Can John Chen Save Blackberry? Blackberry has been widely written off as one of the great tech tragedies of the modern age. Yet CEO John Chen believes that the company still has a chance. This San Jose Mercury News story gives us a glimpse of how he has managed to recruit a top team: I […] Read More »
1. Singularity as a Religious Cult It is impossible to spend time in Silicon Valley without running into someone who sings the praises of Singularity University, the tech-focused, virtual institute led by futurist Ray Kurzweil. Now, a British reporter comes to town and discovers that its adherents, with their focus on “machine intelligence,” are essentially […] Read More »
Russia and a New World Order A thorough accounting of the Ukrainian crisis expects prolonged, far-reaching geopolitical implications from a new competition between Russia and the West. Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center – writing prior to the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 – said: Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia will be the battleground […] Read More »
1. Data Nerds 1, FIFA 0 It appears that no sporting event can avoid the data analytics/social media grinder. Google, as one might have predicted, has assembled a team of analysts and infographic specialists to interpret every minute of the World Cup. Their analysis puts the U.S. on top: The U.S. may struggle to keep […] Read More »
Speed of Service, Company Culture: What Businesses Can Learn from Chipotle’s High-Velocity Burrito Chipotle’s approach to faster and better customer service pays off: the chain recently increased hourly transactions during peak hours by 10 percent. Chipotle focuses on its “four pillars of great throughput.” From “linebackers,” who monitor the countertop, to the extra person between […] Read More »
Was Clay Christensen Wrong About Disruption? Clayton Christensen’s 1997 landmark study of disruptive markets, The Innovator’s Dilemma, continues to drive discussion about innovation and new competitors. But nearly twenty years later, are his conclusions about disruption still persuasive? Jill Lepore re-examines the book in the most recent New Yorker and concludes that he got the […] Read More »
1. Better Left Unread Did you miss the World Bank’s report on global purchasing parities? Didn’t link to the study on Latin American land reform? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Thanks to an astonishingly candid report by the Bank itself, we can now be sure that hardly anyone downloads the hundreds of reports they publish […] Read More »
Where eBay Beats Google This Wired report explains why eBay, not Google, will win the next frontier of computing: language translation. Their secret? eBay engineers use global transaction data, an objective tool Google doesn’t have. Because eBay’s massive user base is coming to eBay not for esoteric academic or technical conversations but the simple back-and-forth […] Read More »
Palmisano Post IBM Former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano tells companies to shift toward an integrated business model: one global supply chain for products, services, talent, capital, and ideas. Palmisano believes the days of managing region by region are fading. This is what he calls “the globally integrated enterprise,” which he described in a recent speech: […] Read More »
G100 Companies Exclusive: Borrowing Next Practices from Other Industries to Leapfrog the Innovation Process This winter, G100 Companies hosted a dinner to celebrate the work of Michael Dowling, Chief Executive Officer, and Kathleen Gallo, Chief Learning Officer, of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (LIJ). An early proponent of pay-per-performance contracts and transparent publishing of […] Read More »
