Go That Way, Really Fast

Today I ran across a thought provoking post by Jeff Atwood with the same title as this one via Fred Wilson’s blog. In it, he explains how his firm’s entire strategy is summed up by this clip from Better Off Dead: If for some reason you can’t see the video (or if your attention span […]

Don’t Hire Experience, Hire Learners

A few weeks ago, the Australian Financial Review published an article discussing how Australian employers value job candidates with an MBA. The short summary is: they don’t value MBAs at all. One headhunter was quoted saying something along the lines of “most employers say that if you have to choose between getting an MBA or […]

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nancy and I spend the day yesterday looking at what’s left of Hadrian’s Wall. It was a fascinating day. Around 200 A.D. the wall went for about 75 miles across the UK, with forts all the way along. This is what the fort at Birdoswald looks like now: Seeing this makes me understand why it […]

Searching for the Perfect Innovation

How can we come up with the perfect innovation? One that will last forever, and make us rich, and perfectly solve the problem it was designed for? The short answer is – we can’t. Well, it’s not completely impossible, but it’s awfully unlikely. Here’s an example that shows why. I’m in London for the DRUID […]

Innovation Creates Uncertainty

One of the reasons that firms are often hesitant to innovate is that innovation creates uncertainty, and a lot of people are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Here is short clip from one of our earlier Executive Education courses where I talk about how we can use innovation technologies to reduce uncertainty a little bit: Innovation technologies […]

Innovation through Exaptation

John Tropea made an interesting comment on twitter about one of my recent posts – asking how the idea of exaptation might be used to get our innovative ideas to spread through the network economy. This is a superb question, and well worth investigating (John’s blog is fantastic, by the way, and you should check […]

Think Like a Biologist to be a Better Manager

The first Archaeopteryx fossil was found in 1861, and it now resides in the Natural History Museum in London. It was an important find – two years after the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, Archaeopteryx was the rarest of fossils, and one that was quite useful for Darwin’s theory – an […]

Electric Cars & Business Model Innovation: Better Place

When was the first car fully powered by electricity built? Depends on how you define it. There was a prototype built in 1835. One built in Belgium set the land speed records in 1899 (68 mph!). And a few were on sale from at least 1895 on. In all that time, they’ve had one fundamental […]

Creating Value Through New Connections

Tim does a really nice talk on the invention of the computer and he has posted the slides on this blog. While he uses the story to discuss the difference between innovation and invention, I think there are a lot of other really interesting lessons here. Firstly, I’d like to add to Tim’s story by […]

The Importance of National Innovation Systems

One topic that I’ve done quite a bit of academic research on is Innovation Systems (National, Regional and Sectoral), but strangely, I haven’t written much about it here. However, over the weekend I saw a recent report released here in Australia called Management Matters in Australia (the summary is here, and you can also download […]

Don’t Fear the Social Media Bubble

In a blog post last week, Umair Haque put forward the idea that we’re currently experiencing a social media bubble, and he also explained why he thinks this is a bad thing: Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as […]

You Have to Break Connections to Get Your Ideas to Spread

Next time you get in a car to drive somewhere, take a minute to think about how many parts of the economy are connected to your trip. There are a whole lot. There all of the people and firms involved in building your car. They have taken ideas and designs that have evolved for over […]