Monthly Archives: August 2011
“Even a brown box can be innovative when you think about supply chain, how you bring it to market,” Waite says. But that can only happen if you provide an atmosphere where your employees’ innovation can thrive. “I have to make sure I give them freedom and latitude, and make sure I don’t shut them down,” says Waite, who personally answers his own phone calls. “I can shut that down by a wrong word, a wrong tone in a meeting. I tell my managers, ‘Try to have an open mind every day you come to work — how can you do it better and make it better?’” While he’s open to ideas, Waite also points back to the process it takes for one to become reality. “I always first say to them, ‘Have you talked to the people at your local level first?’” he says. “No. 1, that respects the … Continue reading
Envision this situation: You and your team have successfully made it through go-live of your product portfolio management (PPM) software solution and you now have a system that is operational and being used to drive more effective decision making in the business. Things are going well until an executive asks you if the program is generating the benefits committed to in the business case. You stare at the executive blankly and stumble through the words, “I think so.” What do you do now? Continue reading
An Ode to the “Great Man” of Innovation All good things must come to an end. In 1986, after an incredible seven-year relationship with Apple, the brilliant advertising agency Chiat/Day – responsible for such masterpieces as the famous “1984” Super Bowl commercial, and by far the era’s best print ads for the computer industry – was unduly ousted (as Steve Jobs had been one year previously) by Apple’s hapless CEO John Sculley. Instead of complaining, condemning or criticizing his former client, Jay Chiat ran a $40,000 full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline “Thanks, Apple”. I absolutely loved the gesture. Among other things, the ad said: “Thanks for letting us make a little history. Thanks for demanding our best, and then more than our best.” The words, of course, were directed not at Apple in general but at one particular person – Steve Jobs. And they speak … Continue reading
In case you’ve been out of town or very busy with your workload, you haven’t failed to miss the fact that the ongoing recession (or very slow recovery, if that’s what it is) is not creating the atmosphere for a lot of hiring by larger corporations. In fact, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million people are out of work, and the workforce participation rate is the lowest it has been since the Great Depression. What this means is that there are a lot of people out of work, for whom there are few options in the traditional employment pool. Large companies aren’t hiring, government is actually shrinking, the military is overachieving its quotas. So, what this means, and what it has meant in the last few recessions or depressions, is that many unemployed people will decide to start their own companies or create their own jobs. …
Stanford Technology Ventures Program’s Executive Director Tina Seelig shares rich insights in creative thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset. Her talk, based on her 2009 book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, cites numerous classroom successes of applied problem-solving and the lessons of failure. Here is the transcript from the talk: I am Tina Seelig and I play two roles here today. First, I am the host normally, but today I’m also the speaker. So I’m going to give you a little bit of my background so you know actually who am I besides of the person who usually introduces our other guests. I am the Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and along with my wonderful colleagues Tom Byers and Kathy Eisenhardt who are the faculty directors, we run the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. And we spend all of our efforts thinking about research and … Continue reading
The most important currency of the 21st century isn’t money, it’s not even anything tangible – it’s connections – relationships – the network Continue reading
