May 21, 2012
The Facebook IPO has ignited a predictable frenzy. It's certainly true that social media have profoundly changed the way we interact, find information, and network — but the billion-dollar question is whether all this activity is going to generate solid economic returns.
The conversation about the business model behind sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest reminds me of the conversations that took place during the 1990s tech bubble. There is the same faith...
Many successful innovations work because they create a new market. This is, of course, hardly a new point. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD have written a whole book about Blue Ocean Strategy as they call it, in which successful companies innovate their value propositions to attract customers who have never engaged with their type of product or service before.
A classic...
May 18, 2012
People talk about Francis Bacon as the last person to know everything. Apparently, these people don't know any 15-year-old girls. Because these girls know everything. And they just can't believe we don't. And parents! Don't get them started. Plus, 15-year-olds are preternaturally alert. Nothing gets past them.
I was reminded of this at MTV recently, where I ran into...
Polymath is one of those words more likely to show up on the SAT than in everyday conversation. But the reason we don't use the word much these days has less to do with vocabulary than it has to do with practicality: there aren't a lot of polymaths around anymore.
In case you don't have your pocket dictionary handy, a polymath is a person with a wide range of knowledge or learning. Think people like Leonardo da Vinci (...
May 17, 2012
An interview with Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever. This interview is featured in the forthcoming June issue of HBR.
A written transcript will be available by May 24.
...Each year, twenty million babies worldwide are born prematurely or with a low birth weight, and four million of them die, most in developing nations. Those who survive often suffer from low IQ, diabetes, and heart disease when they reach adulthood. According to the World Health Organization, 75% of these deaths and ailments could be averted by simply keeping these premature babies warm. Unfortunately,...
What do your innovators want? What do they need from you?
Earlier this month, we invited the HBR community on Twitter to share their personal insights into what they need to be at their most innovative. "What can your organizations do to help you?" we asked. "If you tell us, we will pass your comments on." A spirited conversation followed, one whose very richness demonstrates just what a challenge fostering innovation really is.
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May 16, 2012
You want to start a business. So you need a plan, right? No. Not really.
As part of the research for a book I'm co-authoring — Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, due out in August from HBR Press — my colleagues and I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of successful entrepreneurs around the globe to better understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur and build a really great business. One of our most striking...
You probably think that the barriers to innovation are negative elements of your organization — that is, the wrong people, behaviors, and processes. But the most subtle and pernicious barriers to innovation may be the seemingly positive myths about what has made your organization successful.
Every organization has myths about who are the great leaders, what are the behaviors to admire and imitate, what business you are in, what customers want, what are the best skills to run a...
May 15, 2012
To stay competitive, organizations need to continually find opportunities for innovation in key processes such as customer service and product development, and adoption of a new process almost always requires the implementation of new information technology. In his 1990 classic HBR article "Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate," Michael Hammer argued that IT must drive radical process innovation...
