Archive for the 'Business' Category

The Connecting Thread: The Innovation Landscape

Friday, January 8th, 2010

One of the primary stitches running across my life cloak:
The primary engine driving economic growth is innovation. And we are in the midst of transitioning to a new innovation landscape as corporations are dying and the startup ecosystem matures. The innovation landscape is the overlapping theme for most of what I’m thinking about and working [...]

The Lego Model— From the Force For the Future Blog

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Original post can be found here.

There are two types of organizations that are driving a majority of our economic growth: the startup and the large corporation.

On one hand, we have startups, which are where the innovation is happening and on the other hand, we have corporations, which have the advantages of scale and abundant resources. [...]

Crowdsourcing Pitfalls for Productive People

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

On Thursday I attended Crowdsourcing for Social Good a great panel, with great attendees who I witnessed cook up some great things the mixer time surrounding the panel. Here I’ve written up one cautionary note about crowdsourcing for people who are engaged in their work, and a few notes from the evening.

I don’t think that for [...]

Upward Market Pressure on Creativity

Friday, August 21st, 2009

I recently followed a link to this article on Wired profiling the first scientific discovery made by a machine with no human intervention.
This doesn’t signal the end of the role human scientists. Instead it puts increasing upward pressure on scientists developing their creative faculties. And this trend is not prevalent just in science. Everything that [...]

If You’re Successful Once, Please Don’t Check Out

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Most people are going to disagree with me here, but I find it sad that Seth Berger checked out after finishing with AND1.  I think having kids was the culprit for the decrease in desire, and this case isn’t the exception.
“Knowledge@Wharton: Clearly you have experienced a lot of success in a very competitive industry. If [...]

Making Sense of the Big Shift – Corporations Are Failing At Talent Development and Universities Are Doing No Better

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

I attended the San Francisco Supernova Mixer Tuesday night, where John Hagel and John Seely Brown from Deloitte’s Center for the Edge presented their research on the Big Shift– “a major new effort to track the real impacts of what we call the Network Age. ” My copious notes on their talk are posted [...]

The Big Shift: An Evening with John Seely Brown and John Hagel

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

From Eventbrite:

We’re delighted to launch our first 2009 Supernova Mixer event at Wharton Ι SF Campus on Tuesday, August 11, 5:30pm – 7:30pm. Please join us for a lively conversation with Deloitte’s John Hagel and John Seely Brown (Center for the Edge) on The Shift Index — a major new effort to track the real [...]

Lessons from Sports: Focusing On The Right Things

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I’ve written about sports frequently because I think the lessons are incredibly transferable. Athletics are extremely competitive with a long history of results-oriented focus. It’s a huge business, with a lot of attention, money and science aimed at maximizing results. While transferring lessons from a game can be dangerous, because any game is an over [...]

Networking Is Like Planting Seeds

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Networking is like planting seeds. But the goal is foliage not a seed. Planting is easy. Consistently watering is hard.

There are many successful ways to network. But most successful systems usually consist of 1) building off your existing network and 2) exposure to high degrees of randomness to add new people to your network.
The end goal of [...]

Capitalism, Profitability & Rule Sets

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Earlier tonight I ended up talking with my mom about creative capitalism.
She was talking about how she heard that drug companies stopped researching a HIV treatment because it wasn’t profitable. And she directed this complaint somewhat antagonistically towards the abstract, corporate capitalistic establishment. She lamented the fact that Viagra is extremely profitable yet provides little [...]