The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success

by Ori Brafman, Judah Pollack

Overview

In the bestselling tradition of Switch and Made to Stick, Ori Brafman reveals how organizations can drive growth and profits by allowing contained chaos and disruption the space to flourish, generating new ideas that trigger innovation.

In The Chaos Imperative, organizational expert and bestselling author Ori Brafman (Sway, The Starfish and the Spider) shows how even the best and most efficient organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army, benefit from allowing a little unstructured space and disruption into their planning and decision-making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307886699
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/13/2013
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

ORI BRAFMAN has an MBA in organizational studies from Stanford Business School and consults with and speaks to Fortune 500 companies on organization, disruption, and innovation. Brafman is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Sway, as well as the bestselling and critically acclaimed book The Starfish and the Spider. For the past two years, he has worked closely with the US Army on a training program that introduces chaos theory into the Army's decision-making.

JUDAH POLLACK is a regular speaker at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, as well TEDx conferences around the country. An expert in the field of leadership, Pollack has worked with Google, SAP, and Oracle, as well as with the Special Forces and the Army's senior leadership. Most recently he developed a program to help returning soldiers reintegrate into non-combat military life from the experience of war.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Bottom Line ix

1 Harnessing Chaos 1

2 Contained Chaos 31

3 Einstein's Brain 45

4 The Neurobiology of Insight 84

5 Surfing Naked 120

6 Accelerating Serendipity 147

7 Putting it All Together 172

8 The Five Rules of Chaos 193

Acknowledgments 211

Notes 214

Index 225

Editorial Reviews

In this surprising tome, organizational expert Brafman (Sway), who has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Army, argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, chaos is essential for generating new ideas. While noting that organizational structure and discipline have their place, the best ideas, he posits, come from what he calls “white space”—short, unstructured moments that allow the brain to ruminate without performance pressure. Using examples such as Albert Einstein—who is said to have derived many of his best ideas in coffeehouses and on hikes—and the Army, arguably the least likely group to accept anything unstructured, the author offers five rules of chaos. The rules are based on a training program Brafman developed with the Army over the past two years: avoid the seductive lure of data, because not everything can be determined by metrics; put a loose structure around the chaotic; make white space productive; embrace “unusual suspects,” those outside the inner circle, who approach the issues from a fresh perspective; and organize serendipity (set the stage for spontaneous interactions of different groups). This useful and practical book will be welcomed by managers looking for new ways to innovate. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

This useful and practical book will be welcomed by managers looking for new ways to innovate.” -Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Thought-provoking insights. . . . A must read.”
—Booklist [HC starred review]

Booklist

Narrator Drew Birdseye’s lively phrasing and appealing vocal personality help listeners stay engaged with this book, even when its abstractions are weighty or beg for more clarity. The authors use a potpourri of case examples to show how innovation requires “contained chaos,” and space for new people and ideas to appear. A running case narrative involves a U.S. Army officer who learns from one of the authors how to become more open to chaos and disruption. The main argument is that too much structure and hierarchy in large organizations suppresses the unfettered creativity that enterprises need to grow. More of a big-idea book than a how-to, it needs Drew Birdseye’s enthusiasm. His performance helps invite bureaucrats to be less afraid of uncertainty, disruptive people, and the free exchange of ideas. T.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

2013-09-01
Pop psych meets pop business in Brafman's (co-author: Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, 2011, etc.) latest outing in the land of counterintuition, written with the assistance of leadership expert Pollack. Business types live and breathe for data, analysis and endless planning. Yet, as Joseph Schumpeter observed, there's something irresistibly compelling about cleaning house, resetting priorities and otherwise changing course by means of what he called "creative destruction." Brafman doesn't quite counsel burning down the house, but he isn't shy of introducing a little bubonic plague into the equation, either. Drawing on the results of a three-year consultancy with Martin Dempsey, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brafman urges that we consider the bright side of chaos and calamity: The Black Death may have brought about all manner of death and destruction, but "it was actually instrumental in bringing about Europe's ascent to greatness." Post–James Gleick, the word "chaos" has been applied and misapplied in all sorts of half-baked, Gladwell-ian ways, and Brafman plays it a little loose at times. Nonetheless, this book has value in encouraging a rethinking of how things get done, particularly in heavily institutionalized cultures. For instance, in the military, there's a manual for everything, including one on the proper way to change a tire on a tuck. But why read a manual when a YouTube video would do? Such useful ideas come from what the author calls "casual downtime," the thinking time that institutions too often don't budget for. And what situation wouldn't benefit from more thinking about it, as long as it's not perfectly unbroken? For some readers, there won't be much news here, but for others--particularly those down the chain from Dempsey--there's much good food for thought in Brafman's sometimes-brash assertions.

Kirkus Reviews