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...
Downturn? Upturn! It might sound like the PBS version of how the top-floor management tries to bewitch what's left of the rest of the company into being happy about the latest restructuring. But it could also be a sound plan for a firm that would otherwise simply flounder under...
I was catching up on Sean Silverthorne's excellent blog and found this link to a post by Scott Berkun on Why Innovation is Overrated. Berkun makes a few reasonable points -- most people don't talk about 'innovation' in everyday conversation. Where it does get used, it's done...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Do we think better when we set aside time for it? Ellis Booker, a friend and former colleague, blogged in the affirmative, saying Take the time to let big ideas grow. In his post, he described an unexpected five-hour layover at LaGuardia...
With 60 percent of Americans now attending college, Richard Posner asks whether the number might go to 100 percent (don't snort; it wasn't even a century ago that most people didn't go to high school). At first, in his post on the boom in college education, he seems to think...
Should work make us happy? Hmm. I should say yes -- I write frequently about ideas suggesting workplace culture should be more encouraging and supportive than it often is. Most people spend the majority of their waking hours working, and work shouldn't be a depressing...
Who sets strategy at your firm? Is it someone's specific role, or everyone's? McKinsey assembled six chief strategy officers at large corporations and had them talk about what exactly they do. The first comment immediately noted that the "true chief strategist" is in fact...
Dan Roam has written a book about show-and-tell, and why it's all you need to solve pretty much any business problem. Don't be fooled -- it is not the business version of "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." His key point: visual thinking makes the complex...
Feel like you're running on an economic hamster wheel, powering an economy that benefits only a relative few? Jared Bernstein's "Crunch" is for you. So says reviewer Harry Hurt III in A Rock, A Hard Place and an Exit Strategy. Hurt walks through Bernstein's discussion...
Computers lack the vision thing. Humans, however, excel at vision -- computer vision pales versus how well we process images.. Can businesses use this incredible visual ability to systematically how they operate? That's Dan Roam's argument in "The Back of the Napkin" (see Bnet's...
Newspapers aren't famous for their knowledge of management. But Jill Geisler, the management guru at the Poynter Institute, a news industry think tank and training ground, has put together a not-bad list of management books. For improving as a manager: "Understanding and Changing...
Much of the press around President George W. Bush's most recent address on climate change has been dismissive though there were also interesting approaches like the Annotated climate speech on the New York Times Web site. McKinsey, however, used it as a call to action for business. It...
Wouldn't we all like to make business decisions that work as well as the world's richest man's? A friendly reader noted my recent post on Irrational Economics and flagged a Marc Andreessen's discussion of a speech by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's right-hand man. The speech is The...
Change This recently posted The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage. It's a semi-excerpt of Michael Stallard's book "Fired Up or Burned Out," reviewed on Big Think in October 2007 as The Importance of Connecting with Colleagues. It also has posts by Richard Florida and...
The third time may be more strike than charm for Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist and author of two high-profile books on globalization, has published a third, "Making Globalization Work." In a review entitled Gloomy About Globalization Robert Skidelsky, a British economist and author of a well-regarded biography...
I'm interested in how people come up with ideas. That's one reason why I reviewed Bernd Schmidt's book "Big Think" (see How To Build Bernd Schmitt's Trojan Horse). So I was eager to read The Road To Eureka! subscription required, a piece in Science News on...
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...
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