In Pursuit of Elegance

I can't wait to get my hands on Matt May's new book In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing which will be published next week.

His recent ChangeThis manifesto provides a sneak preview of th content:



Matt's previos book The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation is one of the most referred to books in my blog. It captures what I have been doing for the past 15 years in my career - applying to knowledge work what I learned from studying industrial management, production control, quality management and organizational development.

I have referred to his book in my previous posts:

Mind of an Innovator:
Innovation, problemsolving and learning employ the same iterative process—blending supposition, logic, creativity and reflection.

Ideas Come from Everywhere
The Toyota organization implements a million ideas a year.

That’s a fact, he says. It is their greatest source of competitive advantage. It’s their engine of innovation. But more than that, Toyota has created a culture where every idea counts. It’s an environment of everyday innovation as a result of fanatical focus on getting little better, daily.

Long Term Goals
Toyota implements 1 million ideas each year. He continues, Do the math: 3000 ideas a day. That number, more than anything else, explains why Toyota appears to be in a league all their own, playing offense on a field of innovation, while their competitors remain caught in a crossfire of cost-cutting.

My Management System
an excellent book about Toyota’s innovation system which is built on learning: “Learning and innovation go hand in hand, but learning comes first.”

In Search of Simplicity
The first step is to start a war on complexity, which can be identified by inconsistency, overload, and waste – all of which unnecessarily consume the resources of time, effort, space, and money without adding value.

His ideas are universally valid and can be easily transferred to knowledge work in the office.