Innovation. It always leads to the next big thing in the arts, the sciences, and especially in the business world. In A Passion for Ideas: How Innovators Create the New and Shape Our World, editors Heinrich von Pierer, former president and CEO of Siemens, and Bolko von Oetinger, senior partner and managing director of The Boston Consulting Group, collect ideas about innovation from people who've made a livelihood out of wrestling with the unfamiliar and the unexpected.
Buy this book: Amazon Barnes and NobleThe challenge for individuals, institutions, and entire societies, has always been knowing where to find innovation, how to cultivate it, and ultimately how to get people to buy into it. Rather than staking out a single position, this collection of individual insights and corporate case studies seeks to provoke dialogue and illuminate unforeseen correlations.
A common thread throughout the selections is the inevitable tension between the old and the new and the consequent need to unlearn before you can attempt to discover. As A Passion for Ideas points out, successful multinationals such as Siemens, Phillips, and Unilever exemplify organizations committed to the new. These are companies that create virtuous cycles of innovation by recognizing, cultivating, capitalizing on, and then disseminating the new throughout their enterprises.
Introduction: Novitas Ante Portas
Heinrich von Pierer and Bolko von Oetinger
- The New and the Known
- Real Movies Are Yet to Come
Peter Greenaway, interviewed by Hannah Hurtzig - Unlearning
Harry Mulisch, interviewed by Peter Saalbach - That's the Nature of all Changeable Things
William Forsythe, interviewed by Arnd Wesemann - Trust Gravity!
Wolfgang Rihm, interviewed by Margarete Zander - Original, Copy, and Coffee Cup
Katja Blomberg - East is West and West is East
Bolko von Oetinger - From "Learning Organizations" to "Learning Communities"
Peter E. Senge and Claus Otto Scharmer - The Virtues of Corporate "Disorder"
John Kao - Endless Innovation: The Charles Schwab Strategy
Daniel O. Leemon, interviewed by Margarete Zander - Molecular Designer
Roger Y. Tsien, interviewed by Steven Adler - With Us There Are No Titles
Michael Hilti, interviewed by Michael Gatermann - Pioneering Spirit versus Regulation Mania
Ron Sommer - More Disorder in the Enterprise
Berthold Leibinger - Developing and Marketing an Innovative Idea:
Chasing the Goal of Commercial Success
Heinrich von Pierer - Increase and Arrival:
Franz Emanuel Weinert - In It for the Long Haul
Harold Prince, interviewed by Janet Coleman - Composing with High Technology
Todd Winkler, interviewd by Kent Lineback - The Heart, The Head, and the Hand:
Passion, Analysis, Production
Tao Ho - The Writer's Dubious Riends
John Barnie - Why Is It Easy To Be Creative?
Gerd Binnig, interviewed by Gunna Wendt-Rohrbach - Ora et Labora:
Seven Non-Benedictine Rules on Human Rights Regarding Idleness
Jürgen Werner - Where Art Does Not Come Sweepin' Down The Plain
Mary Frates, interviewed by Frederick Dillen - Increase and Arrival:
On the Finiteness of Progress
Gerhard Schulze - Innovation and Global Responsibility
Steven Schmidheiny - The Logical Progression of Dreams and Ideas
William McDonough, interviewed by Christopher Tilghman - Always Faster? More? Newer? Better?
Christoph-Friedrich von Braun
Us and Them
More and Too Much
The New and the Known
Bolko von Oetinger
Bolko von Oetinger studied political science in Berlin and holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a senior partner and managing director
of The Boston Consulting Group and director of BCG's Strategy Institute. He has consulting expertise in strategic direction and productivity. He was cofounder of the software company CompuNet, where he sits as a board representative.
Heinrich von Pierer
Heinrich von Pierer studied law and economics and joined Siemens AG's legal department in 1969. From 1977 to 1987 he held various commercial duties with Kraftwerk Union AG and in 1988 became the commercial head of the corporate sector of KWU. In 1989 he became a board member of Siemens AG and also served as its president and CEO from 1992 until 2005.
