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A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business Hardcover – January 20, 2015
Adam Morgan
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Mark Barden
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Print length288 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherWiley
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Publication dateJanuary 20, 2015
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Dimensions8.2 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
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ISBN-109781118899014
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ISBN-13978-1118899014
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Morgan and Barden have produced a thought-provoking book for leaders and entrepreneurs looking to inject fresh thinking into their perspectives on business”. (The Irish Times, May 2015)
“..there are tons of inspiring and interesting case studies….it will inspire, guide and challenge you to find your way around – if not over – that hurdle you currently face.” (Marketing, June 2015)
“..in the assured hands of Morgan and Barden, it’s a gentle but insistent boot up the backside for anyone who wants to improve their business – or personal – performance” (PR Week, July 2015)
From the Inside Flap
"AN AMAZING BOOK"
Dan Wieden
HOW DO YOU TURN YOUR LIMITATIONS INTO OPPORTUNITIES?
Drawing inspiration from cases in fields as diverse as education, automobile engineering, supply-chain management, agriculture and breakthrough marketing campaigns, A Beautiful Constraint provides simple and practical tools to help almost anyone use constraints as a source of inspiration rather than asphyxiation. With clearly signalled chapter summaries allowing the time-constrained reader to grasp the whole book in 21 minutes, this is an easily digestible guidebook for all of us who need to make more from less.
"A Beautiful Constraint is a worldview changer."
Seth Godin, Author, What To Do When It's Your Turn
"A Beautiful Constraint is a book you can arm-wrestle with. Come at it with a traditional mindset and it will come right back at you with forceful arguments that will stimulate your thinking. The book offers us all a beguilingly simple way of looking at new approaches to grow and prosper in a new world order where the overriding preoccupation of business is scarcity of resource in all its forms. Read it and be inspired."
Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Unilever
"I'm a huge believer in the power of constraint. Less is often better. This book beautifully explores the question of how to approach constraints, both as individuals and as organizations and provides pragmatic frameworks for how to implement in every day life. In the end, this is not a business book, it is essential reading for personal happiness and entrepreneurship."
Fabian Pfortmüller, Co-Founder, Holstee
"Through its compelling real world examples and observations, A Beautiful Constraint has encouraged me to challenge time-worn assumptions, and enlightened me to the concept of asking tough propelling questions to both our creative teams and our sales and marketing organization. As an added bonus, ABC has been assembled in an easy-to-digest format perfect for short attention span readers like me."
Scott Rohde, SVP Product Development, Sony PlayStation Worldwide Studios America
"An amazing book. A well-written, lucid survey of how businesses succeed by figuring out how to use their limitations. A business book that doesn't read like one. I think these guys nailed it."
Dan Wieden, Co-Founder & Chairman, Wieden + Kennedy
"Adam and Mark have not only thought deeply about how to turn lemons into lemonade, they've also thought about how to make the wealth of ideas in their book easy to digest and use."
Nancy Duarte, CEO, Duarte, Inc.
"I started Samuel Adams in 1984 on a shoestring, but I never felt constrained. I felt focused and clear about every decision. We bootstrapped and innovated to compensate for lack of financial resources, and that creative culture serves us well even now, 30 years later. A Beautiful Constraint is a great addition to the entrepreneur's bookshelf. The antithesis of the ill-fated 'burn rate' calculations used by VCs during the dot com boom, the lessons in A Beautiful Constraint give the reader the tools to stay true to the company's core values and the confidence to let constraints be a powerful ally."
Jim Koch, Chairman & Founder, The Boston Beer Company
From the Back Cover
"AN AMAZING BOOK"
Dan Wieden
HOW DO YOU TURN YOUR LIMITATIONS INTO OPPORTUNITIES?
Drawing inspiration from cases in fields as diverse as education, automobile engineering, supply-chain management, agriculture and breakthrough marketing campaigns, A Beautiful Constraint provides simple and practical tools to help almost anyone use constraints as a source of inspiration rather than asphyxiation. With clearly signalled chapter summaries allowing the time-constrained reader to grasp the whole book in 21 minutes, this is an easily digestible guidebook for all of us who need to make more from less.
"A Beautiful Constraint is a worldview changer."
Seth Godin, Author, What To Do When It's Your Turn
"A Beautiful Constraint is a book you can arm-wrestle with. Come at it with a traditional mindset and it will come right back at you with forceful arguments that will stimulate your thinking. The book offers us all a beguilingly simple way of looking at new approaches to grow and prosper in a new world order where the overriding preoccupation of business is scarcity of resource in all its forms. Read it and be inspired."
Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Unilever
"I'm a huge believer in the power of constraint. Less is often better. This book beautifully explores the question of how to approach constraints, both as individuals and as organizations and provides pragmatic frameworks for how to implement in every day life. In the end, this is not a business book, it is essential reading for personal happiness and entrepreneurship."
Fabian Pfortmüller, Co-Founder, Holstee
"Through its compelling real world examples and observations, A Beautiful Constraint has encouraged me to challenge time-worn assumptions, and enlightened me to the concept of asking tough propelling questions to both our creative teams and our sales and marketing organization. As an added bonus, ABC has been assembled in an easy-to-digest format perfect for short attention span readers like me."
Scott Rohde, SVP Product Development, Sony PlayStation Worldwide Studios America
"An amazing book. A well-written, lucid survey of how businesses succeed by figuring out how to use their limitations. A business book that doesn't read like one. I think these guys nailed it."
Dan Wieden, Co-Founder & Chairman, Wieden + Kennedy
"Adam and Mark have not only thought deeply about how to turn lemons into lemonade, they've also thought about how to make the wealth of ideas in their book easy to digest and use."
Nancy Duarte, CEO, Duarte, Inc.
"I started Samuel Adams in 1984 on a shoestring, but I never felt constrained. I felt focused and clear about every decision. We bootstrapped and innovated to compensate for lack of financial resources, and that creative culture serves us well even now, 30 years later. A Beautiful Constraint is a great addition to the entrepreneur's bookshelf. The antithesis of the ill-fated 'burn rate' calculations used by VCs during the dot com boom, the lessons in A Beautiful Constraint give the reader the tools to stay true to the company's core values and the confidence to let constraints be a powerful ally."
Jim Koch, Chairman & Founder, The Boston Beer Company
About the Author
ADAM MORGAN is the author of Eating The Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, the international bestseller that introduced the concept of challenger brands to the world of marketing. His ideas have been widely cited as a key influence by a new generation of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world. He is founder of eatbigfish, a renowned marketing consultancy that works with clients to develop their own breakthrough strategies, from Helsinki to Hanoi.
MARK BARDEN runs the west coast business for eatbigfish in the US. Over his career he's won the Platinum Award for direct response marketing, taken a dot com public, warmed up a crowd for Ellen De Generes, and played a Buddhist monk in a Kleenex commercial. His advice on how to create breakthrough thinking with outsize results is much sought after. He is a popular speaker, world class facilitator and occasional coach.
Product details
- ASIN : 1118899016
- Publisher : Wiley; 1st edition (January 20, 2015)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781118899014
- ISBN-13 : 978-1118899014
- Item Weight : 1.87 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.2 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#45,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #321 in Marketing (Books)
- #691 in Business Management (Books)
- #1,184 in Personal Finance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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The title of this book is arresting: “A Beautiful Constraint”. Ponder that for a moment.
Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy was given a “gift” by Phil Knight, founder of Nike. The gift was the constraint that came with the offer to take charge of Nike’s marketing. Knight did not want anything “that looked or felt or smelled like advertising”. As a competitive runner, he wanted a real relationship with the athletes who would use his product. Wieden’s agency was not to run the same ad twice— “you wouldn't write the same letter to a friend two weeks in a row, so why would you show them the same ad?” There was to be no use of models in the adverts, none at all.
The “gift” had the effect of denying Wieden+Kennedy the ability to do what they knew as successful advertising. The result was one of the world’s most admired and successful communications campaigns.
Our instinctive response to constraints is to view them as restrictions. There is good reason to see some as necessary, beneficial, and to be embraced.
Todd Batty, Creative Director of video game giant Electronic Arts, notes that the absence of any constraints on video game designers, does not provide an infinite range of possibilities, but the opposite: “a predictable sameness”.
In a very different field, comedian Jerry Seinfeld's approach is to deny himself the easy source of laughs, such as sex or swearing. Instead, his comedy is about the humdrum minutiae of life. This approach has earned him $ 30 million a year.
Constraints can be grouped into “foundation, resource, time, and method”.
“Foundation” constraints are those that deny the business an essential for success. An example is the lack of a physical restaurant for a would-be restaurateur, which resulted in the growth of the food-cart industry.
A “Resource” constraint is the common lack of budget, people, and knowledge or expertise.
Hannah Jones, VP of Corporate Responsibility at Nike at the time, faced the almost impossible task of enforcing the use of protective facemasks to prevent breathing in glue fumes in their factories. She challenged the constraining assumption that glue fumes have to be toxic, and forced Nike designers to make a nontoxic glue. The result was not only a safer but also better performing product.
“Time” was a huge constraint on the ambitious “Sky City” building in Changsha, China. It was to be twice the height of the Empire State Building with 202 floors, making it the tallest skyscraper in the world. It was to be built in just 90 days! The constraint forced the pre-fabrication of the floors elsewhere, which were then assembled on-site.
The constraint of “Method” is commonly the result of trying to address today’s demands with yesterday’s methods. What was appropriate then, is not necessarily appropriate now, but previous success blinds one to what could create success tomorrow.
The constraint faced by the Audi R10 racing-car development team, was how to win the Le Mans if their car could go no faster than anyone else’s. This methodological constraint resulted in using diesel technology in their racing cars for the first time. The answer was fuel efficiency without being able to go faster. Audi could win Le Mans with a car that was not faster, but needed fewer pit stops. The R10 TDI took first place at Le Mans for the next three years.
The authors do more than simply point out the creative value of a constraint – they offer some valuable techniques that are immediately useable. A key part of the solution is the “Propelling Question”. This type of question is not merely a difficult question such as how to double turnover in two years.
“How we frame the question is critical to making a constraint beautiful because it forces us to think and behave in a different way”, the authors explain. Propelling Questions must contain a “directional tension” that retains the “can” while looking for the “if”. Audi’s question was “How can we win the Le Mans if our car can go no faster than anyone else’s?”
There is adequate research to suggest that when people are stressed, they are more likely to stick to addressing problems as they always have. Try addressing your constraint with this Propelling Question format.
The authors identify three generic reactions to constraints.
The first group the “Victims” who lower their ambition when faced with a constraint. Since I cannot achieve what I desire because of the constraint, I will settle for less.
The second group the “Neutralizers” refuse to lower the ambition but find an alternative way to deliver the ambition. If I cannot double turnover in two years, I will exit this business and invest elsewhere.
The third group, the “Transformers” who finds a way to use a constraint as an opportunity, and even heighten their ambition in the process.
Our habitual ways of responding to constraints, prevent us from finding new ways to solve new problems. If the first step to correcting this is acknowledging the problem, the second is finding effective remedies.
Start with this book. It is a practical book, accessible and also entertaining,
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works.
This book is a font of knowledge backed up with real examples to illustrate various points. Contains practical steps to move organizations towards having a transformation culture and away from the status quo. Didn't agree with everything that was said but made me question some of my own thinking. A great read.
That said, I am still giving the book 5 stars as the content is absolutely wonderful. I am using the book for a Business Book Review for the local Chamber newsletter. Normally, a few pages missing would be upsetting but one could still get the "idea" and move on. But the pages missing in here are truly being missed as there is something of use and value on every page.
I can see referencing this book over and over again, not a one-time read.
A lot of applicable insight on the "how", instead of just the importance of normative "you should see the things differently, out of box, etc"
Recommended.
Top reviews from other countries

If you're looking to generate options for your toughest challenges and you need to generate fresh perspectives on moving forward then this book is invaluable. I've described the book as a Rubik Cube for getting unstuck (most of my day job is helping getting businesses unstuck). By being familiar with the method then recombining the tools to suit your individual situation, new paths for moving forward seem to become visible that were not previously apparent. So, in that way the book is as much a field-book or 'kit' as it is an approach (for this reason buy the hard copy). There will no doubt be an ABC app coming along soon.
For me, the greatest achievement for the authors is their bravery in going further than simply presenting a set of 'new methods' (as valuable as they are) by nesting their approaches in sound principles, principles, such as having a big ambition, that are so often missing in business and leadership today.. As Emerson wrote '"As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble."
That, in my eyes makes the book a winner.

If you want to evolve your thinking, bust some shibboleths, refresh your approach to problem definition to get to transforming, consumer pleasing strategies, there is plenty here to quench your thirst, along with the usual great storytelling.
I found it a provocative and instructive hand book that is very much of the moment given, on the one hand, the diminishing resources and growing populations the world now faces and on the other, the proliferation of technology transforming our daily lives. It's tough out there and only going to get tougher..



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