Tag Archives: innovation

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For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

The story of Inky the octopus made headlines around the world this past week. In case you have been in Outer Mongolia (without the internet) Inky was a male common octopus on exhibit in New Zealand’s National Aquarium on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged 914, Arkansas, Arthur D. Little, Ben Franklin, change, ecology, IBM, Inky, innovation, mindfulness, mollusk, National Aquarium, New Zealand, octopus, Sam Walton, scale, Sear Roebuck, Walmart, Xerox | Comments Off on For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

Capitalism as an Ecological Process

On April 2 The Economist published a book review of Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Corporations, a 700-page manual on corporate finance and shareholder value published by McKinsey & Company. The views in both the book and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Andy Haldane, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Bank of England, Cartesian Management, community, complex systems, context, ecocycle, ecological perspective, innovation, management principles, McKinsey, shareholder value model, Valuation | Comments Off on Capitalism as an Ecological Process

Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part III]: Transforming Human Organizations

This is the third in my series of blogs triggered by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore’s criticism of HBS professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. Although her curiously jumbled assessment was wide of the mark, it presented an opportunity … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged capitalism, casino capitalism, Clayton Christensen, complex systems, conscious capitalism, creative capitalism, Crisis & Renewal, destruction, disruption theory, ecocycle, ecological perspective, entrepreneurship, Holling, innovation, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Jill Lepore, panarchy, Peter Drucker, success trap | Comments Off on Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part III]: Transforming Human Organizations

Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part I]: Storm in a Modernist Teacup

A recent article in the New Yorker by Harvard history professor, Jill Lepore is creating quite a storm in management circles. In it she takes Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen to task for sloppy methods in the derivation and … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged analogical, business process reengineering, Clayton Christensen, community, disruption, Faustian bargain, Harvard Business School, innovation, instrumental rationality, Jill Lepore, machine, mechanical, metaphor, Mormonism, Silicon Valley, STEM | Comments Off on Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part I]: Storm in a Modernist Teacup

Climate Change and Evidence-based Management: An Ecological Perspective [Part I]

In the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, British science writer Matt Ridley wrote another one of his provocative essays around his theme of “rational optimism”. [In 2010 Ridley wrote a book, The Rational Optimist, which I reviewed for Strategy+Business.] … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Clayton Christensen, data, ecological perspective, ecology, economics, innovation, judgement, Matt Ridley, Northern Rock, prediction, resources | Comments Off on Climate Change and Evidence-based Management: An Ecological Perspective [Part I]

The “3Rs” of Management Part II: Rationality and Power

Walter Bagehot once wrote that “The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards”. Following on my blog from last week, I think that this is a fair description of … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged agency theory, Bent Flyvbjerg, Bertrand Russel, Bertrand Russell, domination, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, exploitation, Harold Leavitt, hunter-gatherer, innovation, investor capitalism, Machiavelli, means and ends, Nietzsche, power, Rakesh Khurana, Rationality and Power, rationalization, Realpolitik, Realrationalitat, shareholder value model, Walter Bagehot | Comments Off on The “3Rs” of Management Part II: Rationality and Power

Organic and Mechanical Approaches to Complex Systems

The last week a blog I wrote for the Harvard Business Review and the Drucker Forum was published on the HBR site. It brought together a number of issues that I have been talking about in the past few months … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, Cirque du Soleil, constructive, creativity, critical, Drucker Forum, ecological perspective, ecology, engineering, guba, innovation, Iraq, Kim, lincoln, Mauborgne, narrative, philosophy, positives, reverse-engineer, success factors, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Organic and Mechanical Approaches to Complex Systems

T-shaped People: Deduction, Induction, Abduction and Systems Thinking

IDEO, the design and innovation firm, prizes what they call “T-shaped” individuals. These are people with a deep expertise in one field or domain (the vertical stroke of the “T”) and some expertise across several, often dissimilar, domains (the horizontal … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, analogical, analytical, bottom-up, Charles Sanders Peirce, complex systems, creativity, deduction, ecological perspective, IDEO, induction, innovation, leveraged action, systems, T-shaped, thinking, top-down | Comments Off on T-shaped People: Deduction, Induction, Abduction and Systems Thinking

Is Conscious Capitalism A Conceptual Mess?

Conscious Capitalism (CC) is featured prominently in the latest issue of the California Management Review (CMR) (Spring 2013, Vol. 55 No. 3.). In an article entitled “Conscious Capitalism Firms: Do They Behave as Their Proponents Say?”, Chong Wang, an Assistant … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aristotle, Chong Wang, complex systems, conscious capitalism, ecological perspective, innovation, Karl Popper, Max Weber, narrative, Raj Sisodia, The New Ecology of Leadership, Whole Foods | 1 Comment

Innovation at Yahoo – Where Is the Gemba?

This past week the management news was headlined by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban the firm’s staff from working remotely.  Annoyed Yahoo employees quickly leaked the clumsily worded memo from the head of HR. It read in part: … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged change, Clayton Christensen, community, ecosystem, fission-fusion, gatekeepers, gemba, Google, Gore, herder, hunter, hunter-gatherer, hunting dynamics, innovation, leadership, Marissa Mayer, narrative, Yahoo | 2 Comments ← Older posts Newer posts →