IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing

"The full power of elegance is achieved when the maximum impact is exacted with the minimum input." So says Matthew E. May in this deceptively simple audiobook. May offers suggestions for businesses and governments to find elegant solutions to problems through four elements: symmetry, seduction, sustainability, and subtraction. An advocate of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement, May places particular emphasis on solving problems at their root and reducing a problem to its essence. Malcolm Hilgartner gives the ideal performance for May's "less is more" approach. His reading is understated and controlled, creatively engaging the imagination by what is not there. The audiobook refers to examples and illustrations available as PDF files on Blackstone's Web site. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2009]