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How IBM's Sam Palmisano Redefined the Global Corporation

Harvard Business Review

He was comfortable making smart bets to position IBM for decades-long growth, such as creating the Emerging Business Organization to incubate new businesses and shield them from P&L pressures. Palmisano believes the technology industry requires "a high-performance, in-your-face, speak-your-mind culture." Directness.

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Better Questions to Ask Your Data Scientists

Harvard Business Review

At The Data Incubator , we work with hundreds of companies looking to hire data scientists and data engineers or enroll their employees in our corporate training programs. Even seemingly harmless experiments may carry ethical or social implications with real financial consequences. Is the data clean and easy to analyze?

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Building a Software Start-Up Inside GE

Harvard Business Review

Though technology would have allowed for a significantly virtual enterprise, it was important to Ruh to have a physical building where people could actually be located together. “We hired a talent acquisition leader from the software industry, someone who really understood technology.

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Meet Your New R&D Team: Social Entrepreneurs

Harvard Business Review

Social entrepreneurs can serve as the "R&D function" for learning how to serve underdeveloped markets, according to Jim Koch, director of the Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University , which has supported more than 160 social enterprises over the last decade.

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Getting Buy-In for Innovation that Doesn’t Fade at the End of the Quarter

Harvard Business Review

For a business incubated by a large company using an annual funding cycle, you generally need a one-year mission that clearly articulates to direct reports and colleagues what you are aiming to do and what the result should be. Examples of constraints are regulatory, legal and ethical issues, or infrastructural or technological restrictions.