Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Leaders and organizations are under more stress than ever to do two things simultaneously: deliver on today’s pressing commitments by troubleshooting and refining processes; and find and invest in innovation opportunities that will create tomorrow’s success. The problem is, this instinct crowds out longer term, innovative thinking.

Budgeting 9

Budgeting Innovation Disruptive Innovation Six Sigma 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 6, 2014

My fellow HBR blogger Bill Taylor recently made a pitch for all of us to stop using the word “innovation” in 2014. What can be done, in the spirit of Bill’s admonishment, is to stop getting tangled up in all of the variations, nuances, tools, techniques, models, frameworks, and paradigms of innovation. Second, demystify the process.

Innovation 8

Innovation Incubator Taylorism Taylor 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 10, 2012

Have you noticed that general managers are scarce these days? But in many large companies, the only true general manager is the CEO. Everyone else, whether in the C-suite or in the senior management ranks, runs a piece of a business or a support function. At one time general managers were at the center of the action.

Management 13

Management P&L Incubator Finance 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2011

Innovation, in word and deed, has been a golden calf of the business world for decades. Now the concept has taken on a second life in the social sector, where a tougher than tough economy has made "innovation" the theoretical one-size fits all answer for every challenge, with little discussion about the associated costs and challenges.

Innovation 15

Innovation Incubator Short-term Godin 15

The Horizons Tracker

MARCH 15, 2020

There’s no manager to select team members, much less to assign them the roles they’ll undertake. Who would be CEO? The founding team of a startup obviously has various differences to teams formed in other work contexts. While some accelerators play a match making role, in most startups, the team is largely self-selected.

Team 104

Team Entrepreneur COO CFO 104

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2011

This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The CEO's Role in Fixing the System. CEOs manage them, employees work for them, customers buy from them, suppliers sell to them, investors buy their shares, and governments regulate their activities. What Can CEOs Do? treating suppliers as partners).

CEO 11

CEO Incubator Supply Chain Entrepreneur 11

LDRLB

MAY 26, 2014

The most recent being Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation. Paul Nunes and I have known each other for many years, and we’ve both been writing about the subject of disruptive innovation from different vantage points and different angles. DAVID: Yeah. You call it this big bang disruption.

Early Adopters 60

Early Adopters Rogers Disruptive Innovation Innovation 60

Harvard Business Review

MAY 13, 2014

GE is an icon of management best practices. Under CEO Jack Welch in the 1980s and 1990s, they adopted operational efficiency approaches (“ Workout ,” “Six Sigma,” and “Lean”) that reinforced their success and that many companies emulated. Resource allocation: i ncubating a protected class of ideas.

Six Sigma 8

Six Sigma Incubator Payback Period Ries 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Increasing creativity and innovation is not only on the priority list for start-ups; it’s also a strategic goal for CEOs of small, medium, and large-sized companies. As companies grapple with long odds on innovation like these, they are also looking for ways to improve the likelihood of their intrapreneurial success.

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Entrepreneur Constraint 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Likewise, Nebia — a start-up water-efficient showerhead maker in San Francisco — recently scored investment money from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s family foundation. By contrast, the emergence of new cloud-enabled, incubator-supported manufacturing startups could widen the aperture.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Contract Manufacturing Incubator Venture Capitalist 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 22, 2014

Many of these entrepreneurial lessons have been codified in books, the new bibles for innovation — not just for entrepreneurs but also for managers looking to create new and innovative innovation businesses inside existing corporations. In advertising, creative teams are being displaced by open innovation platforms.

Company 8

Company Advertising Business Model Incubator 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

An impatient marketing or finance manager would, on the sly, secure some extra budget money and hire a contractor to build a little database that tracked mailing addresses or top-line financials. Slowly but surely, as the little database grew bigger and bigger, the manager would wedge the cost into her operating budget.

Supply Chain 15

Supply Chain CIO Budgeting Project 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 1, 2012

In the mid-90s as CEO of Medtronic, I was concerned about whether we could sustain the remarkable success in innovation that we had enjoyed during the previous 10 years. This process of "disruptive innovation" enabled new competitors to create entirely new product categories. Nevertheless, we steadfastly supported the venture.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Christensen Telecommunications Incubator 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2014

Similar fates often befall innovations within large companies. You must do that in the face of vast forces arrayed against innovation within an established organization, which include inertia, resistance to change, fear of failure, financial disincentives, and the tendency of people and organizations to favor what has worked in the past.

Cialdini 10

Cialdini Resistance Innovation Media 10

Harvard Business Review

JULY 14, 2017

And for society and democracy at large, the workplace might just be the one institution that incubates a more constructive way of bringing people together. And a growing number of CEOs and chairs are taking positions on political and social issues. Employees are able to internalize these values more deeply as a result.

Diversity 8

Diversity Politics Survey Incubator 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 25, 2016

Over the major innovation cycles, the capitalist system has been resilient enough to absorb the effects of the crashes caused by pure speculation and turn them to its advantage. Some prominent economists predict a new period of secular stagnation as the last great phase of innovation-fueled growth (as they see it) dries up.

Drucker 8

Drucker Long-term Short-term Christensen 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 11, 2017

As LCPs have proven their ability to transform the talent practices of the PE firm to the fund’s managing partners, they’re then tasked with doing the same for portfolio companies. A transformation requires more fundamental changes in the organization culture, management processes, and talent.

Due Diligence 8

Due Diligence Leadership Early Adopters Incubator 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 11, 2017

EDENS, of which the latter is CEO, has led the revitalization of the 45-acre Union Market district in Northeast Washington, DC. There’s also potential to improve existing jobs by providing lower-skill workers with tools and encouragement, thereby improving customer service, reducing turnover, and promoting innovation and engagement.

Real Estate 11

Real Estate Development Long-term Short-term 11

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

CEO Ginni Rometty is leading the company into new areas, betting big on its Watson software and cloud computing. The most successful innovative companies buy startups and other private companies to help transform themselves. It has started growing Watson Health through acquisitions and a new partner ecosystem.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Short-term ROI Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

My colleague Andy Hargadon noted this when he did an ethnography of the renowned innovation firm IDEO in the 1990s. When the company had 60 or 70 people working at its Palo Alto headquarters, founder and then CEO David Kelley (now Chairman) did a masterful job of orchestrating the “Monday morning,” a weekly 9:00 am gathering.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Brainstorming Proposal CEO 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 18, 2012

These are the qualities I believe made him the best CEO, so far, of the 21st century: Humility and openness. Palmisano warned against prioritizing shareholders or other constituents, calling this "a false choice," and explaining that "Long-term management is a serious challenge in a world driven by short-term thinking. Directness.

Globalization 15

Globalization Golden Parachute Short-term Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 22, 2016

Organizations that manage digital networks (we call them network orchestrators) are different from traditional product and service providers. Many big organizations even help incubate startups in their industry. Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, has decided that GE needs to navigate its own digital transformation.

Real Estate 8

Real Estate Business Model Incubator Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 29, 2015

It made a massive investment (more than $1 billion) to build a software “ Center of Excellence ” in San Ramon, California to manage the data explosion created by the increasing intelligence of its industrial machines. A design studio is geared for collaboration and innovation work with customers and partners.

Software 8

Software Six Sigma Insourcing P&L 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 27, 2015

Can you think of any business topic that’s been hotter for longer than innovation? In a McKinsey poll , 94% of the managers surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their company’s innovation performance. And yet when it comes to innovation, the gap between aspiration and accomplishment seems as big as ever.

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Engineering Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 17, 2015

Phil Gilbert , general manager of IBM Design: “In design thinking, you need to listen to the people doing the job, while in continuous delivery you don’t need to talk to users; you just monitor what they do on the web.” To the engineers, the design thinking process seemed like a return to the Waterfall method.

Productivity 8

Productivity Products Customer Intimacy Software 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 23, 2012

Heins, the new CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), has been plucked from the company's relatively obscure COO position to fill the giant shoes of two longtime co-CEOs as they depart at the behest of angry investors. Is it Apple's consumer appeal, or the declining influence of corporate IT managers?

Strategy 14

Strategy CEO Strategic Planning Consensus 14

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

The general point is right — a dollar of investment in incrementally improving the core is almost always going to earn a greater near-term return than a dollar invested in a growth business that might take years to incubate. If we just take our investment in innovation and redirect it to our core business, we’ll be much better off.”.

Incubator 9

Incubator Business Model Competitive Advantage Short-term 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2016

We met with leaders at private equity funds, venture capitalists, and incubators, including Andreessen Horowitz and Playground. These conversations highlighted some attitudes and values that seemed to go a long way toward explaining Silicon Valley’s innovation identity. But boldness by itself is a dime-store commodity.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Company Succession Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 7, 2015

Innovation tourism: it’s a thing. These well-intentioned professionals travel the world in pursuit of the secret sauce of innovation. If you ask the director of a government innovation agency how influential or effective they are, what answer do you expect, other than “ extremely ?” Kenneth Andersson.

Innovation 8

Innovation Planning Tourism Venture Capitalist 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 20, 2018

While there is no doubt an intent to strengthen India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, its state support is more limited and less sophisticated than China’s in addressing the voids that impede innovation and entrepreneurship. Third, the Chinese ecosystem intermediaries (e.g. through its Made in China policy).

Incubator 8

Incubator Company Policies B2C 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 29, 2018

Incubated at Y Combinator, the venture was aimed squarely at the most important, most reliable, most consistent mobility need that consumers have every day: getting to and from work. But as Barclay’s CEO Ashok Vaswani says, don’t let the mother ship kill the pirate ship. Sponsored by Accenture Strategy.

Business Model 8

Business Model Transportation ROI Metrics 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2013

As noted management expert Geoffrey Moore told me with respect to high-velocity competition, "I''m not sure you ever want to be in the public markets." The next few product launches were not nearly as successful and Ed Zander , a CEO who came in during the successful period, was unable to come up with any more hits.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Restructuring Competitive Advantage Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

Frequently cited as one of the world’s most vibrant innovation hubs, Israel boasts more startups per capita than any other country in the world. In the 1990s it subsidized venture capital, incubators, university R&D, and technology transfer programs. That’s the good news. Good relations with the U.S.,

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Marketing IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 20, 2017

The innovation alone is a herculean task, but imagine being that upstart pioneer trying to develop the technology, while at the same time going up against entrenched, powerful competitors with deep industry knowledge, assets, and channels who’ve been around for a hundred years or more. This is an incredible moment for innovation.

Innovation 9

Innovation Productivity Products Venture Capitalist 9

Rajesh Setty

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Ganguly, CEO of DimDim, suggested that we organized “virtual book readings” over their platform. Once the $1 million revenue milestone is crossed, entrepreneurs find it easier to find additional customers, manage working capital, and access funding, whether it is credit or equity. This is where numerous ventures fail.

Entrepreneur 54

Entrepreneur Stage-Gate Finance Incubator 54

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 24, 2018

” Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said that to TechCrunch in 2010 , but the line from then to now is the graph of our growing disenchantment with tech. Giving students a shorter pathway to their career through bootcamps, incubators, and accelerators seems to be a logical next step.

Incubator 8

Incubator Company Technology Attrition 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 31, 2014

Despite their resource advantages, incumbents are seldom the authors of game-changing innovation. It’s not that veteran CEOs discount the value of innovation; rather, they’ve inherited organizational structures and processes that are inherently toxic to break-out thinking and relentless experimentation.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Business Incubator Incubator Innovation 8