Innovation can happen by chance, without a determined effort or specific methodology. But when it does, it's more like luck than strategic progress. While there is a role for serendipity in strategy – being able to take advantage of pleasant surprises -- too often, that's the only way companies approach innovation: with fingers crossed.
This time of year we tend to subject ourselves to tough review. We zero in on our practices and tendencies and resolve to take up new, positive habits--and, more importantly, to break the bad. It can be a productive exercise if approached with a clear eye and dedicated follow-through. My question:...
You probably know people whose mothers loom large - even in their adult lives. Their every move is slowed by the tugging of apron strings and the daunting consideration of what mother would thin
What do kids know about creating a company anyway? Well, 3 24-yr old Brown University ('08) grads didn't know how to do it the "right" way, so they did it their way.
3M takes its Markets of the Future process from a cloistered analysis by corporate strategists to a global Web 2.0-enabled event, tapping the collective insight of 20,500 3Mers in over 60 countries.&n
PARC made a radical transformation from a captive research center to a commercial open innovation business. This forced PARC to create a number of new practices in innovation management -- just t
Manonamission.blogspot.com is a great collection of corporate mission statements. I recently used its search function to find examples of companies that prominently and publicly state something close to "people are our most important asset." Here's a partial list: Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Land...
Editor's Note: Ross Smith has worked in every corner of the software industry for over 20 years and is currently a Director of Test at Microsoft. You can read his M-Prize-winning STORY Organizational Trust: 42projects . In 1855, Robert Browning published a poem about the Italian Renaissance painter...
When Kraft Foods embarked on an important program to re-define its corporate purpose, vision and values, they decided not do it in a closed meeting room in Chicago but instead open up the process and
elBulli is a well-known restaurant famous not only for his chef, Ferran Adria, but also for being a creative organization in which every year more than a hundred elaborations are put in place.At elBul