Tag Archive for: Innovation

Twittering Matters

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There’s an intriguing new article about Twitter and how it’s affecting corporate cultures and reputations in the June 1 issue of Business Week (“Managing the Tweets” – the online version is titled “Web 2.0: Managing Corporate Reputations“).

Here’s the essence of the article (written by our friend Michelle Conlin and her colleague Douglas Macmillan):

Social networking is a love-hate relationship. On the one hand managers want their workers to experiment so they can cultivate new-world skills. Employees as brand ambassadors! Products virally transformed into overnight hits! On the other hand, bosses are filled with foreboding about social networking’s dark side—losing secrets to rivals, the corporate embarrassment of errant employee tweets, becoming the latest victim of a venomous crowd.

Read it; the full article includes a number of very specific stories about individual companies and their employees – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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Register Now for Our Free May 12 Webinar on Corporate Agility

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We are pleased to announce that on Wednesday, May 12, we (Charlie Grantham and I) will be delivering a one-hour free webinar called “Corporate Agility:  Working Anywhere, Anytime.”

You can read about the webinar at this link on PC Magazine’s website, and register there as well. The webinar is sponsored by our friends and long-term clients at Citrix Online, and will include Eric Bensley of Citrix. [continue reading...]

Preparing for the Future of Work by Living It

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I’m a big fan of learning by doing – and in the college world that translates into getting out of the classroom to work on real-world problems. The more the better. So I was pleased to come across this short video clip showing how IBM is partnering with Michigan Tech University to get IT students working on practical, serious, real problems. [continue reading...]

Happy Birthday, Worldwide Web!

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Thanks to my friend Jessica Lipnack (author of the Endless Knots blog) for reminding me:   the web was “born” twenty years ago this month (and it seems like it’s been here forever…). Tim Berners-Lee’s seminal article was published in March of 1988. And what a ride it’s been!

Jessica pointed me to an insightful article from the Boston Globe last week:  “Woven deep into our lives,” by Hiawatha Bray. [continue reading...]

Putting Things in Perspective – Part Two

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The other day I posted a humorous “rant” by comedian Louis CK about how things really aren’t all that bad (“Putting Things in Perspective“).

Now my good friend Don Porter has forwarded me another video that’s probably also already gone viral, but I can’t resist putting it up too.

This one is a whole heck of a lot more serious – not so much about the current economic crisis as about some basic statistics about the size of the global economy, the relative strengths of the United States, China, and India, and the accumulation of knowledge in the world. [continue reading...]

How are We Going to Stimulate the Entrepreneurs?

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We’re not doing  anywhere near enough for entrepreneurs and startup businesses as we attempt to kick-start the U.S. economy back into high gear. Forbes Columnist and author Sramana Mitra is doing her part (see below for information about a series of free webinars she is offering). But I certainly don’t see anywhere enough attention being paid to the real source of economic  innovation and value.

Plenty of people are talking about the Stimulus Package (technically, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) – and rightly so. It seems to have something for almost everyone – even though some of its critics think it’s full of “pork” (like high-speed rail and “something called volcano monitoring” – actually fairly important investments in our future).

But fortunately well over two-thirds of the American public supports the bill and believes it is a necessary part of getting the economy back on track.

However, like all too much of what Congress does, the stimulus bill seems focused mostly on Big Business, even though there’s also general consensus that it was big business that got us into this mess in the first place.

Sramana Mitra is one “lonely voice” crying in the wilderness about the need to focus more attention on small businesses and entrepreneurs. Way back in September she was writing about the need for some serious refocusing (“A Stimulus Package for Entrepreneurs“).

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It’s easier to think out of the box when you’re not in it

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Thought for the day . . .

From our good friend Diane Coles, who is a “new breed” nomad worker. She’s in the corporate facility just about every day, but has no office per se. Sh’e’s got her laptop, access to WiFi in the building, and her cell phone (which receives calls forwarded from the corporate system), and she’s focused on meeting her clients’ needs, not on being in an office. [continue reading...]

Let’s Bail Out the Future, not the Past

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Tom Friedman of the New York Times has a very thoughtful column in today’s paper (February 22, 2009 – “Start Up the Risk-Takers“).

His basic recommendation is for the federal government to put $20 billion into 20 venture capital funds and let them invest in new businesses that will drive growth and innovation to help “jump-start” the economy.

In Friedman’s words:

You want to spend $20 billion of taxpayer money creating jobs? Fine. Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all lose. If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel, taxpayers will give you 20 percent of the investors’ upside and keep 80 percent for themselves.

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