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Innovation and Creativity for the Darwinian CEO
Over at Business Week, Bruce Nussbaum suggests that the growing backlash against innovation in the media is really a backlash against companies that falsely attempt to portray themselves as innovators. Time and time again, this happens, as companies like Ford Motor Company realize that their ...
This is probably the single most disturbing thing you will read on this Valentine's Day: an "innovative" Parisian fashion designer has decided that the waist-cinching corset should become the Next Big Thing in male fashion. In other words, take the picture above and imagine a bunch of French ...
Yesterday on the front page of the Wall Street Journal ("In Race to Take Tourists Into Orbit, Partners Split, Soar"), Andy Pasztor described the innovation grudge match between two space flight pioneers - Burt Rutan and Jim Benson. After uniting a few years ago to develop SpaceShipOne and win ...
One of the most interesting trends on Wall Street these days is the creation of the SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition Company, in order to bring IPO riches to investors as quickly as possible while, at the same time, avoiding too much regulatory scrutiny. A SPAC is basically a "blank check ...
Over on the On Disruption blog, software executive and guitar enthusiast Zack Urlocker has posted a great case study of disruptive change within the billion-dollar professional guitar industry. What happens when an upstart competitor from southern California (Line 6) launches a new line of ...
Today is the day that die-hard Yankee fans have been eagerly looking forward to since October - Pitchers and Catchers Day down in Tampa, Florida. As Spring Training finally kicks off, Yankees pitchers and catchers start arriving today, preparing for their first formal workout on Thursday. Several ...
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran an online survey of its readers, asking them to predict which form of alternative energy would be most prevalent by the year 2030. Somewhat surprisingly, the top pick was NUCLEAR, with a whopping 49% of the vote. (I've been following some uranium companies ...
When I listened in on the Xerox conference call a few weeks ago, they mentioned a slew of innovative new products scheduled for the first half of 2007, but they didn't mention anything about this: an expanded initiative to develop a Google-killer. As Xerox slowly rebuilds itself into a global ...
Ideas are the life-blood of the innovation community. With that in mind, over on the Principled Innovation blog, Jeff De Cagna announces the launch of a new series of blog posts called Garage Memes: "Last month, I wrote about the need to bring more “garage thinking” into the ...
When it comes to innovation, is it too much of a simplification to say that there are two types of people -- creationists and evolutionists? Creationists believe that most innovation results from a random spark of creativity somewhere within the organization. These folks tend to focus much more ...
Obviously spooked by the prospect that Americans might finally embrace alternative energy sources like ethanol, the oil industry is mounting a massive PR campaign based around "innovation" to get out in front of the issue. Much as British Petroleum changed its name to BP ("Beyond Petroleum") in ...
One of the most interesting examples in Malcolm Gladwell's landmark book The Tipping Point was the case of shoe retailer Hush Puppies, which experienced a hipster revival in the mid-1990s, thanks to the efforts of the "cool kids" in Manhattan. From a relatively small neighborhood in the East ...
This case study of Disney kicks off what I hope becomes a regular series on business innovation that I'm calling "Survival of the Most Innovative." (an obvious reference to the Darwinian concept of the "Survival of the Fittest") Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal (free feature) described the ...
Fortress Investment Group, the first-ever hedge fund IPO, starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. If you don't already have your hard-earned dollars (or euros) tucked away in a nice little hedge fund earning 20-30% a year, now is your chance to play with the Wall Street big boys ...
Now is your chance to ask Donald Trump any question you want - preferably about innovation or creativity, but if you want to know something about Melanie, hey, that's your business. Together with FORTUNE magazine, UPS is sponsoring a series of Q&As with cool business thinkers, and Donald Trump ...