Since the days of Adam Smith, we have credited rising living standards with an improvement in productivity, typically manufacturing productivity. But as we are on the cusp of a revolution in digital, intelligent work, perhaps… Read more »
Thought Sparks
Why you would have a strategic edge if you’d attended “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” in the 90’s
It’s fun to reflect on how my course “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” has evolved over the years. I first took over as the Faculty Director for the course in 1998. Everyone was abuzz about… Read more »
The Merger Mirage: The Triumph of Hope over Experience
Synergy. Market expansion. Gaining share. Cost savings. Diversification. Talent acquisition. Owning a unique asset. Moving into a high-growth sector. These and many more reasons have often propelled companies into one another’s arms, regardless of the… Read more »
High-quality service jobs and the advent of a new golden age?
As MIT’s Zeynep Ton has pointed out, the U.S. suffers from a deluge of bad jobs, many in the service sector. While some suggest trying to revive manufacturing as the basis for a solid middle… Read more »
The Digital Deception Economy: How Bot Farms Distort Social Signals
In a digital environment, sentiment has become currency. How customers, investors, and the public feel about your content directly affects performance metrics, from revenues to reputation to stock price. But what happens when that sentiment… Read more »
Have business books jumped the shark? The “peak book” hypothesis
Publishing a book used to be a rite of passage for would-be pundits, experts, speakers and more. Books once provided credibility, presence in the market and an audience for new ideas. But in an age… Read more »
Interns! We have interns! Welcome to the tribe
As Garry Ridge, the former CEO of WD-40 says, in his wonderful book Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It, citing Sebastian Junger, “The earliest and most basic definition of community – of tribe – would be… Read more »
The Benefits of Bureaucracy: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Red Tape
Throughout much of human history, power was exercised through a system of patrimonialism, as the great sociologist Max Weber coined the term. Under patrimonialism, a leader exerts power without respect to formal rules and regulations,… Read more »
Boggled by radically increased uncertainty? You are not alone
January 2025 Monthly Wrap Up January is now in the rear-view mirror (gasp) and a new administration is in office in the United States. 45 executive orders and a massively disruptive freeze in federal… Read more »
Is AI coming for your job? Depends on who you ask
Astonishingly, the age of AI introduced by the November, 2022 release of ChatGPT has been around long enough that we’re starting to build up what you can think of as conventional wisdom! Most CEO’s calmly… Read more »
Why the party’s over at Party City, but Build-A-Bear Workshop is Thriving
We’ve been talking about the retail apocalypse for quite some time now. And the sector sure has had its problems – from rapacious Private Equity investors who burdened their properties with debt, to customers wanting… Read more »
Join me at the Conference Forbes declared one of the top 5 to attend this year- April 29-30 in Dublin
We’ve all been to conferences that are either a bunch of talking heads or even worse, panel after panel after panel without a lot of new insights or actionable ideas. Our team at The Reinvention… Read more »