Michael Fitzgerald writes about innovation and other big ideas in business for publications like the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc. and CIO. He’s worked as a writer or editor at Red Herring, ZDNet, TechTV and Computerworld, and has received numerous awards as a writer and editor. Most...
With recession looming, it must be time to talk about how to hire people. Sure, things are uncertain, but they're always uncertain in the modern economy. That's the theme of Peter Cappelli's "Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty." Cappelli, a professor...
In a move that's either completely self-aggrandizing or wildly enthusiastic, Tom Peters gives two thumbs up all by himself to Leadership the Hard Way, by Dov Frohman. Either way, it's obvious from his post, Believe It or Not: An Original Take on Leadership that he likes the book, which...
Just in time for the home stretch of summer, Joe Nocera of the New York Times a paper I sometimes write for has posted his list of the the best business books ever Nocera has been a top business writer for decades now -- for instance, his story...
Might the bailout of the week strategy in vogue in Washington be simply irrational behavior on an institutional level? I hinted at this in Peeling Away the Economic Onion. I ran across this Shankar Vedantam column in the Washington Post, Taking More Risks Because You Feel...
The Onion has a cunning bit of satire, Recession-Plagued Nation Demands A New Bubble To Invest In , that offers a welcome bit of relief from the oppressive sense of doom that pervades most financial news right now. A sample bit: ...
Slacker Manager has a weak post on telecommuting, 8 Tips on How to Work From Home: 28 Years of Experience, by David Zinger . It's really more like eight thoughts. Only two seem like tips to me -- the rest are observations or benefits based...
Resilience is one of the most important traits a successful human can have. It can also work for business brands, argue Booz Allen Hamilton consultants Nikhil Bahadur and John Jullens in strategy+business more or less a Booz house organ. In New Life for Tired Brands, they start with a mini-study...
Maggie Jackson's book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age," is getting real buzz. I got this subject line in my email yesterday: Are You Feeling Distracted? (My first thought: just about every minute of the day.) Are you feeling saturated...
In a fun and mind-turning essay, Michael T. Kanazawa argues People Don't Hate Change, They Hate How You're Trying To Change Them It starts out with a cold slap in the face: "According to a summary of over 40 research studies on change, the success rate of...
ChangeThis has an excerpt from "Chindia Rising:How China and India Will Benefit Your Business," by Jagdish N. Sheth. If the excerpt provides a model for the whole book, the writing is slightly jarring, like the name 'Chindia' itself. Many of the assertions seem overstated. Sheth argues for...
One of the most interesting emerging ideas in business today is tapping into user communities for innovative ideas. Open source software offers a prime example of this sort of citizen innovation (a phrase I may be stealing from someone, but if so, it's inadvertent). Software isn't the only...
Hello readers. A quick pointer to the post, "Help us Build a Better BNET," put up by the people who bring you the site. A number of you have sent me emails complaining about the registration process. This post gives you a great opportunity to be heard...
The ominous sounding "The Quandary of a Superpower As Others Race to Catch Up" yields a lovely, concise "compare and contrast" review of two books about America's future in Sunday's New York Times. Reviewer Stephen Kotkin summarizes and analyzes "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," by the...
The future of business will be dominated by freelancers who affiliate with each other on a temporary basis and rarely go into an office. Why should they? The network technology will be so advanced that the real world will be largely forgotten, thanks to virtual worlds built on top...
Perhaps because everyone knows there's no place like home, I was skeptical of Who's Your City? see The Future According to Richard Florida. Having now read it, I am impressed by author Richard Florida's ability to take massive amounts of...
When in trouble, change the model radically. That's the message for book publishers, a business badly in need of saving. The argument on how to reinvent the book publishing business is to have authors self-publish, use word of mouth to gain sales, and then whoever gets buzz will get publishing...
The business world seems like it's going green, at least according to what you see in the media. McKinsey has said that having a green strategy is now a competitive edge (if it's viable). Now Booz Allen's strategy+business magazine is saying that companies that aren't going green will find themselves...
The exact term George Soros uses is "superbubble," as he tells a skeptical Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal in an interview, Soros, the Man Who Cries Wolf, Now Is Warning of a "Superbubble". Bubblicious is a kind of gum favored by callow teenagers (I loved...
The Industrial Revolution was a bubble, and it's in the process of bursting. Smart business managers will get out before it does. That means figuring out how to take your business post-industrial, by making it green. So let's replace one bubble with the other, eh? ...
Is better analytics the key to business success? In his "The Halcyon Days of Analytics," Steve Finikiotis of management consultant Osprey Associates argues that firms should be using analytics more effectively. It's an intriguing post, but a little thin on specifics. To wit, this statement: ...
Michael Fitzgerald writes about innovation and other big ideas in business for publications like the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc. and CIO. He’s worked as a writer or editor at Red Herring, ZDNet, TechTV and Computerworld, and has received numerous awards as a writer and editor. Most...
