Insights and ideas

One thing we can predict about the new ways that people will interact with television is that the new uses will surprise us. As has been the case with the way many new technologies have been adopted in the past. I think we can expect significant shifts in people’s television consumption patterns. I think we…

Quick, do you believe that smaller, leaner corporate headquarters are associated with higher performance? A recent study published in the Strategic Management Journal suggests that such a taken for granted belief may not make sense. A very insightful bit of research – Here’s the citation: Collis D, Young D, Goold M. 2007. The size, structure…

I was recently asked to comment on whether Web 2.0 is a ‘bubble’ – here’s what I think. Both web 2.0 and the dot.com surge are/were driven by a common human bias: this is to over-state the implications of major societal/business/regulatory changes in the short term and to under-state them in the longer term. The…

Our colleague, Walter Derzko gives some interesting insights into why good ideas don’t get results – see his blog at – http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2007/02/why_good_ideas_.html With respect to innovation, one study suggests that you need 3,000 ideas to get one commercial launch – see this article: Stevens, G.A., J. Burley. 1997. 3000 raw ideas – 11 commercial success!…

I heard a fascinating statistic the other day that really should give all of us pause. It seems that 2/3 of all jobs in America require a college education, yet only 1/3 of the potentially eligible population goes to college in this country. Either we are going to have to drastically ramp up our numbers…

So XM and Sirius satellite radio have announced that they are finally going to merge. We called that one years ago! What the two have been doing is engaging in a competitive war of attrition that is guaranteed to end with one killing the other off, or in a desperate bid to avoid the ultimate…

Our good friend Phil Rosenzweig has just published a terrific book, called The Halo Effect. It’s main thesis is that we come to a lot of erroneous conclusions because knowing the outcomes biases our reasoning. It’s a fascinating read. For more on Phil and the book, check out his website – http://www.the-halo-effect.com

I ran across the following mind-blowing numbers – and came to the conclusion that there are vast sums of money out there if one is creative enough to capitalize on what people are willing to buy! $38 Billion – Amount Americans spent on pet food and care in 2006, nearly double that spent 10 years…

Visitors to our site might have an interest in the work of the ILO Institute. Here’s the news about them: The ILO Institute brings together senior executives from Fortune 500’s, for dialogue with Nobel Prize winners and other distinguished thinkers (Christensen, Lessig, Dyson, others), and to provide research on best practices to make innovation a…

From our good friend in Korea, Hyokon Zhang (we’ve temporarily disabled comments due to too much junk and spam – but if you email me comments I’ll happily post them – Rita) I absolutely agree. If you want to improve the service level of store operation, six-sigma could help. But if you want to remove…