Innovation

At Citigroup, creativity is a global game

March 13, 2014
In late 2011, Susan Andrews came up with a bold campaign to spur innovation across Citigroup, a global financial firm. As head of innovation for the company’s Citi Ventures unit, Andrews decided to use social media to turn 263,000 em­­ployees in 97 countries into innovators.

4 stages of scaling your organization

March 7, 2014
Bring your enterprise to scale in 4 stages.

Young McDonnell had a farm

February 28, 2014

After college, Stephen McDonnell worked as a financial analyst at Ford, got a master’s in organizational behavior from Harvard and began to understand small businesses. He decided he wanted to change the way America eats meat …

Rise above rival’s petty moves

February 26, 2014
Walt Disney’s optimism inoculated him from much of the scheming and betrayal that he faced as a young entrepreneur. When others tried to muscle him out of business, he sought creative solutions.

Fight off ‘feature creep’ to win fans

February 18, 2014
Innovation usually starts with the seed of a simple idea. The challenge is to nurture that seed and let it grow into a product or service—without over­­complicating its initial simplicity.

‘Idea man’ Nikola Tesla

February 17, 2014
Known as “the Wizard” for his showmanship, inventor Nikola Tesla, one of America’s first celebrity scientists at the turn of the 20th century, relied on rigorous thinking as well as imagination to perfect his inventions.

Facebook embraces ‘The Hacker Way’

February 12, 2014
During Facebook’s meteoric rise from startup to global giant, founder Mark Zuckerberg sought to preserve the company’s innovative culture. He achieved this by embracing what he calls “The Hacker Way.”

Billion-dollar baby

February 7, 2014

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and boss of his other startup, Square, lets anybody accept credit card payments through a little square swiper that attaches to a smartphone. It now processes $15 billion in transactions a year, up from $5 billion in April 2012.

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.