Thinkplace – Facilitating Innovation

For a company the size if IBM, innovation is everything.  Dell recognized the need to be more transparent in its product offerings, and IBM is following suit. Thinkplace, ‘a web application for facilitating innovation through idea generation, collaboration, and refinement,’ appears to be on the right track.  What Thinkplace does is provide a place for … Continue reading Thinkplace – Facilitating Innovation

Schumpeter: Prophet of Innovation

Joseph Schumpeter started analyzing innovation management more than seventy years ago, and his theories and ideas are still influential among academics and business men. Recently, in fact, Harvard Business School’s professor Thomas McCraw released a book titled “Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction.” In the HBS Working Knowledge website there is an interesting … Continue reading Schumpeter: Prophet of Innovation

Horizontal Integration

Horizontal integration refers to a strategy of seeking ownership of or increased control over a firm’s competitors.  One of the most significant trends in strategic management today is the increased use of horizontal integration as a growth strategy. Mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers among competitors allow for increased economies of scale and enhanced transfer of resources … Continue reading Horizontal Integration

Innovation Quotes: Windows

The only thing that I’d rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it. Scott McNealy (Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems)

Gauss versus Pareto

It looks like we are shifting from a Gaussian world to a Paretian one, or so claims John Hagel on a recent article titled “The Power of the Power Laws”.

Leadership Traits

Many corporations today use the controversial Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung, to label managers on four dimensions – as extroverts or introverts, thinkers or feelers, sensors or intuitors, and judges or perceivers. The current research on leadership traits suggests that some factors do help differentiate leaders from … Continue reading Leadership Traits