Word: rowan
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...Julian Ganz Jr.; Robert Rifkind's superb conspectus of German expressionist paintings, sculpture, prints and posters, remarkable for its depth and its number of first-rate works by unfamiliar names as well as obvious greats; the collections of post-1945 American art put together by Robert Rowan, Marcia Weisman and her ex-husband Frederick Weisman; anthologies of big-ticket contemporary work bought in a few years by Douglas Cramer and Eli Broad; smaller and more concentrated collections owned by Steve Martin and Beatrice and Phil Gersh...
...sees it, intuition, at least the successful kind, is something more than vague presentiment. The sifting of personal experience is an important part of the intuitive faculty. Rowan approvingly quotes the late Joyce Hall, founder of the Hallmark greeting-card empire, who called memory "the vapor of past experiences." Successful managers, Rowan recounts, have found some unusual places in which to enjoy those fumes. McDonald's Chairman Ray Kroc opted for a 700-gal. waterbed on which he and his aides plopped to think...
...Rowan counsels that an ingenious business idea is usually the "final stage of a slow fermentation process." He cites the birth of Federal Express, the company that created the market for overnight mail delivery. The idea for the business first came to Founder Frederick Smith while he was a student at Yale writing a term paper on the parcel-service system. Much later, while he was flying combat missions in Viet Nam, Smith developed his notion of an "absolutely, positively overnight" service...
...formidable enemy of intuition, according to Rowan, is "analysis paralysis," a condition caused by too much inquiry. "Constantly accumulating new information . . . without giving the mind a chance to percolate and come to a conclusion intuitively can delay any important decision until the time for action expires," he says. That is "substituting study for courage." He advises executives not to fret about their lack of experience. Rowan recalls that King Gillette was a bottle-cap salesman when he dreamed up the safety razor. Concludes Rowan: "Inexperience may make us more daring...
...current emphasis on scientific management, Rowan concludes, the Eureka factor is likely to remain important in the history of business achievement. Says he: "The biggest winners tomorrow will be those who can summon from somewhere deep inside themselves . . . intuitive flashes of the business opportunities that have yet to surface." There will always be a place, in other words, for old-fashioned entrepreneurial spirit...