About the Author

PAULO SAVAGET is associate professor at Oxford University's Engineering Sciences Department and the Saïd Business School. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and has a background working as a lecturer, consultant, entrepreneur, and researcher finding innovative solutions for a more inclusive world. As a consultant, he worked on projects for large companies, non-profits, government agencies in Latin America, and the OECD. He currently resides in Oxford.

Reviews

Praise for The Four Workarounds "Groundbreaking" --Next Big Idea Club "As well as telling some entertaining tales of cunning loophole-exploitation and next-best ingenuity, the book also touches on the philosophical." --Financial Times "An extraordinary and iconoclastic study, The Four Workarounds...should be brought to the attention of every corporate executive, business manager, and entrepreneur with an interest in business decision making and problem solving. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented... Highly recommended for personal, professional, community, corporate, college, and university library Business Management collections and supplemental MBA curriculum studies lists." --Midwest Book Review "A smart guide to finding creative solutions for a variety of difficulties ... clever case studies enlighten, and business readers will appreciate the suggestions on how to make one's workplace "workaround friendly." ... Wise and level-headed, this delivers." --Publishers Weekly "Excellent insight into what often holds us back from designing and implementing work-arounds. This creative but pragmatic treatment of complex problem solving will be a breath of fresh air for readers seeking innovative new pathways to workable solutions. Recommended..." --Booklist "Paulo Savaget cleverly reveals how you take scrappiness to success: the workaround. In The Four Workarounds, he uses real world examples to show us smart, efficient ways to problem-solve. This book helps us live happier, successful, and more fulfilling lives." --Jenn Lim, CEO and cofounder of Delivering Happiness, and bestselling author of Beyond Happiness "If you are tired of business books about the secrets of Amazon, prepare to be surprised by great ideas that come from the Amazon. Using a rich library of examples, Paulo Savaget shows how "scrappy" organizations tackle seemingly intractable problems, from illegal logging in Brazil to caste discrimination in India to children diarrhea in sub-Saharan Africa. His distillation of their robust, dynamic and creative methods is an original and inspiring read for anyone interested in nontraditional problem-solving approaches." --Olivier Sibony, Professor of Strategy at HEC Paris and New York Times bestselling co-author of Noise "The most effective companies have figured out how to "hack" their own problems and use the four workarounds to bypass obstacles. But these "hacks" are also used by all changemakers. Read this book to discover how to unleash the four workarounds in your organization." --Steve Blank, Adjunct Professor, Stanford University and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owners Manual