In Pursuit of Elegance Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing

by May, Matthew E.; Kawasaki, Guy

• ISBN13: 9780385526500
• ISBN10: 0385526504
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-07
• Publisher: Currency

Summary

What made theSopranosfinale one of the most-talked-about events in television history? Why is sudoku so addictive and the iPhone so darn irresistible? What do Jackson Pollock and Lance Armstrong have in common with theoretical physicists and Buddhist monks? Elegance. In this thought-provoking exploration of why certain events, products, and people capture our attention and imaginations, Matthew E. May examines the elusive element behind so many innovative breakthroughs in fields ranging from physics and marketing to design and popular culture. Combining unusual simplicity and surprising power, elegance is characterized by four key elementsseduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a compelling, story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers surprising evidence that what's "not there" often trumps what is. In the bestselling tradition ofThe Tipping Point, Made to Stick,andThe Black Swan,In Pursuit of Elegancewill change the way you think about the world.

Author Biography

MATTHEW E. MAY is the author of the critically acclaimed The Elegant Solution, which won the Shingo Research Prize for Excellence. A popular speaker, he lectures to corporations, governments, and universities around the world, and is currently Senior Lecturer on Creativity and Innovation at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Business. He spent nearly a decade as a close adviser to Toyota, and his articles have appeared in national publications such as USA Today, Strategy+Business, and Quality Progress. He has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business, he lives in Southern California.

Excerpts

Chapter One

Elements of Elegance

In the autumn of 2000, two enterprising Harvard University undergraduates, Anthony Delvecchio and Jason Karamchandari, launched a Web site they called ShuttleGirl. The concept could not have been more simple: help their classmates make sense out of the comprehensively confusing campus shuttle schedule. On the site, the two gents quipped:

It is needless to say that taking the shuttle can be a routine part of a Harvard student's life. ShuttleGirl wants to make this aspect of your life a bit easier. Think about it. We've all seen the shuttle schedule. We've all seen twenty-year-olds reduced to tears when they board a Quad-bound shuttle at 10:00 PM only to hopelessly return to the Science Center at 10:25 PM, a final pre-Quad stop. Indeed, the shuttle schedule is complex in its organization. Some would even say that a working knowledge of game theory is necessary to understand the current shuttle schedule. ShuttleGirl has seen all this pain and she will stand silently no more.

To Delvecchio and Karamchandari, and to the entire shuttle-going student population, for that matter, the campus shuttle schedule was an incomprehensible, incomplete, inconvenient, inaccessible, inaccurate, infuriating mess. Their thought was to deliver just enough information, just in time, in just the right way so that the shuttle rider's experience was effortless.

In addition to providing route information, ShuttleGirl evolved to provide a number of services, including real-time updates that could be received on cellular handheld devices. Not unlike Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Delvecchio and Karamchandari coupled their combined ingenuity with computer savvy, developed several new technologies, tied them to a powerful algorithm, and hid it behind a spare, user-friendly interface.

They chose for their logo a tantalizing enigma: the silhouette of an undisclosed celebrity pop star, which would later be replaced by a partial photograph of a mystery co-ed that in turn created a campuswide obsession over ShuttleGirl's true identity.

Their platform was so enormously appealing that the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), Boston's mass transportation agency, adopted it for its entire commuter rail schedule. Soon, six other cities and a number of other colleges would purchase the system, and the duo formed a company called Second Kiss Wireless to market the ShuttleGirl platform more widely.
In a June 2001 interview with campus newspaper the Harvard Crimson, Delvecchio said of ShuttleGirl's various capabilities: "One algorithm does it all. We think ShuttleGirl is an incredibly elegant solution."

At Davidson College in Charlotte, North Carolina, a course on short prose fiction taught by award-winning writer Randy Nelson begins with a peculiar assignment: using only a box of 250 toothpicks, three feet of string, and a 2.5-ounce tube of glue, each student must build a bridge at least two toothpicks high and strong enough to hold a brick. The goal, Nelson says, is for each student to come up with "an elegant solution--one that is simple, beautiful, strong and stunningly original," and one that uses "every inch of string, every drop of glue and clicks into place with the 250th toothpick." Nelson's lesson is directly applicable to good fiction, he says, which in his view must also be beautiful, original, sturdy, not require any more words than necessary, and click into place with the last word.

For six months in 1983, a lengthy political struggle involving the White House, Congress, and civil rights groups seemed likely to destroy the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The conflict was sparked by then president Ronald Reagan's precipitous nomination of three new commissioners. The act turned pending legislation intended to extend the life of the commission into a political minefield, as civil rights groups and Congre