Conventional strategy theory tends to equip firms badly for 21st century competition. One of the great myths in the MBA strategy toolkit is the concept of sustainable competitive advantage that is endowed to a firm through access to a relatively unique internal resource. Most strategy textbooks talk about particular resources such as knowledge, relationships and […]
I was running an executive education class last week for a group of people from an engineering firm. At the course dinner, we had a speaker from a cutting edge research group within the firm who described a bunch of technology that will completely transform their industry when it hits. The reaction of the class […]
This is just off the top of my head, so I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but here are some of the jobs that I’ve had: Strawberry picker, warehouse worker in a pottery factory, church janitor, , house painter, circuit board assembler, babysitter, lawn mower, DJ, radio assistant music director, college food services worker, feed mill […]
Business school academics spend a lot of time doing statistics with the objective of trying to find the most important factors for making innovative work teams and businesses. This is hard because innovation is very rarely caused by one thing and sometimes what is causing innovation in one group will inhibit innovation in another. For […]
Let’s start with a business trivia question. In 2011 the Imax Group achieved an excellent profit result that delivered an S&P industry leading return on shareholder’s equity of nearly 50% over the financial year. In number two position was business information service McGraw-Hill at 42% ROE. Can you guess what type of business came in […]
I’ve been working on a research project looking at innovativeness in project teams and it’s given me the opportunity to go back through the evidence of what makes innovative teams. Without giving you the long literature review I can tell you that this is a really well worked area over more than two decades. However, […]
Since the revelations that many stars of silicon valley are alumni of Montessori schools there has been a lot of interest in what managers can learn from the Montessori approach to education. I hadn’t realized this until Tim told me but the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and […]
Most of you would know the Nietzsche quote “that which doesn’t kill is makes us stronger” (or it could be a Kelly Clarkson quote, depending on your age). My main point for today is that quote also applies to innovation and this has far reaching implications for anyone trying to make a firm or industry […]
By Greg Satell (mostly) and Tim Kastelle Who wouldn’t like to be Apple? They make great products, consumers love them, competitors fear them and they make a ton of money.Yet for all that’s been written about Apple, nobody’s been able to emulate them. What’s more, little more than a decade ago, they were on the […]
