May 15, 2012
If you've spent any amount of time in executive retreats or leadership off-sites, you've probably been asked to participate in a familiar evaluation of your career and impact. "Take twenty minutes," a facilitator will say, "and write your professional obituary. What legacy did you leave? What contribution did you make? What might colleagues remember about you?"
At one level, it's a strange (and slightly morbid) exercise. At another level, it serves a worthwhile purpose —...
These probably aren't words that you were expecting to see in the same sentence — Harvard Business School and empathy. But as I reflect back on my time as a student there, I've begun to realize that more than anything else, this is one of the the most valuable things that the school teaches.
It starts on day one. You're put into a "section" with 90 incredibly smart folks, people with whom you quickly become good friends. Then the moment arrives when you step into class,...
May 4, 2012
As the editor of the journal Innovations, I'm asked with some regularity, "So, what is innovation anyhow? How would you..."? (eyebrows usually furrow here) "... define it?" Since I don't particularly enjoy debating definitions, I usually respond by saying: "That's a difficult question. But one thing is for sure: If you're not pissing someone off, it's probably not innovation."
I like this response because, if it doesn't...
April 24, 2012
In my previous post, I argued that the potential gains from globalization are larger than most people think. Since I only addressed possible benefits, it is perhaps unsurprising that readers were quick to point out many potential downsides. The global recession has recently and directly impacted the lives of many, most obviously in the form of rising unemployment — and the finger of blame is often...
April 18, 2012
Here's a simple question for all you students of business success and stock-market returns: What has been the best-performing stock in the United States since the "Black Monday" crash of 1987? If you said Apple or Microsoft or Walmart or Berkshire Hathaway, you'd get credit for a reasonable answer. But you'd be wrong. The best-performing stock in the United States over the last 25 years is a company that most of you, I'd be willing to guess, have never heard of — a company called...
April 12, 2012
Do you know why you make the products or offer the services you do? Too often I find that companies don't have a clear enough sense of why they do what they do. They get stuck making incremental improvements that are rooted in existing competencies, markets, and business models.
This is especially problematic when companies decide to innovate. If you don't have a clear understanding of why you are pursuing an innovation, you risk being wasteful and ineffective, and could lack strong...
April 9, 2012
The strategic conversation in most companies has shifted from cost-cutting to growth and expansion. But how do companies get out of the "survival mode," identify the right new products and services, and motivate employees to create real competitive advantage?
In today's rapidly changing, hyper-competitive, disruptive world, Bill Taylor, founder of Fast Company, argues that companies that do the same old things, make only incremental changes, and demonstrate "me-too"...
If you feel like the pace of competition is increasing, you're right. Tectonic shifts in culture and technology over the past decade have rapidly accelerated change in the market. As a result, business strategy today is less about conceiving and executing a brilliant master plan and more about shaping an organization that can quickly launch and learn from smart innovations. How do you evolve your organization and your strategy regularly and rapidly in order to compete? Here are five ways to...
March 26, 2012
In the game of innovation, there is next to no time to rest. As soon as you've discovered the next, best thing, everyone in your industry starts trying to replicate it. In the best cases, it takes your competitors years to distill your secret sauce. In the worst cases, it only takes months to move from profitable differentiation to commodity competition. Scale economics has been one of the last bastions from the competitive...
March 14, 2012
Our prior blog post posed the question, "Will Business Step Up or Step Out?" Will business leaders reconnect with their communities and do their part to restore U.S. competitiveness? Or will they move from location to location, in search of better short-term deals? In this post, we share some data that encourage us to believe that the great majority of business leaders are willing, even eager, to...
