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 »
Seeing Around Corners
The Drugs Have Won and the Smart Money Knows It (credit to Jake Novak for this great line)
What do you do when your most visible and notable spokesperson basically declares that what you’re doing is ineffective? We’re about to find out how WW (formerly Weight Watchers) navigates. The rise of Weight Watchers… Read more »
Could you benefit from Belonging to a Peer-to-Peer Network?
The old recipes for making a firm a talent factory have eroded. Executive development programs provided formal training specific to organizational levels, and employees were expected to remain with their organizations for long careers. Today,… Read more »
Why are so few people talking about the massive wealth transfer to women?
Until astonishingly recently in the sweep of human history, women in the United States had little control over their financial assets, and despite the reality that they make fundamental spending decisions, many sectors of our… Read more »
Our lizard lateral brains and the exponential world we’re confronting
Human brains were designed for a world of lateral change. But, as Ray Kurzweil and others remind us, learning-by-trial-and-error systems introduce the potential for exponential change. This has huge implications for how we design and… Read more »
WFH? RTO? Remembering the Allen Curve and Why It Matters Now
A robust scientific finding from decades ago mapped the richness of information flows against how far apart people sat at work. Called the Allen Curve after MIT’s Thomas J. Allen, who discovered it, it shows… Read more »
On the agenda for 2024 – a better way to keep track of your innovation portfolio?
I was delighted to be part of a virtual event sponsored by the good people over at Innov8rs, in which a field of 10 experts shared their perspectives on the prospects for innovation in 2024,… Read more »
Behind the scenes at the Outthinker Chief Strategy Officer Summit
There is nothing like gathering with a group of peers from other organizations and sectors to facilitate making sense of the context in which crucial strategic decisions need to be made. I was pleased to… Read more »
It’s Halloween! Speaking about X teams and leadership ghosts with MIT’s Deborah Ancona
Our conventional wisdom about teams is that factors internal to the team mostly determine how well they will operate. My LinkedIn Live guest, Professor Deborah Ancona from MIT, begs to differ. No matter how great… Read more »
Using behavioral insights to better segment customers
This week, we’re launching a new guidebook series at Valize, designed to share core ideas about strategy today in a convenient online format for using with your team or on your own. The first one… Read more »
Creating value or extracting it? An existential question.
A board and governance level issue that doesn’t get nearly enough attention is whether firms are being run as value creators or value extractors. As economist William Lazonick points out, absent real pushback, it is… Read more »
Taking it to the streets – Uber CEO finds out what it’s really like to be an Uber driver
CEO’s make a lot more money, have a lot more autonomy and enjoy a lot more control, than the people working for them. The danger is that they can develop incredible blind spots, lose the… Read more »