Tag Archives: innovation

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The Buzz of Entrepreneurs: Hunting Dynamics Part II

Last week I blogged about the virtues of organizations with “hunting dynamics” – networks that could spread themselves out across an opportunity space to explore for opportunities that come and go in unpredictable ways. Once a resource is discovered, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, community, complex systems, consensus, context, creativity, democracy, ecological perspective, ecosystem, Edison, entrepreneur, fission-fusion, forager, honeybees, hunting dynamics, innovation, leadership, passion, quorum, slime mould, story, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thomas Seeley | 1 Comment

Hunting Dynamics: Why Chance Encounters Should Not Be Left to Chance

A few days ago Knowledge@ Wharton published an article entitled, “How Seemingly Irrelevant Ideas Lead to Breakthrough Innovation”. It cited several examples. The cushioning on Reebok’s basketball shoes was derived from intravenous fluid bags; Qualcomm’s new colour display technology is … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, affordance, change, context, ecological perspective, exploit, explore, fission-fusion, hunter-gatherer, hunting dynamics, improvisation, innovation, narrative, Peirce, Quakers, serendipity, Wharton | 1 Comment

Clayton Christensen at Davos: An Ecological Perspective on Innovation

When interviewed at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, Clayton Christensen discussed what he has called “The Capitalist Dilemma”. It goes like this: There are basically three kinds of innovation in the economy: empowering, sustaining and efficiency. Empowering (or … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Uncategorized | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, capital, capitalist dilemma, Carlota Perez, change, Clayton Christensen, community, complex systems, context, Davos, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem, efficiency, empowering, innovation, interest rates, IRR, machine metaphor, organic metaphor, ROCE, RONA, social traps, sustainability, sustaining, sweet zone, The New Ecology of Leadership, Tyler Cowen, unemployment | 3 Comments

Management and the Limits of Logic Part II

When I wrote last week’s blog, I was unaware that Monitor Group, the consulting company founded in 1983 by strategy guru Michael Porter and some Harvard Business School colleagues, had filed for bankruptcy in mid-November and that its assets were … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged balance, both...and, change, competition, creativity, ecological perspective, either/or, elephant, entrepreneur, Five-Forces, gardening, innovation, Jonathan Haidt, logic, markets, Max Weber, Michael Porter, Monitor Group, Protestant Ethic, rationalism, rider, shareholder value, Steve Denning, strategy, The Righteous Mind | 1 Comment

Management in China: The Problem of Trust

Some weeks back New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote an article about China and its perceived lack of ability to innovate. Some say that innovation is not in the Chinese DNA and that their rote education system inhibits their … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership | Tagged Alibaba, Catch-22, change, china, Chinese capitalism, Chinese Family Business, Communist Party, community, Confucian philosophy, expatriate, explicit knowledge, Gordon Redding, gwailo, Hong Kong, innovation, law, management development, markets, nepotism, network, rural, Tom Friedman, trust, urban, virtue | Comments Off on Management in China: The Problem of Trust

Communities of Faith and The Spirit of Capitalism

Last week I asked in the context of the US presidential elections, “Do Mormons Make Better Managers Than Leaders?” The question was intended to be provocative but I do not think it either impolite or improper, especially as well-known HBS … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged achievement motivation, Adam Smith, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Catholicism, change, chocolate industry, Christian, Clayton Christensen, communities of faith, community, Crisis & Renewal, ecological perspective, education, Harvard Business School, head, innovation, management ethics, Max Weber, moral sentiment, Mormons, Nonconformists, Old Testament, Protestant Ethic, Quakers, religion, Robert Barclay, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, social entrepreneurs, spirit of capitalism, start-up, steel industry, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Communities of Faith and The Spirit of Capitalism

Essay Based on The New Ecology of Leadership Wins a Top Prize in the Drucker Global Challenge Essay Contest 2012

It’s official! My essay, “Practical Wisdom: Reinventing Work and Reinventing Organizations by Rediscovering Ourselves”, which is based on the ideas in The New Ecology of Leadership, has won a top prize in the Drucker Global Challenge Essay Contest. The organizers … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Aristotle, behavioral economics, body and mind, business schools, Cartesian, Descartes, Drucker Challenge, ecological rationality, emotion and reason, employee society, English Enlightenment, entrepreneurial society., evolutionary biology, facts and values, functional silo, Global Drucker Forum, ideas and matter, ideology of reason, innovation, management thought, markets, moral sentiment, neuroscience, Peter Drucker, phronesis, Plato, positive empirical, Reinventing Organization, Reinventing Work, Scottish Enlightenment, social ecology, social entrepreneurs, Spanish treasure, stability and change, Stephen Toulmin, Thirty Years' War, Vienna, World War II | 1 Comment

Is “Shareholder Value” a Myth or a Tool for Corporate Euthanasia?

I have been reading Lynn Stout’s The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and The Public. It is a short, highly readable book, written with the objective of demolishing what Professor Stout calls the “shareholder value … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged bankruptcy, boards, corporate law, directors, Dodge v. Ford, ecological perspective, innovation, liquidation, Lynn Stout, Mitt Romney, principal-agent, purpose, shareholder value model | 2 Comments

Recipe for Ruin: Nothing Lasts Unless It Is Incessantly Renewed

Over the weekend a comment on a management blog referred to a piece by management writer Steve Denning in Forbes magazine. Entitled “The Key Missing Ingredient in Leadership Today”, it argued that real leadership is all about transforming systems, not … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Apocalypse Now, bureaucracy, coercive bureaucracy, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, Denning, Deresiewicz, destruction, discipline, ecological perspective, enabling bureaucracy, Forbes, Francis Ford Coppola, freedom, Heart of Darkness, hierarchy, identity, innovation, Joseph Conrad, know-how, know-what, means and ends, modular, narrative, power, renewal, ruin, Toyota Production System, West Point | Comments Off on Recipe for Ruin: Nothing Lasts Unless It Is Incessantly Renewed

Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction

With Mitt Romney now the inevitable Republican Presidential candidate, renewed attention is being focused on his incredibly lucrative years running Bain Capital. In that private-equity firm he and his colleagues played key roles, mostly as the turnaround managers of mature … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged American economy, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Bain, complex systems, creative destruction, ecological perspective, forest renewal, incentives, innovation, Mitt Romney, neoclassical economics, Obama, predator, private-equity, scavenger, shareholders, tax policy, The Economist, venture capital | Comments Off on Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction ← Older posts Newer posts →