This week marks the release of Clayton Christensen’s highly-anticipated book, How Will You Measure Your Life (with co-authors James Allworth and Karen Dillon). The book expands on Christensen’s McKinsey-award-winning HBR article, drawing life lessons from the models that form the basis of his business-oriented writing. I first heard the germs of those ideas in late [...]
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Here’s a quick quiz for you. Is it easier to get A: 1% of a huge, established market? or B: 100% of a completely new one? If you work for Apple, you might have picked B. But too often when companies embark on innovation projects, they pick A: that is, they start by believing that [...]
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The art and science of behavior change took center stage at this year’s TEDMED. And what a stage it was. The healthcare offshoot of the TED conference moved from its prior digs in San Diego into the elegant Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The venue helped blur the line between speaking and performance, as typified [...]
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A movement originating from the United States’ West Coast has sought to transform the creation of new businesses from an art to a science. The intellectual leader of the movement is Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur who now teaches at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. One of Blank’s disciples, Eric Ries, turned [...]
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It’s a topic that perhaps would only appear on the pages of The Economist: an effort to establish North America’s first elephant sperm bank. As the article notes, a single elephant named Jackson has “sired many of the calves born in the United States in the past decade, and scientists say new bloodlines are needed [...]
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A workshop attendee asked me this seemingly simple question: “So, what else should I read to learn more about innovation?” It’s a hard question to answer because there is so much high-quality material out there. And specific recommendations depend on the specific topic about which you are most curious. But in thinking it through, I [...]
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From the bankruptcy at Borders to the further downgrading of J. C. Penney’s stock despite its high-profile re-branding efforts, retailers have been in the news a lot lately—most of it bad. But there’s some good news from one of the unlikeliest parts of the retail sector—groceries, which is known for its razor-thin profit margins. This [...]
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American efforts to jumpstart the development of a cleantech economy have not been wildly successful to date. While there have been scores of small wins and incremental advances that should probably get more notice, the primary theme has been to place big bets — bets that are starting to turn up sour. Last year got [...]
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The most successful innovators are consistently portrayed as possessing a passion that borders on dogmatism. They work tirelessly to bend reality to achieve their vision, with Steve Jobs and his “reality distortion field” serving as the prototypical example. There’s no doubt that passion is a critical component of innovation. After all, innovation is awfully hard [...]
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Apple just threw down the gauntlet to the K-12 publishing industry. In announcing iBooks 2, Apple is making a compelling case that if ever there was a time for school districts to switch from paper-based textbooks to a digital approach – it is now. Even in the absence of iBooks 2, the case was already [...]
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