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The Case for Investing More in People

Harvard Business Review

Productivity in most developed economies has been anemic. Beyond wages, other forms of investment in human capital include education and training, improved healthcare, and other, less obvious investments, such as the time and space to explore new ideas and professional development opportunities.

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Capturing the Innovation Mindset at Bally Technologies

Harvard Business Review

It has a more rigorous organization structure that divides responsibilities between the innovation team and development team, and strengthens management around the opportunity pipeline. These teams have disciplined processes to get the technology to market, generally with a one- to two-year product horizon.

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How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures

Harvard Business Review

What’s more, the subsidiaries operated more or less autonomously, each with separate organizational cultures and norms. The Japanese employees, while already fluent with Japanese concepts such as kaizen (improvement) and omotenashi (hospitality), struggled to become proficient in English. It consists of five key actions.

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It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement

Harvard Business Review

Six Sigma , Kaizen , Lean , and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. Similarly, Japan's automobile industry has been plagued by a series of embarrassing quality problems and recalls, and has lost market share to companies from South Korea and even (gasp!) the United States.

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Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?

Harvard Business Review

The better we know and understand who customers want to become, the better we can invest and develop the innovations necessary to get them there. To see customers as the assets they really are, the strategic design and marketing question must shift from "What's the new value of the innovation?" Call it "customer kaizen.".

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Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?

Harvard Business Review

The better we know and understand who customers want to become, the better we can invest and develop the innovations necessary to get them there. To see customers as the assets they really are, the strategic design and marketing question must shift from "What's the new value of the innovation?" Call it "customer kaizen.".