Author: Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka

Release year: 1986

Publisher: Harvard Business Review

Link to my handwritten notes

Read this article

My review

I have read this article as a follow-up to The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack, since I learned that the Scrum Guide was based on this Harvard Business Review article from 1986. It’s interesting to see that even back then, people had a vision for what would become today’s agility movement. I think this vision has been accomplished with extreme success, when you look at places such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

By today’s standards, it’s a little bit shallow, but there’s no denying that this is the beginning of today’s agility movement.

Félix rating:
🤷🏻‍♂️

⭐ Star Quotes

• (p. 5) When all the team members are located in one large room, someone’s information becomes yours, without even trying.
• (p. 7) If someone from development thinks that 1 out of 100 is good, that’s a clear sign for going ahead. But if someone from production thinks that 1 out of 100 is not good, we’ve got to start all over. This gap in perception creates conflict.
• (p. 10) We learn more from mistakes than from successes. That’s not to say we should make mistakes easily. But if we do make mistakes, we ought to make them creatively.
• (p. 12) A product designed by an engineer afflicted with the “next bench” syndrome—the habit of designing a product by asking the coworker on the next bench what kind of a product he or she would like—may not meet the flexible requirements of the marketplace.