Rita McGrath recently spoke at the IESE Business School in Madrid, Spain where she gave a video interview on the topic of the event: How to Lead Growth in Difficult Times. In the interview, she… Read more »
Archives for 2008
Fast Company: Making Innovation Work
Rita McGrath’s letter to Fast Company regarding their article Making Innovation Work is published in the April 2008 issue: “Your article on Bell Labs innovation (“Mad Scientist,” February) was spot-on. The notion of approaching innovation… Read more »
Yikes! Putting your core business in discovery mode: BlockBuster and Circuit City
The unsolicited attempt by video rental chain Blockbuster to take over electronics retailer Circuit City looks like a pretty desperate move. In short, a company that prospered with the rise of the whole rent-it-out couch… Read more »
Discovery Driven Strategy: Predicting the Path for a Toy Shop
Many of you know that I’ve been following the progress of G. Willikers, a toy shop that opened in Sacramento, CA, in the summer of 2006. I got interested in their story initially by an… Read more »
Follow up on payment systems – RadioShack and Western Union’s money-transfer offer
In a recent post, I noted that many companies are trying out different ways to change how we make payments, with American Express having decided that apparently key fobs is not the way. Just today,… Read more »
Strategy is action, not just a word
Connected, the Columbia University Executive Education newsletter, features Rita McGrath and her colleague, Willie Pietersen, discussing Strategy is action, not just a word. Often, the reality is that “companies devolve to planning with no time… Read more »
Expose Your Company’s Blind Spots
Rita McGrath has posted at the Harvard Business Review blog. Is your company unintentionally keeping your most senior people from getting the feedback they most need? It can easily happen as an unintended consequence of… Read more »
Discovery Driven Strategy: Options investments enable the right kind of failures (Amex Express Pay)
American Express has just announced that it is discontinuing the “Express Pay” offering that allows contact-less payments by consumers, along the lines of the popular Speedpass payment systems that were successfully implemented by gas stations… Read more »
FotoNation: Why new entrants to an industry often see opportunities incumbents don’t
This past Friday’s Wall Street Journal reported on a terrific little Irish-based company, FotoNation, that has achieved breakthrough growth by using software algorithms to solve problems that have bedeviled the photography industry for years. Red-eye,… Read more »
Enraged customers will create opportunities in the wireless space
Business Week recently described the sad state of the art of wireless phone services in the United States. Wireless companies, it seems, generate more customer complaints than any other industry. Even more than airlines. Wireless… Read more »
Innovation and the last gasp of dying technologies
In the January, 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Daniel C. Snow shared some research he’s been doing on product transitions—when one dominant design or conventional product gives way to a different or more… Read more »
Staples “M Line” an effort to escape brutal commoditization
As a long-time fan of stationery supplier Staples, I was intrigued to note that they are adding a whole new, more upscale, line of products called the “M Line”. The goal is to create a… Read more »