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ART CREDIT
plenary The Chaos Imperative + BEAUTIQUE at Cosmoprof UNCONVENTIONAL Beautiful Ruins
There are libraries full of management and leadership books stressing the importance of organization and the power of discipline, but consultant and author Ori Brafman would like to put in a word for confusion and disorder. In his new book, The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success, written with Judah Pol- lack, he argues that chaos can be a good thing, creating “white space” that we fill with new people and new ideas.
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n our corporations, in other organizations in our com- munities, and in our personal lives, we strive to minimize chaos, with all its unpredictability and uncertainty. By definition, chaos is the enemy of organization. We’ve sat in meetings where a lack of defined processes has led to inter- minable wasted hours and negligible results. We’ve seen the footage of chaos unleashed throughout the world, such as the thousands of homeless people in Haiti after the earthquake. We tend to confront chaos as if it were an unruly beast — something to be contained as much as possible…. But what if there’s another side to chaos? A benefit —
something about chaos that can actually help us be more effective? Something in its greater variability, its absence of rigid struc- ture, and its lack of a clear purpose that can lead to revolutionary, as opposed to evolutionary, change? There is a paradox at the heart
of chaos. For all the destructive power of the chaos unleashed by the Black Plague, it turned out to be the crucible in which the modern Western world was forged. We’re going to see a similar pattern emerg- ing again and again: Chaos creates
white space, which in turn allows unusual suspects to sweep in. The result is a kind of organized serendipity, or what I call contained chaos. It may seem magical and bizarre that the Renaissance came about so quickly after the plague. But we’ll see that it was not a random event: the conditions had been created to enable and even accelerate serendipity.
. For more information: oribrafman.com/books
Excerpted from The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success, by Ori Brofman and Judah Pollack. © 2013 Crown Business.
ROOM SET
More Than Skin Deep
Is it better to look good or to feel good? Organizers of Cosmoprof North America, a business-to- business trade show for the beauty industry, figured out a way for attendees to do both at this year’s event, which was held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas on July 13–15. Working with Global Experience Specialists (GES), Cosmoprof’s general contractor, they created a special area on the show floor called BEAUTIQUE.
“Curated boxes featuring sample- sized beauty products is one of today’s hottest trends, with numerous companies offering their own unique variations,” said Detra Page, public relations manager for GES. “BEAUTIQUE was a sampling bar that featured 20 exhibiting brands, including the latest in up-and-coming cos- metics, skin care, nails, hair, and some classic beauty favorites. Attendees received a customized box and could fill it with seven samples, scanning their badge for each sample. Attendees receiving samples at BEAUTIQUE were encouraged to make a $10 donation to the City of Hope. Cosmoprof raised $11,000 from the proceeds of BEAUTIQUE donations, and participating exhibitors received lead informa- tion from scanned badges and could follow up with attendees on the products sampled.”
For more information: convn.org/beautique
28 PCMA CONVENE OCTOBER 2013