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How Separate Should a Corporate Spin-Off Be?

Harvard Business Review

The traditional advice, from Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive innovations and Michael Tushman’s on organizational ambidexterity , is to set up the new activity as a separate unit, reporting to a manager at the corporate headquarters who can sponsor the new activity and help to integrate it with the rest of the company.

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Prototype Your Product, Protect Your Brand

Harvard Business Review

If you’re in automotive, you might look at other highly regulated industries, like healthcare and finance, which manage to experiment considerably despite stringent regulatory environments. They have been able to release Google Glass to the public before it’s ready for mass market use. Look across adjacent industries.

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Why Is Capital Afraid of Cities?

Harvard Business Review

And it's easier to sell to a monolithic mass market than to the diverse and dynamic collection of markets that we call a city. Tim Ferguson is the Founder, Chair, and Managing Partner of Next Street , a merchant bank for the urban enterprise. They're not mean-spirited. They just tend to do what they know.

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Does Your Company Come Across as Too Male?

Harvard Business Review

Every manager, male or female, saw the difference very fast, without any preaching on my part. He had no idea that the ad they’d just run to launch their latest mass-market device was so completely male-oriented. Some were very strategically aimed at women, others carefully crafted for men. So far, so good.

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When to Make a Promise to Your Boss (and When Not To)

Harvard Business Review

And because batteries are the single most expensive component in electric vehicles, that would be a big step toward his dream of a mass-market Tesla car. Then managers are going to take actions to boost earnings at the expense of long-run intangible value." Communication Managing yourself'

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Why Social Marketing Is So Hard

Harvard Business Review

Of course, the notion of a passive consumer, and a mass market was overly simplistic; consumers were never as passive as companies like to think.). Try applying the marketing funnel to your love life and see how it goes. There is not a "thing" to manage. Is a business built on volunteers manageable?

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Making Room for Reflection Is a Strategic Imperative

Harvard Business Review

For example, if youre just here to sell sugar-water, then "innovating" slightly new flavors of soda every few months, and finding novel markets to "sell" it in (read: competencies in product innovation and mass marketing) is probably good enough.