In my final class related post for ENT601 – Entrepreneurial Innovation, I want to briefly reflect on the value gained from re-reading “The Pursuit of Wow! Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times.” Frankly, over the last eight weeks, the book has given me a new perspective on the application of innovation in entrepreneurship. Mr. Peters’ ramblings aside, the book led me to new ideas and thoughts about innovation that I had not considered before. My recent post, Multiculturalism’s Influence on Entrepreneurial Growth, for example, is a somewhat indirect result. “The Pursuit of Wow!” opened the door for broader thinking about the implications cultural and societal change have on the state of entrepreneurship in the United States. Cultural impacts on entrepreneurship is now a topic that I am very interested in researching further, yet I would not have stumbled upon without the help of Mr. Peters and me.
The book’s uneven and sometimes inconsistent approach makes following Tom Peter’s thought process a bit of a challenge, but then, maybe that is the point. The world is often uneven and inconsistent, and entrepreneurs must always navigate topsy-turvy times to ensure success. It will remain on my shelf for future reading. And I will not wait twenty years before I read it again.
Thanks to all who have followed along these past two months. I have enjoyed your comments and our exchanges.
2 thoughts on “Final Reflection on The Pursuit of Wow!”
It is always great when we have a good read that stretches us to a place of more and moves us out of a comfort zone that we did not realize we were resting. You have now moved into a new place of interest for cultural impacts on entrepreneurship, which should lead you down another path to explore as you continue to research this topic. I believe this class is giving all of us a different scope to explore entrepreneurship and innovation, which in return gives us advantages for success in this topsy-turvy career path.
On the broader value of trying to make sense of other people’s ideas, I am in total agreement. Exposure to ideas is essential and I second that this project (read a book and blog about it) was actually quite useful.
I do think that sometimes folks should do a better job of presenting their ideas. We’ve all seem movies (um, Star Wars) were success leads to laziness and lack of scrutiny with future work. I kind of worry that is the problem with Tom Peters. At some point he decided he was going to be a book writing guru and cranked out more and more books. As he succeeded, editors lost control and the books don’t get the review they probably should.
I for one and thrilled with the direction of Amazon reviews. I believe in the wisdom of the crowd. The solution to this problem is for the public to weigh in and “rate” creations – in real time since some book were great but are not out of date. So we can decide what books are “most” inspiring and which will still potentially inspire but could have been presented more effectively.