Product Description

What's the best way to drive fundamental, transformative change within your organization? Envision your ideal solution: then, work backwards to where you are. It's called idealized design, and -- as executives in hundreds of organizations will testify -- it's one of the most powerful techniques you'll ever use. Authored by its legendary creator, Wharton Professor Emeritus Russell Ackoff, and leading practitioner Jason Magidson, Idealized Design covers every facet of this breakthrough methodology. You'll learn the fundamental differences between idealized design and traditional process re-engineering, and understand how idealized design eliminates many conventional obstacles to change. Start-to-finish techniques and examples drawn from hundreds of companies, non-profits, and government organizations will show you how to use idealized design to solve your own crisis of tomorrow...today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #238201 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Idealized design is a great concept: in order to find the ideal solution to a business challenge, you envision the perfect solution, then work backward to the possible. The authors appear to have followed that concept, asking themselves what the ideal business book should include. A thorough explanation of the concept and convincing proof of its value in a variety of situations and organizations? Check. An inventory of the ideal environment for performing idealized design experiments? Check. Case studies? Check. The development of idealized design is largely credited to Ackoff, a management professor emeritus and author of 22 books who is praised in the foreword as "no doubt one of the greatest management innovators of our time." The progressive concepts described here are useful to companies undergoing a difficult transition or wanting to push themselves to the next level. More impressively, this volume ventures beyond the business realm to explore how idealized design can be applied to larger social issues, such as a national health care system or a new electoral system. Regardless of whether the reader agrees with the proposed designs, those examples expand the interest of this book beyond its traditional category and readership. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover
What's the best way to drive fundamental, transformative change within your organization? Envision your ideal solution: then, work backwards to where you are. It's called idealized design, and -- as executives in hundreds of organizations will testify -- it's one of the most powerful techniques you'll ever use. Authored by its legendary creator, Wharton Professor Emeritus Russell Ackoff, and leading practitioner Jason Magidson, Idealized Design covers every facet of this breakthrough methodology. You'll learn the fundamental differences between idealized design and traditional process re-engineering, and understand how idealized design eliminates many conventional obstacles to change. Start-to-finish techniques and examples drawn from hundreds of companies, non-profits, and government organizations will show you how to use idealized design to solve your own crisis of tomorrow...today.

About the Author

Russell L. Ackoff is Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was a member and former Chairman of The Wharton School’s Social Systems Sciences Department, as well as the Busch Center, which specializes in systems planning, research, and design.

Dr. Ackoff is author and co-author of 22 books, including Redesigning the Future, The Art of Problem Solving, Creating the Corporate Future, Revitalizing Western Economies, Management in Small Doses, Ackoff’s Fables, The Democratic Corporation, and his most recent books Re-Creating the Corporation, Ackoff’s Best, Redesigning Society, and Beating the System, the latter two with Sheldon Rovin. His work in research, consulting, and education has involved more than 350 corporations and 75 government agencies in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Ackoff played a key role at the University of Pennsylvania, both in the early history of the Operations Research Group and in establishing the Social Systems Sciences Graduate Group. Since becoming Emeritus, he has been honored by the establishment of the Russell L. Ackoff Endowment in the Wharton School and The Ackoff Center for the Advancement of Systems Approaches in the Engineering School, through which his legacy at the University of Pennsylvania continues.

Jason Magidson is director of innovation processes at GlaxoSmithKline. He has 20 years’ experience helping organizations create an environment where great product and service ideas are generated. His clients have ranged from IKEA and DuPont to startups and non-profits. Magidson founded ProductWish.com,

a Web-based clearinghouse for innovative product improvement ideas. He has written for publications including Harvard Business Review.

Herbert J. Addison is a consulting editor and writer who has served as vice president and executive editor in business and economics for the Oxford University Press, and director of its college textbook department.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Approach to Organizational Focus and Change
This book offers a tremendously intuitive approach to focusing an organization on what needs to be changed. Its step-by-step guidance could be a little more detailed but in general it offers a great "blueprint" for improving an organization.

Well worth the read and trying to implement.

A must read
I purchased this book beacuse it was a required reading for my Leadership class. I am not one that really likes to reads, but I found it a really inspiring book.

Pragmatic Look at Idealized Design Makes This a Useful Management Resource
When I took a personality test at work years ago, I was identified categorically as a "designer", someone who envisions the ideal result and gets pleasure in developing the road map to make the ideal into a reality. Idealized design founder and former Wharton professor in systems theory Russell L. Ackoff, along with co-authors Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison, have elevated my natural inclination into a management philosophy that drives transformative change while remaining true to a company's defined objective. Their primary thesis is that organizations need to be clear on their optimal business outcome and then work backwards to achieve it. This is a major jump ahead of standard process re-engineering since idealized design does not start with a base of falsity about success. At the same time, the concept represents a new way of thinking that may take a while to be embraced by those who must implement it.

In focusing on the idealized vision, Ackoff and his colleagues concisely spell out how many obstacles, often self-inflicted, are eliminated and go as far as identifying the preventative measures that represent a major sea change to a company. What makes the eminently readable book particularly useful is the wide-ranging variety of case studies presented which show empirical evidence of idealized design in action. Most inspiring is Ackoff's own example of working with Bell Labs in the 1950's with the intent of redesigning the telephone. The company was applying then-common practice in looking at making incremental improvements in the standard telephone features - the dial, coaxial cabling and multiplexing. However, by looking at what the management team wanted to achieve as a whole, Ackoff was able to lead the effort toward more revolutionary items such as touch-tone phones, call waiting, call forwarding, conference calls, voice mail, and what was then the beginning of the mobile phone.

From this seminal case study come several contemporary applications of idealized design including fascinating looks at subjects ranging from the redesign of Paris for the future to a drastic overhaul of the current health care system to General Motor's launch of the OnStar system. The most useful chapters are the three most thorough case studies presented - Energetics as an example of the private sector, the Academy of Vocal Arts for non-profits, and the White House Communications Agency as a specific application within the perceived constraints of the U.S. government. The case for idealized design is executed with a minimum of polemics, and the book offers practical information on how best to implement such change in currently vision-blocked companies.