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The Non-Obvious Show · Episode 35

How "Workarounds" Can Solve Big Problems

with Paulo Savaget

Episode 35 · 26 min

In This Episode

Could a workaround solve your problem? Paulo Savaget is an award-winning researcher and professor of engineering entrepreneurship who went on a three year journey to study how people invent workarounds to solve problems. In his book,The Four Workarounds: Strategies from the World's Scrappiest Organizations for Tackling Complex Problems, he shares his experience and findings in hopes of inspiring others to value workarounds and the possible big changes they enable.

In this episode, Rohit Bhargava and Paulo Savaget discuss topics inspired by the book, including the four types of workarounds with case examples, the ethics of loopholes, and the innovations of smaller organizations that large corporations can learn from.

About The Guest

Paulo Savaget Oxford professor, author of The Four Workarounds

Paulo Savaget is associate professor of engineering entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, with a joint appointment at Saïd Business School, and author of The Four Workarounds. He studies how scrappy organisations solve stubborn problems by sidestepping obstacles rather than confronting them.

sbs.ox.ac.uk ↗

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