How to Let 999 Flowers Die: For innovation to flourish, variation must go hand in hand with selection

August 27, 2013

How to Let 999 Flowers Die

For innovation to flourish, variation must go hand in hand with selection.

by Freek Vermeulen

Illustration by Sam Brewster

When it comes to innovation, most executives place a high value on variation. They set up formalized systems that encourage employees to generate ideas and submit them to their superiors. Even firms without a formal mechanism frequently empower their people to experiment without fear of punishment for failure. This approach is based on the knowledge that innovation is often a bottom-up process: Managers should cultivate many promising seeds to let a thousand flowers bloom. Read more of this post

Five Principles to Turbocharge Innovation

Posted: August 2, 2013

Eric McNulty is the director of research at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and writes frequently about leadership and resilience.

Five Principles to Turbocharge Innovation

Why do some teams consistently come up with great new ideas while others languish with little to show but time around a table? How do some organizations operate nimbly in the face of fast-evolving markets while others freeze like deer in headlights? What can you do, as a leader, to build positive, productive energy that fuels creative thinking and breakthrough innovation? I recently had the pleasure of spending two days at The City Resilient, a conference and design charrette hosted by PopTech, an organization known for convening in-person gatherings of innovators, along with the Rockefeller Foundation and others interested in resilience. As PopTech founder Andrew Zolli noted, every person present in the diverse, hand-picked group had great expertise and could be a keynote speaker at most conferences. However, the members of this group hadn’t been convened to lecture, but rather to tackle a vexing problem in short order: creating cities that could survive the stresses of the 21st century, from extreme weather to income inequality. They were charged with working together to actually get something done. Read more of this post

The Big Bite of Small Brands: Upstarts are gaining market share across consumer packaged goods categories. Here’s how incumbents can respond

August 27, 2013

The Big Bite of Small Brands

Upstarts are gaining market share across consumer packaged goods categories. Here’s how incumbents can respond.

by Elisabeth Hartley, Steffen Lauster, and J. Neely

Small consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in the U.S. are steadily gaining market share these days, often at the expense of larger competitors. Booz & Company recently analyzed the food and beverage industry and found that small players (those with sales of less than US$1 billion) are outperforming the competition in 18 of the top 25 categories, including the largest and most consolidated ones, such as bakery, dairy, snacks, and ready meals (see Exhibit). From 2009 to 2012 in packaged foods and from 2008 to 2011 in beverages, small players grew revenue about three times faster than the overall category. Specifically, in packaged foods, small players ex-perienced a three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.2 percent, and gained 1.7 percent of market share. Meanwhile, large players increased sales by just 1.6 percent CAGR and saw their market share decline 0.7 percent. Read more of this post

Watch LG Terrify Job Applicants Into Thinking Their Flat Screens Are Really Office Windows

Watch LG Terrify Job Applicants Into Thinking Their Flat Screens Are Really Office Windows

AARON TAUBE SEP. 4, 2013, 5:17 PM 9,531 9

What better way to demonstrate the life-like quality of your televisions than by using them to scare the bejesus out of people? That’s what LG Chile did in a prankvertisement promoting its 82-inch “Ultra HD” TVs. The commercial, which surfaced Monday on YouTube, shows the LG team rigging up the TVs to look like windows. Then, they sat job applicants across from the televisions under the premise that they were being interviewed for a position with the company. When the tranquil cityscape displayed on the televisions erupts into a series of explosions, hidden cameras capture the applicants’ outrageous reactions: The stunt is not the first time advertisers have launched prankvertisements aimed at job applicants. LG has previously been accused of faking its stunts. In February, we told you about a Heineken campaign in which the company subjected internship hopefuls to a variety of bizarre behaviors, ranging from excessive hand-holding to feigned medical emergencies. That treatment pales in comparison to the comically austere accommodations  Brussels ad agency Mortierbrigade told interns they’d be getting in the agency’s basement. LG’s latest take on the genre seems to be a success. The video already has more than 500,000 views on YouTube.

Why are good managers such a rare species?

September 4, 2013 4:57 pm

Why are good managers such a rare species?

Review by Stefan Stern

Becoming a better boss: Why good management is so difficult, by Julian Birkinshaw, Wiley, RRP£18.99

How likely is it that you would recommend your line manager to a colleague as someone they should work for in the future? This is the question that senior executives at the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche started asking in staff surveys three years ago. The idea was to spot which managers were really good at building engaged, higher performing teams. It is not just about the feelgood factor. According to a Wharton business school study, money invested in America’s 100 “best companies to work for” over a 25-year period would have generated returns 3.5 per cent a year higher than those achieved by the average fund manager. Read more of this post

The four stages of life every successful startup must go through

The four stages of life every successful startup must go through

BY GIRISH SHENOY 
ON SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

If you’ve ever been to a startup event, you’d be awed by the intriguing ideas entrepreneurs come up with — revolutionary jumps that change the way we think about the world, or small incremental ideas that make us relearn everything we know about friends, work, or even coffee. It’s pretty hard not to be awed. But for all their brilliance, most startup entrepreneurs have distorted ideas about customer service, and what it means to their seedling ventures. After all, when you are a garage startup trying to change the world, the first and most important thing you need is traction, and the second: staying alive. Most startups procrastinate on servicing customers to keep them happy until they have gone mainstream. No surprise that a good chunk of these startups don’t survive very long.

Read more of this post

Games we play make us better at work; Plenty of ways to hone the entrepreneurial edge but none compares with the real experience

September 3, 2013 4:47 pm

Games we play make us better at work

By Luke Johnson

Plenty of ways to hone the entrepreneurial edge but none compares with the real experience

This summer my elder son and daughter (six and eight respectively) became obsessed by the board game Monopoly. I saw it anew through their eyes and was reminded that games can be a useful introduction to the world of business. As with life, success in Monopoly is down to a combination of luck and skill. Players learn to handle money, make investments and plan for the future. They find out about strategy, winning and losing, trading and leverage. Read more of this post

The insecurities that torment some people at work and render them risk-averse need to be understood

September 4, 2013 5:01 pm

That fear of being found out

By Naomi Shragai

Many people wear a mask at work – of competency and of being in control. But sometimes behind this lies the anxiety that they are incapable of doing their job and a fear of being found out. As a result they go to unhealthy extremes to ensure they get things right in an effort to avoid what they imagine could be a catastrophic outcome if exposed. Most people will have experienced these feelings in their working lives, and such self-doubt can be healthy. Reflecting on one’s strengths and limitations is essential and makes people strive harder at work. Furthermore, the damaging consequences of the extreme opposite characteristics – stubbornness, arrogance and denying one’s limitations – have been seen in the chief executives who led their companies to irresponsible risk-taking and ruin. Feelings of insecurity are particularly common when people are promoted to a leadership position. Read more of this post

Could This New Technology Destroy The Value Of All Famous Art?

Could This New Technology Destroy The Value Of All Famous Art?

MEGAN WILLETT SEP. 4, 2013, 3:39 PM 6,112 16

Relievo of Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield under Thunderclouds” (1890).

A new 3D printing technique in Europe could threaten the value of the world’s most prized works of art. The proprietary technique is being used by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has partnered with Fujifilm to produce three-dimensional reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces. Called “Relievos” by the museum, the replicas are of extremely high quality and will set you back £22,000, or just under $29,000. The museum is planning to sell 260 limited edition copies — all numbered and stamped — for both collectors and educational purposes. Read more of this post

Bezos to Washington Post: ‘Don’t be boring’

Bezos to Washington Post: ‘Don’t be boring’

4:14pm EDT

(Reuters) – Jeff Bezos, the soon-to-be owner of The Washington Post, does not plan to cut his way to profitability and says the only path to success is growth, according to an account in the Washington Post on Wednesday. The Amazon.com chief executive is visiting the newspaper for the first time this week since he agreed to purchase the Washington Post Co newspaper unit for $250 million on Aug 5. Read more of this post

Study Says Yelling Is As Hurtful as Hitting; Parents Who Yell at Teens Can Increase Risk of Depression and Aggression

September 4, 2013, 7:21 p.m. ET

Study Says Yelling Is As Hurtful as Hitting

Parents Who Yell at Teens Can Increase Risk of Depression and Aggression

ANDREA PETERSEN

Parents who yell at their adolescent children for misbehaving can cause some of the same problems as hitting them would, including increased risk of depression and aggressive behavior, according to a new study. A good, warm relationship with Mom and Dad doesn’t protect teens from the negative effects of parents’ yelling, cursing or lobbing insults, such as calling teens “lazy” or “stupid,” the study found. Conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan, the study was published Wednesday on the journal Child Development’s website. Read more of this post