Lessons In Excellence : Power Of Impossible Thinking

07 April 2007

Taking us on this journey into the mind is Yoram Jerry Wind, Professor at the Wharton school and co-author of the book — The Power of Impossible Thinking. And joining us on the first stop on this journey is Ranjan Kapoor, one of the most authoritative voices in the Indian communications business. Thank you both very much for being on this fresh series of Lessons In Excellence. Jerry, you spent a lifetime researching marketing strategy and marketing led corporate growth strategies. What prompted you to shift into this sphere of mental models?

Yoram Wind: Three things. First, I started a programme, 'the Wharton Fellow'- a programme, which is life long education, a programme for top executive-owned transformation leadership and we realised that one of the major obstacles to effective transformation is the mental models of the participants. This was the first major incentive to start thinking about mental models.

The second is the dramatic changes we have seen in the business environment especially in terms of consumer behaviour and other changes in technology and the like and the fact that a lot of businesses are not reacting to them. If you think about — you mention marketing — you think about the changing role of the 30-second commercial , dramatic impact, yet the industry is very slow to react to it. Napster — major innovation — change of behaviour and the record companies behave as if nothing has happened. So you have these changes but no reaction. And the third fact here is that it has always been disturbing to me why so many innovations start not from the incumbent but from companies coming from other industries.

If you think about Federal Express, if you think about Diet Coke, if you think about the variety of breakthrough innovations, they all come from outside the industry and why is it that the industry is not capable of leading the change? Look at the three combination and it is natural — what is common to them — and the mental models of the participants can explain that.

Anuradha Sengupta: But Ranjan, you have read the book. Do you think at some level this concept of mental models is pretty breathtaking in its simplicity isn't it? And yet do you feel that as individuals and organisations we tend to overlook them or are we conscious of them? What has your experience being?