In 1977, James Eyster, then a Ph.D. student at Cornell, published a book that would completely change the nature of the hotel business worldwide. His idea could not sound more boring—unless you saw the impact… Read more »
Thought Sparks
Netflix and the Battle for Your Disposable Time
In my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners (now available for pre-order wherever you buy books), one of the major themes is that a major blind spot for organizations is that they tend to see the… Read more »
When Hierarchy Is Not an Option: A New Organizational Model for Fast-Moving Contexts
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Human Resources Directors Conference in the United Kingdom. At the conference, I shared some material excerpted from my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points… Read more »
How to Lead an Organization Through an Inflection Point
I was recently at a conference with Curt Carlson, a brilliant leader of innovation who for many years ran SRI, the research organization responsible for the invention of Apple’s Siri and many other multi-billion dollar… Read more »
Preparing for Time Zero Events in Banking
We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare in advance. So how do you develop early warning signs that things are about to change in an industry? One technique for identifying leading indicators is… Read more »
How Digital is Changing the Business of Getting Stuff from A to B
There are trillions up for grabs in the business of delivering things right to you, no matter where you are. A sector reeling from the cumulative effects of digitization is the global logistics business. In… Read more »
Privacy and Property Rights – an emerging inflection point in the use of personal information?
Dear Colleagues, When I was young, the go-to source for important information was a reference book, like the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It kept its secrets about who I was, what I read, which sections got attention,… Read more »
BREAKING UP THE DEGREE STRANGLEHOLD | Disruption in Higher Ed – Credentials by skills learned not degrees
By now, education was supposed to have been thoroughly disrupted. While digital platforms are great for disseminating knowledge, they are terrible at demonstrating what knowledge you have to others. For that, a credential from a… Read more »
Advertising vs. ad-blocking – who knew it would become an arms race?
In the heady early days of the World Wide Web, before the dot-coms and even before most organizations realized that having a web page was not going to be optional, far-seeing pundits observed that information… Read more »
Hear Her Roar – Women in their Fifties Will Surprise You
For as long as I can remember, the professional career path in the developed world has accommodated a linear model. In one’s twenties, you graduate with some kind of undergraduate degree, take a job and/or… Read more »
One reason Tesla Lost $10 Billion in Market Capitalization in a Breathtakingly short period of time
Understanding investor psychology can be baffling and frustrating for the managers of publicly traded corporations. For instance, despite what many would regard as a stellar track record of proven performance, CEO Mark Fields was fired… Read more »
This month’s newsletter-All about what’s going on in the #grocery store
It’s ironic – Whole Foods did a great job of teaching all of us that natural and organic are desirable. And for about 30 years, that created a strong, high-margin position for them in the… Read more »