Monthly Archives: June 2011
The hero culture is alive and well in many organizations. Riding in on a white horse to rescue the company from a downward spiral, occasioned by a history of poor decisions, will win you lots of recognition and rewards. On the other hand, insisting on the importance of truly understanding customer needs prior to deciding on a product’s features… or really thinking through the technical challenges associated with achieving a desired outcome… or taking the time to engage people before instituting a difficult reorganization, will likely gain you the reputation of being an obstacle, poor team player, or just plain indecisive. Unfortunately, being the person who seems to know all the answers and can turn things around by telling everyone what to do is often what we are looking for these days. Creating an organization that is agile and can run on its own — where decisions are made close … Continue reading
If universities want to play as participants, not gate-keepers, in our nation’s innovation ecosystem, university administrators need to learn to create a work environment that attracts, motivates and retains high-performing employees. When people talk about issues involved in transforming federally funded university research into products, medicines and companies, little attention is paid to the people who manage the day-to-day operational details. I don’t mean faculty – they’ve got it good: tenure, freedom to set their own agenda, and advancement opportunities galore. No, I mean the administrative staff, the 9-to-5′ers, the unknown soldiers who spend their days hunkered down on the frontlines of the great divide between the university and the rest of the world. University staff employees don’t get much recognition. Professional advancement opportunities inside the university’s patent office are limited. If universities want to play effectively in an era of open innovation, they’re going …
NASA is an ideas factory. The agency has generated countless spin-off innovations in their quest to repeatedly go where no man has gone before. Now as the aging shuttle fleet heads into retirement and fiscal pressures keep the space program planted on terra firma, it’s worth remembering how imagination and the pursuit of excellence has benefited the rest of us. Here are ten inventions we use everyday that we owe to rocket science: Memory foam – we’re all safer and many of us sleep better at night thanks to this one, a foam that can absorb intense pressure but ‘remembers’ its original shape (think mattresses, crash helmets and a raft of other applications) Ear thermometers – the same technology they use to measure the temperature of the stars means there’s no need to stick anything where the sun doesn’t shine… Shoe insoles – the technology used in your sneakers was … Continue reading
The United States Marine Corps is one the great leadership organizations whose principles have become the envy not only of other service branches but for business as well. Companies large and small have spent enormous resources trying to successfully emulate the Marines’ basic leadership principles and put them into application. Leadership consultants are forever trying to find new ways to spread the Marine Corps’ leadership gospel to their clients. And even some of the top business schools have jumped on the bandwagon by availing their students the opportunity to experience this leadership—albeit in very short two- and three-day “Marine Corps experience” sessions. While in most cases the focus is on the rigorous training that all Marines (both enlisted and officers) go through, they are missing the boat in terms of what makes this training experience unique. It’s not the rigor that makes the training so successful; rather, it’s the personnel … Continue reading
Bob Thacker, Chief Cubist at Cubit Consulting, closed out the Business Marketing Association conference with a presentation on “Unleash Your Creativity.” Thacker’s creativity comments were a fitting and fun (and by fun, I mean both “strategic” and “enjoyable”) close for the BMA Unleash conference. Here are three themes on creative possibilities I took away to apply to my own creative pursuits: Challenges Unleash Creative Possibilities For those who expect perfect conditions to be in place to trigger creativity, history is full of contra-examples where hard times have sent people looking for creative escape and hope: Half of the world’s population died from the plague in the 15th century, yet it also yielded incredible thinkers and artists in the Renaissance. Shakespeare’s artistry emerged from a religious bloodbath in England during the 16th century. The economic failure of The Great Depression was the genesis for many prominent brands which shaped business and … Continue reading
When seeing a music superstar in concert you hope for a greatest hits performance covering their best recordings. You really hope the hits sound something like the original songs. You realize some songs you wanted to hear won’t get played. And nobody’s surprised when the artist beats a hasty retreat for the door at the performance’s conclusion. Why should it be any different when you see a superstar blogger/author such as Seth Godin? Yet there were grumblings about him simply going over topics straight from his books and questions about why he departed so quickly from his Business Marketing Association Unleash luncheon keynote last week. If you ask me, Seth Godin put on a veteran rock star performance. I’ll admit to thinking Seth Godin is a lot better blogger than book author. His blogs are focused and insightful. His books, however, seem like under-edited compilations of blog posts with focus … Continue reading
