Product Description

Ever since Hewlett-Packard emerged from one in 1939, a "garage" has come to symbolize the no-holds-barred mentality that fosters the kind of creativity that drove this company--and the dozens more it spawned--to heights theretofore unknown. Bernd Schmitt, a Columbia Business School professor who has written several well-received marketing books (Experiential Marketing, Marketing Aesthetics) takes this image to the next level in Build Your Own Garage by relaying strategies that readers can adapt to their own enterprises whether they are housed in a converted parking structure or not.

As one might suspect from a book that advocates the unorthodox, Schmitt chooses to deliver his ideas in an unconventional manner. Each chapter begins with an elaborate short story by Laura Brown that encapsulates its central concepts (such as a vampire tale based on Bram Stoker's Dracula that illustrates how "the strictures of traditional corporate culture are enough to suck the life energy out of anyone"). Also sprinkled throughout are photographs and images by graphic artist Gail Anderson, which simultaneously reinforce the book's themes (on topics including technology, branding and "customer experience management") and distance it from buttoned-down management tomes that espouse the very group-think Schmitt is trying to eliminate. Those seeking new ideas who are not turned off by unique presentations should find this intriguing. --Howard Rothman

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Product Details

Title	Build Your Own Garage: Blueprints and Tools to Unleash Your Company's Hidden Creativity
Author	Bernd H. Schmitt,Laura Brown
Format	Hardcover Bargain Price
Publication Date	2001-08-09
Number Of Pages	224

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Customer Reviews

All Buzz and No Bizz

Review by Prescott Prospector, 2005-03-05

This is an incredibly structured book about creativity. Although I agree with most of what he says, I find little value in this book. The thing that I disagree with most is the need for tension between bizz and buzz. I know that harmony between the two is not only acheivable but more productive.

The short stories about real companies earned this book its second star. They had real value.

To the writers of the 5 star reviews that convinced me to buy this book, I would ask "How in the world did you manage to walk away with anything of practical value?" It reads like an outline -- five steps to this, four tools for that, two types of that, three stages of the other thing. How boring!! And what a cluttered mind!!

In a sense, it is a great road map but tells you nothing about road conditions or the best route to take. To me, the creative stories just took up space and slowed me down. There is more information in a three frame Dilbert cartoon than in one of these stories.

I managed an innovation group for a fortune 100 company for 23 years and my experience taught me that people who try to create a "Cookbook" for creativity are usually devoid of it.

This would be a great $6.00 book.

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Clever stories but no handbook

Review by hatchmo, 2001-12-30

The book benefits from amusing anecdotes but is very light on actual help for putting in place a workable framework for managing business innovation.

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Wake-Up Call for Traditional Marketing Literature

Review by Chris, 2001-10-31

Finally somebody tearing down the "dusty" rules and old-fashioned formats of how to write a marketing book. This book is not only creative, well thought-out, and informative it is especially fun to read.
An absolute must-read!

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Build Your Own Garage

Review by Anonymous, 2001-08-08

Another brilliant book fom Bernd Schmitt (the man behind "Experiential Marketing"). Very creative, great ideas about managing and adding creativity to yr organization. I loved the website too --buildyourowngarage.com. Very creative, hand-drawn design!

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Sparking Corporate Creativity

Review by Rita Belmont, 2001-08-08

Having read Schmitt's books on marketing, I was very interested to see him branching out into the field of corporate creativity. "Build Your Own Garage" is a really interesting, quirky book that sparks the imagination and also offers practical, concrete tools that managers can use.

I believe that "Build Your Own Garage" is the first business book on creativity that really expresses the complexity of the creative process. Encouraging and managing creativity in a large organization is not a simple job. Schmitt and Brown approach the topic from different angles--analyzing the role of creativity in business organizations, detailing real-world examples of creative initiatives, and also offering creative "business parables" to show different facets of creativity in the workplace. (Look especially for the vampire story about "the Corporate Undead"!)

For all its quirkiness, "Build Your Own Garage" deals with corporate creativity in a down-to-earth way. This is not a giddy, dot-com, anything-goes approach to creativity. The book fully acknowledges the importance of business fundamentals and proposes a variety of realistic techniques to improve performance through creativity. Not surprisingly given Schmitt's background, the chapter on Branding is particularly strong.

"Build Your Own Garage" is a quick and enjoyable read that offers some useful insights into corporate creativity. I highly recommend it.

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