisfaction (Irwin Professional, 1995), deal with the issue of customer satisfaction, none of them discusses marketing and strategic planning by focusing on the fringe elements of business. Recommended for business collections.?Kathy Shimpock-Vieweg, Muchmore & Wallwork Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 275 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (August 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0471134163
  • ISBN-13: 978-0471134169
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #884,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent companion to Joel Barker's Future Edge, April 5, 2000
This review is from: Wide-Angle Vision: Beat Your Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees (Hardcover)
Read this book jointly with Joel Barkers' Future Edge. It will be an excellent companion.

Wayne Burkan has been a collaborator of Joel Barker. In this book, filled with excellent real-world business examples, the author introduces some more interesting concepts to the paradigm phenomenon. The author uses the term EDGE to illustrate his innovative ideas.

Most business books postulating the concept of strategic advantage sometimes get too conceptual or even too vague in the approach. This is one book that shows you the tactical and yet practical approaches to gaining a strategic advantage in your business.

One of the best learning tools I got out of this book is the power of observation through the application of peripheral vision. The author calls it "splatter vision" or "wide angle vision" which he uses as the book's main title. I understand from my American friends that this is an age-old technique practised by native North American Indians. Henceforth, it is now practised by nature observers, bird watchers and animal trackers. In the book, the author relates an analogy of how Secret Service agents apply "splatter vision" in the field to visually screen out, read the signals quickly - & anticipate - any potential threats against the President.

In the business world, I fully agree "splatter vision" is a useful & powerful anticipation tool, with which you can apply to constantly scan the entire business landscape in sweeping motions in order to avoid missing "unexpected gaps" which could be potential threats &/or possible opportunities.

In reality, you are:
- unfocusing your eyes;
- maximising your peripheral vision;
- sustaining a soft focus;
- increasing your view of the landscape with an almost 180 degree-field-of-vision;
in order to avoid becoming so focused that you expect your challenge to come from a specific direction!

Another book that can be read in conjunction with these two books, is 'The Whack-A-Mole Theory; Creating Breakthrough and Transformation in Organizations' by Lindsay E. Collier. You will certainly note a common theme throughout these three books.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars New perspective on the true value of the customer you hate, February 12, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Wide-Angle Vision: Beat Your Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees (Hardcover)
Burkan has done a nice job in reminding us about the value of our most irritating customer and our peskiest employee. Pay attention to them! They point us to new markets and new opportunities to create value for our stakeholders
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3.0 out of 5 stars it is ok, January 21, 2000
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This review is from: Wide-Angle Vision: Beat Your Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees (Hardcover)
in my opinion, it is good that the book focus on some ignored customers, employees and other business partners. since retention of customer is important. some concept like savior on the edge is also interesting .

it is ok and above average.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
A powerful force is looming before you. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
excuse industry, yearbook company, fringe competitors, edge team, edge employees, strategic vulnerability, edge customers, rogue employees, edge competitors, anticipated crisis, mainstream customers, edge members, disgruntled customers, complaining customers, toughest problems, generic language, real estate group
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ideal Team, United States, Smith Corona, People Express, Special Team Member, Soviet Union, Cultural Toys, Patrick Naughton, Apple Computer, Secret Service, Barry Marshall, General Motors, Jacob Miles, Princeton Review, West Coast, African American, Business Week, John Saxon, Paradigm Prism, Peter Drucker, Sandia Labs, Sun Microsystems, Uniroyal Chemical, Wall Street, Beech Aircraft
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