Innovation

Stay a step ahead of social media

July 7, 2014
Wary of the power of social media as an outlet for public criticism, savvy leaders are trying to pre-empt negative buzz through careful preparation.

Leaders as zeitgebers

June 18, 2014

The king of France unveiled a spectacular new machine in 1370. It was the first public clock in Paris, and the king saw its potential. He issued a decree that all clocks in the city were to be synchronized with this royal clock. He created what the Germans call a zeitgeber, or time giver for life. Not much has changed, in that external rhythms can dictate how we operate.

Where does innovation come from?

May 8, 2014
Peter Diamandis has built his entrepreneurial career around gathering creative people and letting them loose to chase lofty goals. The 51-year-old founded the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that runs competitions to identify the most ambitious ideas and technologies to help humanity.

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.”