Bamboo Innovator

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup
BY ADAM L. PENENBERG
ON MARCH 21, 2014
Lean Startup Machine), has a bleak– but simple — prescription for big companies: Act more like a startup or enjoy a long slide into irrelevance and creative destruction. Read more of this post

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company
By Max Nisen @MaxNisen March 20, 2014
Even for the volatile tech industry, the implosion of Canadian telecom giant Nortel was spectacular. In 2000, it was the 9th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of $283 billion. A decade later, it was bankrupt and ceasing operations.

Read more of this post

How Goldman Sachs became a household name; In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years

How Goldman Sachs became a household name
March 21, 2014: 8:00 AM ET
In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years.
By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large
FORTUNE — Becoming a household name has not been a good thing for Goldman Sachs (GS). Not long ago, few people outside Wall Street and the top tier of corporate America paid much attention to Goldman, other than to note how many former Goldmanites seemed to be concentrated in the upper echelons of the federal government and other seats of power. Then came the worldwide financial meltdown, and almost overnight, Goldman came to be invoked as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong. Read more of this post

Bill Clinton on leadership

Bill Clinton on leadership
March 20, 2014: 7:49 AM ET
The former President distills his wisdom for Fortune.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership means bringing people together in pursuit of a common cause, developing a plan to achieve it, and staying with it until the goal is achieved. If the leader holds a public or private position with other defined responsibilities, leadership also requires the ability to carry out those tasks and to respond to unforeseen problems and opportunities when they arise. It is helpful to be able to clearly articulate a vision of where you want to go, develop a realistic strategy to get there, and attract talented, committed people with a wide variety of knowledge, perspectives, and skills to do what needs to be done. In the modern world, I believe lasting positive results are more likely to occur when leaders practice inclusion and cooperation rather than authoritarian unilateralism. Even those who lead the way don’t have all the answers. Read more of this post

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?
by Quy Huy and Timo Vuori | Mar 21, 2014
Nokia lost the smartphone battle despite having half of the global market share in 2007. Some argue that it was down to software, others that it was complacency. We argue that collective emotions within the company were a big part of the story
Leaders who are able to identify and manage patterns of emotions in a collective are better able to make their ambitious strategies a reality. Our argument centres around the idea that the emotions felt by a large number of people within an organisation can determine the success of strategy implementation even when these feelings go unexpressed. Read more of this post

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop
AMANDA MACIAS ADVERTISING MAR. 21, 2014, 6:59 AM
Pepsi Max kicked off its ‘Unbelievable’ campaign by pranking commuters sitting inside a typical London bus stop.
A stop on New Oxford Street was rigged with hidden digital technology that tricks unsuspecting passengers into thinking they are steps away from hovering alien ships, a loose tiger, and a giant robot with laser beam eyes.
Rachel Holmes, senior marketing manager at PepsiCo UK said, “It truly lives up to Pepsi Max’s Unbelievable proposition from the innovative media planning through to the fantastic creative,”reports the Drum.

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996
LISA EADICICCO TECH MAR. 21, 2014, 9:18 PM
Google co-founder Sergey Brin may be one of the biggest names in today’s tech industry, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, like many of us, his resume looked fairly plain and basic back in the early 1990s.
This old version of Brin’s resume, which was last updated in 1996, is making the rounds on Hacker News today.
The resume details some of Brin’s earliest projects, including one titled “Movie Ratings” that sounds a lot like the recommendation engine built into today’s entertainment apps such as Netflix. Read more of this post

Sting reminds us all that sometimes you have to gaze back into the past in order to move forward; The events of childhood are like the Hebrew alphabet; the vowels are missing, and the older self has to make sense of them

Going Home Again
MARCH 20, 2014
David Brooks
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The TED conference is dedicated to innovation. Most of the people who give TED talks are working on some creative project: to invent new bionic limbs for amputees, new telescopes, new fusion reactors or new protest movements to reduce the power of money in politics. Read more of this post

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together

The Family That Talks Money Together, Stays Together
MARCH 21, 2014
By PAUL SULLIVAN
Marvin Blum, a lawyer from Fort Worth, flew to New York last week to visit his daughter, son-in-law and young grandson. Staying close to his family is crucial to him. The same goes for seeing his son, who lives in Austin. Read more of this post

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly

Innovation: Floor Tiles That Can Monitor the Health of the Elderly
By Patrick Clark March 20, 2014
Innovators: Charles Hendee, 34, and Ken Perlin, 55
Chief technology officer and chief scientific adviser, respectively, of six-employee Tactonic Technologies in New York.
Form and function: A strip of pressure-sensitive floor tiles made of plastic evaluates a walker’s health based on footstep patterns. The tile system’s cloud-based analytics can provide health updates via smartphone and assist caretakers for the elderly. Read more of this post

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Oprah gives Starbucks tea push a celebrity shot with chai drink

Wed, Mar 19 2014
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp will add a celebrity blend to its big tea push when it debuts “Oprah Chai,” a tea-based drink created by media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Read more of this post

A Pre-Fab Bamboo Bicycle, Grown from the Ground in Bike Shape

A PRE-FAB BAMBOO BICYCLE, GROWN FROM THE GROUND IN BIKE SHAPE
THE AJIRO–A CONCEPT FROM AUSTRALIA–WOULD COME FROM THE EARTH FULLY FORMED. IS THIS THE FIRST STEP FOR A SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING ECONOMY?
BY MATTHEW BATTLES

Another bamboo bicycle? Yes–but the vehicle devised by Alexander Vittouris departs from the funky, tiki-bar-friendly lines made from this sustainable, globally ubiquitous grass. A design student at Australia’s Monash University, Vittouris envisions a bicycle that isn’t built, but grown–the bamboo stalks of the frame being trained into shape while the plant is growing. Inspired by arborsculpture, in which tree branches are fixed in expressive shapes that they take as the plant grows, Vittouris wants to develop a reusable framework that would shape bamboo into nearly finished bicycles. Read more of this post

Love Mental Models? Study Threshold Concepts!

Love Mental Models? Study Threshold Concepts!
*Note: I consider this to be one of the most important posts on this blog. In fact, I didn’t blog yesterday because I wanted to dedicate extra time to this post. If you are a student of mental models, this is the model that should guide your acquisition of all other mental models. Read more of this post