In the near-term, you can have a highly successful process-driven company with a leading share in its market, but at the expense of the “innovators and mavericks” you want to keep.

When the market shifts, Hastings warns,  “due to new technology or new competitors or new business models the company is unable to adapt quickly, because the employees are extremely good at following the existing processes, and process adherence is the value system.

The process of reaching an ideal state of simplicity can be truly complex, so allow me to simplify it for you. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. When in doubt, just remove. But be careful of what you remove.

[…] “It’s a very difficult business to be in,” Sax says, “but the [delis] that are most inspiring, the ones that people cling to, the ones that people enshrine for years and years are the traditional Jewish delis. And Los Angeles just happens to have more of them than any city I’ve been to.”

To die-hard deli aficionados and sandwich fans, this assertion is heresy. It certainly wasn’t what Sax, a Toronto native who now lives in Brooklyn, expected to discover. But in “Save the Deli,” a book that traces the rise and fall of Jewish delicatessens from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the suburbs of middle America, he makes that very claim.

On a two-month cross-country trip, Sax hit all the major deli hubs: Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and, of course, New York, even working for an evening as a counterman at the legendary Katz’s deli on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But he also fanned out across North America to Denver; Detroit; Scottsdale, Ariz.; St. Louis; Cleveland; Las Vegas; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Montreal; Toronto; and a dozen other cities. He even made a trip across the Atlantic to visit delis in London, Brussels, Paris and Krakow, Poland, one of the birthplaces of the modern Jewish deli. […]

Image from @KelloggsUK’s Twitpic

If the new Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with laser-etched logo is for publicity, then hat’s off. If it’s a legitimate marketing move an actual change of the cereal production process, isn’t it a needless use of energy and cash?

One popular element of Foursquare is a competition to become “mayor” of different places. If you check in more than anyone else, you claim rights as “the mayor” of that place. Regular BART riders already are trading back and forth as “mayors” of the 43 stations. Foursquare updates are shared across other social networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, announcing who has ousted whom as mayor. BART also will look at other ways to coordinate promotions with new and existing venue partners, through www.mybart.org, its free service offering contests and discounts for entertainment, sports and other events. BART is listing tips for things to do near BART stations on its Foursquare profile page (www.foursquare.com/user/SFBART).

“AC/DC’s new $200 box set packs musical rarities and memorabilia inside a functional 1-watt guitar amplifier.”