It’s Not About the Gizmo (It’s About Elegance).

-

Another wonderful manifesto within a ChangeThis Manifesto. Why Simple is Better. And Elegance is much better. 

Source: ChangeThis Manifesto :: Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way

Mention innovation, and people immediately think, technology. The truth is that business innovation is about value, not gadgetry. But the pace of technological progress sweeps us off our feet and we get all caught up in the gizmo, losing sight of the why behind the what. People don’t want products and services. They want solutions to problems. That’s value. And when it come to solutions, simple is better. Elegant is better still.

Great innovation requires understanding and appreciating the concept of elegance as it relates to solving important problems. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the  simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

Elegance is the simplicity found on the far side of complexity. An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense.

Elegant solutions embrace an overarching philosophy of doing far more with much less, a notion that has become synonymous with Toyota and is present to this day in all of their operations, from design and engineering to manufacturing and distribution to sales and marketing.

An elegant solution is recognized by its juxtaposition of simplicity and power. The most challenging games have the fewest rules, as do the most dynamic organizations. The most memorable films have a simple message with complex meaning, touching a universal chord while allowing multiple interpretations.

An elegant solution is quite often a single tiny aha! idea that changes everything.

Finally, elegant solutions aren’t obvious, except, of course, in retrospect.

Technorati tags: , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Newsworthy News in Red October : Dow Jones & Tax Dodgers

-
Dow Jones Index crosses the symbolic 10000 figure. U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 10,000 for the first time in a year, on better-than-estimated earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. Bank of America Corp., American Express Co. and JPMorgan more than doubled since the Dow slid to a 12-year low on March 9 as global financial firms began recovering from $1.6 trillion in writedowns and credit losses. International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. jumped at least 54 percent since March 9 on signs the nation was recovering from the worst recession in seven decades. Source: Bloomberg And, about 7500 International Tax dodgers file for IRS Amnesty to avoid jail Some 7,500 international tax dodgers have applied for an amnesty program that promises no jail time and reduced penalties for tax cheats who come forward, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday. … The program is part of a larger eff...
Read more

USCIS Selects Final H1B Petitions by Random Selection - Almost a 50% chance for each Application

-
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that on April 12 it conducted the computer-generated random selection process to determine which H-1B petitions, subject to the congressionally mandated H-1B cap for fiscal year 2008 (FY 2008), would continue to final processing. USCIS completed this determination ahead of the preliminary schedule noted on April 3, when it announced it had received enough petitions to meet the cap for FY 2008. The 123,480 cap-subject petitions received on April 2 and 3 were labeled with unique numerical identifiers and selected randomly by computer. The chosen numerical identifiers were then transmitted to the appropriate service center for further processing. Source: USCIS Announcement Number 123,480 looks a lot better keeping in view initial estimates. A good 50% chance for each application to be selected.  Update: 3rd May 2007 Hello friends, I understand your anxiety. But don’t loose your hope and/or temper yet. Please wai...
Read more

H1B 2008:USCIS released Preliminary Numbers

-
USCIS today released the final count of number of unique pieces of mail received for H1B petitions. It received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. I guess, each piece of mail will ' mostly ' contain more than one petition, as no company would send each petition in a seperate package and its most unlikely that a firm applies for just one petition. Probably by the end of next week, we might know the actual number of H1B petitions filed and how lucky one must be to get through the initial filter. Source: USCIS Releases Preliminary Number of FY 2008 H-1B Cap Filings  (26KB PDF) 04/05/2007 During Monday and Tuesday, USCIS received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. This is lower that the original USCIS estimate of 150,000. USCIS based the initial estimate on amounts from manifests received along with the mail. USCIS reached the updated number following a physical count of the mail. Each piece of mail may contain more than one H-1B pe...
Read more