Matt May, In Pursuit of Elegance

I’m a big fan of Matt May’s book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. It speaks to my belief that design is an increasingly critical element of everything we do. Not just for those of us in the “creative” industries, but for all of us in all we do. With so much stuff everywhere – content is free – it is through design and elegance we find solutions and create value…and do Great Work.

Matt’s first award-winning book was called The Elegant Solution, and was written after many years advising Toyota on business design and helping build Toyota University. He now spends much of his time advising corporations on how to build in elegance and design into the work that they do.

In our conversation we talk about:

• The important difference between basic vanilla simplicity and elegant simplicity
• Why you need a “To Not Do” list
• How to find the sweet spot between your skills and the challenge at hand
• And what drives Tiger Woods to succeed. (Yes, we did this interview Before The Scandal)

You can follow Matt on Twitter at @MatthewEMay and at his website www.InPursuitOfElegance.com.

Listen to my interview with Matt May

0:16 Michael introduces Matt May

1:16 Matt’s books In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and The Elegant Solution

6:12 The important difference between basic vanilla simplicity and elegant simplicity

10:45 Why you need a “To Not Do” list

15:20 How to find the sweet spot between your skills and the challenge at hand

19:21 And what drives Tiger Woods to succeed. (Yes, we did this interview Before The Scandal)

24:40 How to find out more about Matt May

25:51 Michael closes the interview

If you enjoyed this post, you'll also like:

1. Matt Lambert, Theory of Cooperation
2. Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen
3. Bill Jensen, Simplicity Survival Handbook
4. Dan Roam, Blah Blah Blah
5. Dan Roam, The Back of the Napkin