In 1977, James Eyster, then a Ph.D. student at Cornell, published a book that would completely change the nature of the hotel business worldwide. His idea could not sound more boring—unless you saw the impact… Read more »
Business Strategy
When Hierarchy Is Not an Option: A New Organizational Model for Fast-Moving Contexts
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Human Resources Directors Conference in the United Kingdom. At the conference, I shared some material excerpted from my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points… Read more »
How to Lead an Organization Through an Inflection Point
I was recently at a conference with Curt Carlson, a brilliant leader of innovation who for many years ran SRI, the research organization responsible for the invention of Apple’s Siri and many other multi-billion dollar… Read more »
Decoding why digital is so disruptive
My colleague, Ryan P. McManus, is at CES this week and is much in demand for his perspective on why digital is so disruptive. He traces the evolution of digital from its 4G impact on… Read more »
One reason Tesla Lost $10 Billion in Market Capitalization in a Breathtakingly short period of time
Understanding investor psychology can be baffling and frustrating for the managers of publicly traded corporations. For instance, despite what many would regard as a stellar track record of proven performance, CEO Mark Fields was fired… Read more »
This month’s newsletter-All about what’s going on in the #grocery store
It’s ironic – Whole Foods did a great job of teaching all of us that natural and organic are desirable. And for about 30 years, that created a strong, high-margin position for them in the… Read more »
Innovation and Jobs-to-be-Done discussed in my latest newsletter
My latest newsletter offers observations and ideas that were discussed at two CEO Summits sponsored by Innosight and featuring keynotes by Clayton Christensen and myself. We discussed Clay’s terrific new book, Competing Against Luck, some… Read more »
‘If you can’t do it, we’ll find somebody who can’ can be disastrous
Recent corporate scandals and mishaps should remind us that what can feel like the creation of a pragmatic sense of urgency in the “C-Suite” can translate into deeply dysfunctional behavior farther down the organization. Just… Read more »
Why managing an opportunity portfolio leads to surprising investment decisions
There is no shortage of interesting strategic activity going on in the intertwining worlds of content creation, telecommunications and other forms of distribution. The recent sales of AOL and Yahoo! to Verizon are representative of… Read more »
Insight into unintended consequences-anticipating the effects of low oil prices
Over the years, I’ve cited and used some of the work done by the Futures Strategy Group principals in their development of very robust tools that help organizations anticipate (not predict) what might happen in… Read more »
Staring down a disengagement decision at Yahoo!
Yahoo and its CEO of three years, Marissa Mayer, have been in the news a lot lately. While Yahoo’s checkered history and frequent changes in leadership have not done the company’s reputation any favors, it still… Read more »
Secrets of the Superbosses – catch up on Syd Finkelstein’s latest book
Lorne Michaels. Ralph Lauren. Alice Waters. George Lucas. Larry Ellison. Miles Davis. And a dozen others. Business leaders and creative icons with tremendous track records who all have something else in common: they helped develop… Read more »