Pages tagged hbr:

How Do Innovators Think? - HBR Editors' Blog - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbreditors/2009/09/how_do_innovators_think.html

out being sustained by people who cared about experimentation and exploration. Sometimes these people were relatives, but sometimes they were neighbors, teachers or other influential adults. A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity. To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).
How Do Innovators Think? 5:21 PM Monday September 28, 2009 by Bronwyn Fryer Tags:Creativity, Innovation, Leadership What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Ebay's Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G's A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the "Innovators' DNA" works.This post is part of HarvardBusiness.org's Creativity at Work special package. Fryer: You conducted a six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five "discovery skills" that distinguish them. What are these skills? Dyer: The first skill is what we call "associating." It's a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. The second skill is questioning - an abilit
The Social Media Bubble - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_social_media_bubble.html
What are the wages of relationship inflation? Three cancers eating away at the vitality of today's web. First, attention isn't allocated efficiently; people discover less what they value than what everyone else likes, right this second. Second, people invest in low-quality content. Farmville ain't exactly Casablanca. Third, and most damaging, is the ongoing weakening of the Internet as a force for good. Not only is Farmville not Casablanca, it's not Kiva either. One of the seminal examples of the promise of social media, Kiva allocates micro-credit more meaningfully. By contrast, Farmville is largely socially useless. It doesn't make kids tangibly better off; it just makes advertisers better off.
The Social Media Bubble http://j.mp/apBH1F
From Social Media to Social Strategy - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/04/from_social_media_to_social_strategy.html
Today, the meaning is the message. The "message" of the Internet's social revolution is more meaningful work, economics, politics, society, and organization.
More useful (albeit heavily sprinkled with marketing buzz words and phrases) on the best way of using social media as part of an organisation.
12 Things Good Bosses Believe - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/12_things_that_good_bosses_bel.html
What makes a boss great? It's a question I've been researching for a while now. In June 2009, I offered some analysis in HBR on the subject, and more recently I've been hard at work on a book called Good Boss, Bad Boss (forthcoming in September from Business Plus).
Facebook's Culture Problem May Be Fatal - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/facebooks_culture_problem_may.html
"They just assumed Facebook would evolve as their lives shifted from adolescent to adult and their needs changed. Facebook's failure to recognize this culture change deeply threatens its future profits."
"Facebook's imbroglio over privacy reveals what may be a fatal business model..."
Privacy. Seemingly altruistic companies screwing over their users for monetization and business models
What lessons can we draw from the Facebook flameup? Lifecycle changes can trump generational change and cultural values perceived as crucial at the age of 13 can be very different at 20. A business founded on the values of a generation, such as Facebook, has to keep up with, and respect, evolving lives and needs.