The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World - Hardcover

Johansson, Frans

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591844932 ISBN 13: 9781591844938

Verlag: Portfolio, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

On the one hand we aren’t surprised by the uncertainty of everyday life, but on the other we believe that success can be analyzed and planned for. It is a revealing paradox. The impli­cations are explosive and they obliterate every common-sense notion we have about strategy and planning.

The Click Moment is about two very simple but highly provocative ideas. The first is that success is random—far more random than we would like to believe. The second is that there are a number of specific actions that we, as individuals and organizations, can take to cap­ture this randomness and focus it in our favor.

According to Johansson, strategy, plan­ning, and careful analysis can no longer guarantee strong performance; today’s busi­ness environments are far too random and complicated. But when you dig deep into the actions of successful people and orga­nizations, you’ll find one common theme. A turning point occurs—a major client signs on, a new competitor redefines the market, an unlikely idea surfaces—and they take advan­tage of that serendipity to change their fate. Consider how . . .

• Diane von Furstenberg saw Julie Nixon Eisenhower on TV wearing a matching skirt and top, and the timeless, elegant wrap-dress was born.
• Microsoft Windows was on the brink of being shut down until two individuals met unexpectedly at a party and altered the fate of the world’s dominant computer operat­ing system.
• Starbucks sold high-end brewing equip­ment and coffee by the pound until Howard Schultz experienced his first latte in a café in Milan.
• Nike was stumped on how to invent a spike­less trainer when a legendary running coach poured latex on a waffle iron.

Each of these individuals experienced a “click moment”—a rare point of opportunity that was completely unexpected. But they capitalized on their luck in ways that paid off significantly and altered their organizations’ strategies and the course of their lives.

Johansson uses stories of successful people and companies throughout history to illustrate the specific actions we can take to create more click moments, place lots of high-potential bets, open ourselves up to chance encounters, and harness the complex forces of success that follow.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Frans Johansson is the bestselling author of The Medici Effect. Raised in Swe­den by his African American/Cherokee mother and Swedish father, he now speaks to audiences worldwide, from the boardrooms of America’s largest cor­porations to villages in developing countries. He has founded a software start-up, a health-care firm, a hedge fund, and the innovation firm the Medici Group. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Visit www.themedicigroup.com

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

THE CLICK MOMENT

Frans Johansson is the bestselling author of The Medici Effect. Born and raised in Sweden, he has founded a software startup, a healthcare firm, and a hedge fund, and is currently CEO of strategy and innovation at the consulting firm The Medici Group.

FOREWORD

I wish I had read this book many years ago. Maybe I would have worried less about whether I knew what I was doing or not—and more about simply getting going. The truth is that we are all in some way stumbling on the road to success. The thing that makes this book so compelling is that it provides a roadmap for how to think about that journey.

Many of the lessons of this book are ones I had to discover through my own process of trial and error. Luck not only matters far more than we’d like to believe, but it is also our best chance to stand apart. As such, there is no one single master plan for success; every journey is unique. Sure, there are actions we can all take to improve our chances—get the best schooling, expand our networks, outperform our peers to that coveted promotion—but they are susceptible to the unexpected turn. What do you do when your best-laid plans come undone? And they inevitably will.

That is why Frans’s message is so powerful. For once there is someone that takes seriously the notion that some things are out of your control and mistakes will happen—and that your success hinges on essentially “making your own luck” by taking advantage of “click moments” that you never could have foreseen.

Frans’s first book, The Medici Effect, focuses on why intersections of cultures and industries are a hotbed for innovation and creativity. The Click Moment explores how to harness the unexpected ideas and click moments that come out of such intersections. It chronicles amazing moments that changed the course of individuals and companies, who in turn have influenced our everyday lives in unexpected ways. It is also filled with plans that go awry and the knowledge that, in the end, if we keep pushing, if we keep trying, we will eventually break through. I know this now. And so will you.

In my life, for example, whatever plans I had have changed a million times over, and the click moments that opened me up for opportunities to succeed were completely unexpected. After leaving culinary school, I just knew that my future was in France, because that’s where the best food in the world was made. Or at least I thought so at the time. It just did not work out that way. My skin color became a barrier, but that crushed dream gave way to another opportunity where I learned that amazing food is found all over the world.

My own journey has taken me from Ethiopia to Sweden; to France, Switzerland, and Japan; to New York and to becoming a force in revitalizing Harlem. This was not the pathway my twenty-year-old self imagined I would ever take. But it’s a pathway that was marked by unexpected opportunities. For example, I got the chance to head upmy own kitchen at Aquavit because the former executive chef suddenly died from a heart attack. It was a tragedy, but it also meant that my career changed. I now had an opening to try something different, and it allowed me to present my own ideas around tastes and flavors. The unspoken truth around success is that so much of it is so difficultto plan for or to predict.

The Click Moment has allowed me to more deeply understand the pivots in my own journey. With these insights and the how-tos Frans shares in his book, I know I can more purposefully create intersectionswhere the unexpected happens, recognize a click moment, and make the most out of these opportunities—essentially, I now have an unfair advantage over luck and chance.

At every step of the way, windows of opportunity opened and closed, some of them worked and others did not. Th e hallmark of a great career is never the brilliance of the person behind it—it is the person’s tenacious and stubborn willingness to keep trying until the chips fall in his or her favor. Work hard, try different things, stay unique, but never believe that you can predict what will happen next. Instead, stay open to the possibilities and be prepared to switch plans if things don’t go your way.

Sometimes life simply throws you a lot of curveballs. But it is from those curveballs that new and exciting opportunities will start to emerge. You never know what awaits you.

—Marcus Samuelsson

INTRODUCTION

Heading into the fall of 2004, ABC was dead last among broadcast television networks. Then, on September 22, something surprising happened and its fortunes changed. That was the night Lost debuted. The program came out of nowhere and delivered 18.7 million viewers to the struggling network, making it ABC’s most-watched dramatic premier in nine years.

In a world of reality shows, Lost was a breath of fresh air. Centering on the survivors from an airliner that crashes on a mystical island, the show seemed like a sure-fire winner. It attracted an incredibly intense fan base that passionately dissected all the clues revealed in each episode. The plot was so intricate that the origin of a “smoke monster” from the first season wasn’t revealed until the sixth. Critics and fans agreed that the island’s “mythology” and the slow unraveling of its central mysteries made the show great. It must have required an incredible amount of planning to even get on the air.

Except the exact opposite was true. Many of the story elements that Lost fanatics loved were ideas the producers thought were too crazy to work. The show, it turns out, was a byproduct of a meeting between Damon Lindelof and J. J. Abrams. At the time, Lindelof was a writer on the modestly successful Crossing Jordan, and Abrams was the creator of the popular series Alias. Lindelof desperately wanted to write for Alias, and after years of trying to make a connection, he received a call from a mutual friend.

“Good news,” she said, “You can meet him. Bad news, it’s a ridiculous idea about a plane that crashes on an island.” The idea didn’t come from Abrams, but from ABC executive Lloyd Braun, who became infatuated with the notion of a scripted version of Survivor. He asked Abrams to rewrite the pilot, but Abrams declined, agreeing to supervise a writer instead. Lindelof thought the idea was insane, but saw an opening—if he could pitch a few good ideas for this “stupid plane crash” show he could propel himself to a writing position on Alias.

During their meeting it was clear to both men that Lost would never make it, so they pitched increasingly crazier ideas to each other. Abrams wanted random noises on the island to scare the viewer. When asked what the noises would be, Abrams responded, “I don’t know, it’s never going to get picked up.” But it did. Things happened so quickly that Lindelof didn’t have time to write the script. Instead, he handed in a twenty-page treatment, which Braun unexpectedly approved, along with Desperate Housewives, which turned out to be the biggest success of the 2004–2005 television season.

For his part, Braun was promptly fired for approving a $12 million television pilot that didn’t even have a script for a show idea Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney (which owns ABC) thought was “never going to work.” When Eisner graded all the pilots ABC approved that year, he gave Lost a two out of ten. The man who developed the two shows that saved ABC was out of a job before they even aired.

Now, if the world moved in a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Portfolio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1591844932
• ISBN 13: 9781591844938
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 246
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Portfolio; https://www.wetones.co.uk/; ; 105 Golborne Rd; London; W10 5NL; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: M.E.G Cards & Gifts; 443000000000; paula@megcards.com; ; 48 Cloyfin Road; Unit 4, 48 Cloyfin Road; Coleraine; Londonderry; BT52 2NY; Irland