Rita McGrath contributed to the article Spike in fiscal year-end spending driven by use-it-or-lose-it mentality at GovPro.com: “I vividly recall people rushing into my office pleading for fast-track treatment for proposed purchases because ‘the fiscal… Read more »
Thought Sparks
Who’s Disrupting the Gaming Industry?
Rita McGrath is a regular Discussion Leader at the Harvard Business Publishing blog. Read her April 27th posting on Who’s Disrupting the Gaming Industry?
Turning the insurance business model on its head: FM Global
Fast Company, a magazine that often uncovers little gems, reports on a unique business model being pursued by insurance giant FM Global. Instead of deploying armies of actuaries to predict the risk of certain types… Read more »
Jigsaw – creating a market for contact information
Anne Ferguson, my assistant, drew this one to my attention. The company in question, Jigsaw, is trying to create a market for contact information, using a variant of the ‘free labor’ theme I’ve written about… Read more »
Testing some key assumptions - second home market early warnings
Fortune, in their April 28, 2008 issue, printed a little statistic that struck me as valuable in terms of the sort of data one could use to test assumptions, but which often go unnoticed. They… Read more »
Testing some key assumptions – second home market early warnings
Fortune, in their April 28, 2008 issue, printed a little statistic that struck me as valuable in terms of the sort of data one could use to test assumptions, but which often go unnoticed. They… Read more »
Michelin PAX Run-Flat: A stillborn revolution
This weekend’s New York Times carried the sad headline, “Michelin Giving Up on PAX Run-Flat Tire.”. So much for an innovation that was supposed to revolutionize the tire industry, in much the same way that… Read more »
How To Lead Growth in Difficult Times video interview
Rita McGrath recently spoke at the IESE Business School in Madrid, Spain where she gave a video interview on the topic of the event: How to Lead Growth in Difficult Times. In the interview, she… Read more »
Fast Company: Making Innovation Work
Rita McGrath’s letter to Fast Company regarding their article Making Innovation Work is published in the April 2008 issue: “Your article on Bell Labs innovation (“Mad Scientist,” February) was spot-on. The notion of approaching innovation… Read more »
Yikes! Putting your core business in discovery mode: BlockBuster and Circuit City
The unsolicited attempt by video rental chain Blockbuster to take over electronics retailer Circuit City looks like a pretty desperate move. In short, a company that prospered with the rise of the whole rent-it-out couch… Read more »
Discovery Driven Strategy: Predicting the Path for a Toy Shop
Many of you know that I’ve been following the progress of G. Willikers, a toy shop that opened in Sacramento, CA, in the summer of 2006. I got interested in their story initially by an… Read more »
Follow up on payment systems – RadioShack and Western Union’s money-transfer offer
In a recent post, I noted that many companies are trying out different ways to change how we make payments, with American Express having decided that apparently key fobs is not the way. Just today,… Read more »