Seven Tools for Turning Your Ideas Into Reality
Nathan FurrDecember 7, 2020
By Nathan Furr From finding the right analogy to tapping into FOMO, learn how to sell your ideas to potential supporters. Innovation is built on great ideas, usually about solving a customer need. Successful innovation, the sort that makes fortunes and sometimes change lives, is also built on financial and other kinds of support […]
“Too Elevated”: Raf Simons’s Troubled Stint at Calvin Klein
Frédéric GodartDecember 7, 2020
By Frédéric Godart A short-lived partnership between the sprawling American brand and the celebrated Belgian designer highlights the importance of fit in all its forms. As Calvin Klein’s first chief creative officer with sweeping oversight of the iconic American label, Raf Simons seemed to be making all the right moves. After arriving in New York […]
Food Security in a Pandemic: Lessons From India’s Lockdown
Wesley Wu-Yi KooNovember 30, 2020
By Wesley Wu-Yi Koo Portable food ration cards allow migrant populations to shelter in place, but implementation across state borders faces hurdles. When India announced its nation-wide lockdown in March 2020, migrant workers, among the country’s poorest citizens, had a particularly difficult time adhering to lockdown measures. With just a few days’ worth of savings […]
Leadership in Wicked Times
Natalia KarelaiaNovember 30, 2020
By Natalia Karelaia We face extraordinary problems calling for new leadership approaches. This extraordinary year has brought to the fore an unprecedented number of wicked problems – like Covid-19 or systemic racism. Global warming, developing over decades, arguably is the biggest one. Unlike tame problems which have known solutions, wicked problems generate a fountain of […]
Illogical Truths: The Paradoxes of Silicon Valley
Gopi RanganNovember 23, 2020
By Gopi Rangan The Valley’s most valuable product is the contrarian thinking that fuels its innovation culture. World-famous companies that have never turned a profit. A sprawling homeless epidemic cheek by jowl with some of the wealthiest zip codes in the world. Techies who are more likely to bond at Burning Man than […]
How to Build a C-Suite in Less Than Two Years
Jason DavisNovember 23, 2020
By Jason Davis Indonesian state-owned giant Pertamina had a problem: Its top leaders were all retiring at once. The solution? A new kind of leadership accelerator. In 2017, Indonesian state-owned giant Pertamina had two ambitious strategic objectives: Transition from oil and gas to a more diverse portfolio including renewables, and entrench itself deeper in the […]
Covid Cost-Cutting May Backfire in the Long Run
Oliver BinzNovember 16, 2020
By Oliver Binz Macroeconomic uncertainty makes firms more profitable in the short-term, but the bill comes due later. The Covid crisis has left the world’s economy blanketed in uncertainty. The media provide daily reminders that businesses are suffering and that unemployment is at historic highs. If past crises are any indicator, such economic uncertainty triggers swift initial […]
Scorched-Earth Strategic Thinking for Covid Times
Benjamin KesslerNovember 16, 2020
By Benjamin Kessler “Disrupt yourself first” is so five years ago. The new motto is “Burn your company to the ground then rebuild it.” Covid-19 has rapidly bent, if not broken, virtually all certainties about business – from the reliability of global supply chains, to the necessity for co-workers to inhabit the same physical space, […]
Transforming a Supply Chain Into a Social Enterprise
Amitava ChattopadhyayNovember 9, 2020
By Amitava Chattopadhyay Creating sustainability initiatives that can scale requires innovative balancing of social impact and profit seeking. For conventional, profit-seeking companies, moving into social impact carries huge contradictions. An ad hoc, small-scale initiative is an inexpensive way to do a bit of good and receive a nice warm glow in the process. But any […]
How to Appease Your Customers After Your Algorithm Rejects Them
Klaus WertenbrochNovember 9, 2020
By Klaus Wertenbroch No one likes to hear “computer says no”. But there may be more ways to be transparent about algorithm-driven rejections than you think. From a customer perspective, the only thing more frustrating than being denied a product or service is when that denial comes without a satisfactory explanation. As humans, our ability […]