1. Richard Branson: Bluster Machine Finally, a much-needed take-down of Richard Branson, who is usually the beneficiary of fawning, celebratory profiles that paint him as the hero-entrepreneur. In this review essay of Tom Bower’s biography of the Virgin CEO , David Runciman parses business success from flimflam: What holds all this scheming and posturing together […] Read More »
Stan McChrystal’s Playbook Former General Stan McChrystal focuses not on war stories but how an organization facing extraordinary pressures can promote collaboration among different team members. Newsweek offers an inside look at how McChrystal’s new consulting business works with large corporate clients: The McChrystal Group is selling…a blueprint of how they used to hunt Al […] Read More »
1. The Gates of Rage Military historian Max Boot offers this masterful review of the memoir of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So good and incisive it makes reading the book unnecessary. Although Boot offers a favorable and respectful assessment, he also cleverly reveals how Gates falls victim to one of the grand Washington […] Read More »
What is the New Approach to Activist Investors? Engagement by directors and executives to avoid costly boardroom battles, says The Wall Street Journal in this noteworthy piece, citing ISS data that reveals activist shareholders in 2013 won or settled for a board seat in 66% of all proxy fights, a 22% jump from 2012. Watch […] Read More »
More than a GPS: UPS Will Use Big Data to Save Fuel and Customize Deliveries UPS previously made headlines when it updated its route-planning processes to save fuel by avoiding left turns and peak hours. Today, it pushes the boundaries of network planning and optimization by incorporating tribal qualitative data into its models. According to […] Read More »
In this issue of the G100 Network Notebook we talk about the future of marketing with Twitter, why deregulation moves so slowly, how Edward Snowden damaged free trade & more. Can Engineers Be Managers? Google initially thought it could be a company without management. That has changed. Harvard Business Review offers an in-depth look at […] Read More »
1. Killing Me QWERTY Who killed QWERTY? With Blackberry barely hanging on, the physical QWERTY keyboard may never again appear on a cell phone. Tech writer Sean Hollister, a QWERTY bitter-ender, discovers that the decline of the keyboard may be the result of the decline of writing itself: The real reason is not design, […] Read More »
1. Wikipedia’s Getting Worse An unflinching takedown of Wikipedia by the MIT Technology Review . According to the article, Wikipedia not only suffers from unwieldy growth and a lack of capable editors, but also a “crushing bureaucracy” of a management system that creates “an abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers” from participating and helping the […] Read More »
How PBS Reinvented Itself from a Legacy Brand to a Digital Leader by Rewarding Failure In order to continuously innovate, businesses must applaud experimentation, even when it fails. This HBR piece highlights how this very notion transformed PBS. In 2007, PBS faced stalled growth and a weak product pipeline. Moreover, a “deeply engrained culture […] Read More »
The G100 August Network Notebook is a monthly memo of news and noteworthy reading for G100 Network members from Daniel Casse, G100 President. In this issue we talk about the hype over China’s slowdown, conscious capitalism, the state of work in America, the bureaucracy of terrorism, the purchase of the Washington Post, the sharing economy, […] Read More »