Innovation

No bosses? This CEO makes it work

January 3, 2014
Chris Rufer has brought innovation to an industry not accustomed to outside-the-box thinking: tomato processing. Rufer views the traditional relationship be­­tween supervisor and employee as “forced” and “artificial.”

Panera bets on ‘pay-what-you-can’

December 17, 2013
They may look just like any other of the 1,600 Panera locations, but five Panera Cares cafés don’t use price lists or cash registers. After three years, this pioneering effort—the first time a major U.S. corporation has put resources behind making pay-what-you-can work—is surviving.

Where no one has gone before

November 8, 2013
High school junior Jack Andraka was not satisfied at winning $100,000 in last year’s Intel science fair for developing a paper strip that might become the world’s best test for pancreatic cancer. With friends he’d made at the fair, the 16-year-old has set off on a new quest: the $10 million Tricorder X-Prize.

Where’s innovation coming from?

November 1, 2013
Businesses in the developing world traditionally have been obsessed with seniority, and ambitious young people have been equally obsessed with finding paths to corporate seniority. Not anymore.

Leadership Tips: Vol. 1013

October 17, 2013
Look ahead the Larry Page way … Deliver a real statement to your people … Have a career plan as strong as Campbell Soup’s CEO.

Persuade skeptics with ‘Imagine This’

August 13, 2013
In 1985, Steve Jobs launched a computer firm called NeXT. He set ambitious goals at NeXT to serve the higher education market, but that meant he needed to recruit a top-notch technical team to his new company. In his efforts to woo Steve Mayer, a video engineer who had co-founded Atari Corp., Jobs pulled out all the stops.

Quiet question sends loud message

July 31, 2013
Terry Jones, founder of Travelocity, once squandered $1 million of the company’s money on a dud project. He assumed his boss would scold him—or worse—for wasting precious funds. Instead, his boss asked, “Well, Terry, what did you learn?”

Leadership Tips: Vol. 713

July 9, 2013
Learn to take those first steps toward leadership alone … Take Derek Jeter’s advice on being bold … Provide nuance where it’s becoming desperately needed.

Innovate by eliminating ‘Bozone Layer’

June 19, 2013
Fostering a culture of innovation is easy if you run a small business with a handful of employees. But at larger organizations, midlevel managers may not en­­courage their support staff to innovate. The solution: Eliminate the “Bozone layer.”

Bell Labs innovator connected us all

June 5, 2013
Bell Labs was among the most innovative scientific organizations of the 20th century. The man at the helm was Mervin Kelly, a physicist who led the laboratory. Follow his lead for inventing the future.