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Grant David McCracken Biography

Author

Grant David McCracken, born in 1951, is a renowned author whose work spans across cultural theory, consumerism, and sociology, profoundly influencing cultural studies.

Related Quotes

“The University of Chicago is an astounding place. It's Yeshiva, a priesthood. It gives you an education, but more than that it gives you a mission. Oh, and an arrogance. But being Canadian helps with that.”

Giving Helping Arrogance

Author:Grant David McCracken

“You need to begin where people are. You can't punt ideas or innovations in from the 40 yard line. And yes, the work should feel so collaborative that it should feel like the end result belongs to everyone. Your best moment as a consultant is when your client plays your idea back to you as their idea. Your job: to nod sagely and say, "that's an excellent idea.".”

People Moments Innovation Excellent

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Now that everyone is reinventing and innovating, advantage goes to those who keep at it. We need to greet even success with humility.”

Humility

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Often it takes more time to explain a task than to do it yourself, and when you do it yourself there is no data lost in transmission. We have something to learn about how communication works in these settings. Sometimes it takes a really long time to communicate the full meaning of what we want to say.”

Long Sometimes Communication Communicate Transmission Do It Yourself Really Long

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature but the real cause of lots of resistance often is that however much a team might say that it wants to change, the old assumptions are woven, invisibly, deep within the corporate culture, and from this staging ground they act invisibly to sustain the old order. Finding the assumption out and then rooting them out is a special skill. It calls for assumption hunters, I call them.”

Real Fall Culture Failing Team Special Expectations Assumption Initiative

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Business schools do most things very well. They are just not comprehensive and what they miss are things like culture and creativity and a certain kind of pattern recognition that comes easily to people trained in the liberal arts.”

People Kind Art School Culture Creativity Missing Recognition Liberal Arts

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Keeping the ship on course will be the first and most difficult order of business. Everyone is going to be piloting their organization through very high waters where things can change in an instant.”

Difficult Water Instant

Author:Grant David McCracken

“That culture is a a critical resource the organization ignores. Competely mystifying. The organization continues to act as if culture were dark matter, something essentially inaccessible to us. When in fact there is an ancient discipline called anthropology that's pretty good at thinking about it.”

Thinking Culture Dark Discipline Ancient Anthropology

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Innovation got hip. It got cool. I prefer the people who investigate the world out a brute sense of curiosity, a fundamental sense of play.”

People World Innovation Curiosity

Author:Grant David McCracken

“I think the corporations if it wants to be truly responses to the changes taking place in the world is going to have to learn how to be much more porous to the world. And that is ever so difficult. We are good at boundaries and systems. We need to learn how to open those up.”

Thinking World Difficult Response Boundaries

Author:Grant David McCracken

“The world of the consumer, the sheer innovation and dynamism of our culture has never been easy for marketing to keep up with, but now these are suddenly faster and much more powerful. We need a new idea and practice of marketing and of the brand.”

World Culture Easy Powerful Innovation Marketing

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Often creativity comes from a very pragmatic kind of "well, what if we try this. How about this." You set some parameters and then work through the variations. It's hard to see something as a concept. It literally comes out of the hands on experiment.”

Trying Kind Creativity What If Pragmatic

Author:Grant David McCracken

“Finding the right people and giving power and letting them go find value in the world. That's got to be toughest. Really, its like the Spanish court in the 16th century saying, um, take this ship and go see what you can find. You have to believe in your sailors!”

People World Giving Believe Values Believe In You Sailor

Author:Grant David McCracken

“The future is going to be stranger and more various and more dynamic than anything people can imagine now. We will be extraordiarily tested. I wish us the best of luck!”

People Wish Imagine Luck Various Stranger

Author:Grant David McCracken

About the Author

Born: 1951
Known for: Author
Quotes: 14

Books & Sources

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