Tag Archives: Problem Solving

Beyond the Blog

The people who bring you the Portfolio Javelin also produce a monthly podcast, the Penguin Business Beat. This month, we interviewed professionals in the creative fields who shared their expertise on turning vision into reality and ideas into successful finished projects.

Check it out to hear Portfolio’s president and publisher Adrian Zackheim, Behance CEO and author of Making Ideas Happen Scott Belsky, 800-CEO-READ‘s Jack Covert, and Dan Roam, author of Unfolding the Napkin and The Back of the Napkin.

You can listen to all our shows here.

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Silly rabbit, problem solving is for kids (and everyone else).

problemsolving101According to author Ken Watanabe (writing on HuffPo today), kids should be able to solve problems just as well as McKinsey consultants:

I saw the importance of problem solving first hand when I was working as a consultant for the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. For six years, I worked with major companies all over the world to help solve their business challenges using a straightforward yet powerful set of problem-solving tools. And these were tools that anyone could use. They didn’t require complicated computer software or an MBA. These simple approaches are basic enough for a child to understand.

Tutorials based on the tools from Watanabe’s book, Problem Solving 101, can be found here: www.ProblemSolvingToolBox.com. There are even challenges you can do to see how you stack up against children and professionals alike.

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Can a bestselling Japanese business book succeed in the US?

Problem Solving 101Next week, Portfolio is publishing Problem Solving 101, a book that (under a slightly different title) became the #1 business book of 2007 in Japan. Now, we’re publishing it in English for the first time.

In this morning’s USA TODAY, business columnist Del Jones says “Should PROBLEM SOLVING 101 sell well in the USA, author Ken Watanabe will pull off a rare recent instance of transferring business advice from the world’s second-largest economy to the largest.”

The book actually began in Japan as a tool for schoolchildren to learn critical thinking skills, but something surprising happened – it became a phenomenal bestseller among adults and sold nearly 370,000 copies.
Since the book is basic enough for a child to understand, yet also sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their toughest problems – it’ll be interesting to see in the coming months whether Americans embrace the book in the same way.

You can read the full USA TODAY piece here.

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