Thought leaders across the web

Delegation is a necessary survival skill for senior executives. But when executives delegate their discovery-related innovation tasks, the odds of them finding the surprising insights that often spur transformative-growth businesses decrease dramatically. This thought crossed my mind as I participated in a review session for an interesting new growth business that a large company was [...]

“Summer” is a bit of an odd concept when you live 85 miles north of the Equator, and the weather seems to be pretty stable throughout the year. Yet, three sets of experiences over the past few months provided the kind of stimulation that led to at-the-beach-like reflections — and point to ways to accelerate [...]

Let me make one thing clear. I love entrepreneurs. I admire their creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance. I have stood in their shoes as we built out Innosight’s core business and explored new geographies and offerings. I have also funded many entrepreneurs through our company’s venture investment arm. I am writing today, however, to praise corporate [...]

Over the last couple of weeks in Singapore I’ve wandered the halls of the regional and global headquarters of three pretty big companies with more than $150 billion in combined revenues. I figured the calamitous economic news out of the United States and Europe coupled with riots in England would result in corporate cube dwellers [...]

The other day one of my colleagues had an interesting idea. He observed how we basically have two ways of engaging with clients. One is to form a consulting team that works with a client for several months. That hands-on guidance is valuable but too expensive for some companies. The other approach is a workshop [...]

We’re in the final phases of editing The Little Black Book of Innovation, and my editor had an interesting idea involving HBR blog readers. First, a bit of background. My intent in writing the book was to make innovation literature more accessible. In a perhaps too flippant moment I even termed the book a gateway [...]

“We never see any good ideas,” lamented a senior executive. “People bring us ideas. But they just don’t have any . . . magic.” At first, I found the comment surprising. I had just begun to get to know the company, and it seemed to me to be brimming with innovation energy, particularly among young [...]

I am on record of being “long” on innovation in Asia, and I continue to feel tremendous innovation energy in the region. I’ve seen fascinating developments inside both big companies and emerging startups. But observations during two recent meetings made me wonder about the degree to which Asia needs a “Woodstock moment” to realize its [...]

The other week, I was in Beijing facilitating a company offsite. The company had absolutely no operations in Beijing, and no plans to start operations there. It is a disciplined operator, so this wasn’t a junket either. So, what was the company doing in Beijing? It was smartly spending time at the periphery of its [...]

Remember how after Chemical Bank launched the first Automated Teller Machine in the 1960s, waves of bank branches shut down? And remember when banks went online, how waves of local bank branches shut down? Oh wait. In both cases the new technology ended up augmenting, rather than replacing existing channels. This isn’t unusual. Despite bold [...]