Lessons in Excellence: The power of impossible thinking — episode 2

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, professor of marketing at Wharton school and co-author of The Power of Impossible Thinking and Ranjan Kapur, country head, WPP, discuss the power of mental models on CNBC's new series, Lessons in Excellence: The Power of Impossible Thinking, to be telecast on Saturday April 16, 2005, at 10:30 pm, and repeat telecast on Sunday April 17, 2005, at 8:30 pm, anchored by CNBC-TV18's Anuradha Sengupta.

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Anuradha Sengupta: Impossible thinking is the ultimate achievement as well as the ultimate compliment to the indomitable human spirit. On Lessons in Excellence, Jerry Wind, the author of The power of impossible thinking and Ranjan Kapoor, WPP's country manager talk about timing, knowing when to swap one mental model for another.

Jerry, when is it a good time to change? Do you plan for this or can you change a mental model only when you are confronted with a situation that compels you to think about it?

Yoram Wind: No you should of course. You basically should have a system in place that allows you to continuously challenge your assumptions, challenge your mental models, look for early signals of change in the environment especially vexing of the challenges, how do I detect vexing of the environment. It's like change in consumer behavior, new small competitors entering somewhere else, the beginning of a new technology and obviously I need systems and processes to try to identify these.

Anuradha Sengupta: Ranjan, what Unilever was doing in India these days, you think it is thinking ahead or do you think it is being reactive and it is being compelled to change it's mental model?