Ash Kam

Malcolm Gladwell and Freakonomics Applied to Breakthrough Innovation

Revisado: 11-14-23

I have always enjoyed reading books by Malcolm Gladwell and like Freakonomics that reveal the hidden patterns and surprising insights behind seemingly unrelated phenomena. More than reading, I’ve enjoyed the hangover of being amused and sharing those stories at cocktail parties. This book by Haladker and Mashelkar is in the same league, but with a transformative utilitarian twist. It shows how to use these unexpected connections to create exponential improvement in any field or challenge. As an engineer who is always excited about continuous improvement, I found the fascinating examples and case studies from various domains such as manufacturing, environment, space and toys were not only engaging but also inspiring.

This is not just a book to admire and just talk about, but this is something to keep revisiting as a reference because it has some practical examples explaining how the unique methodology of converging parallels can be used to find novel solutions for domains like business, research, social, economics, health and environment. It is a normal practice and also the limitation of the human brain to default to logical thinking and solving problems and achieving improvements linearly, and that’s why breakthrough innovation is not a common phenomenon and many times is left to chance. This is exactly the gap that books like these attempt to fill and therefore I’m recommending our entire department to read/listen to this book.

As an individual, I found this book very inspiring and my personal take away was that to think creatively or out-of-the-box, it is important to intentionally develop an exprovement outlook, ask the right questions and keep an open eye for solutions from different walks of life.

For an organization, this book can be a game-changer to take the next giant leap in solving a long standing problem or to lead the next disruptive innovation in a fast paced world. Equipped with the power of AI to help us drawn upon knowledge of parallels in different fields, the timely guidance from this book can help to create a culture of exprovement and foster a collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach to problem-solving. It can also help to identify and exploit the opportunities that lie in the intersections of different fields and industries.

This book is highly recommend to leaders, engineers, consultants, advisors, researchers, innovators, problem-solvers in all fields or anyone who would like to look impressive by sharing amusing anecdotes of innovation at their next cocktail party.

The audio quality is good, but I would have preferred the reading style to be more business like because at times it sounded like a children’s story book is being narrated.

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