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Status Quophiles and Quophobes

Mills Scofield

Ever know anyone who will explicitly say he/she doesn't think innovation is important? Status Quophobes are Innovators - they see the half empty glass as half full, waiting to be filled up! Status Quophobes are Innovators - they see the half empty glass as half full, waiting to be filled up! Do these sound familiar?

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Say “No” to Innovation-in-General

Harvard Business Review

For over an hour, the panel discussed all of the innovative projects they’d worked on — spanning projects from Google Fiber to ad bidding technologies at Facebook. Yes, all of the panelists were speaking broadly on innovative projects. But innovation is a word that means a wide variety of things to a wide variety of people.

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How Likely Is Your Industry to Be Disrupted? This 2×2 Matrix Will Tell You

Harvard Business Review

For the latter, we measured incumbents’ operational efficiency, commitment to innovation, and defenses against attack. Previously strong barriers to entry have perished; fixed assets such as car fleets, hotels, bank branches, and landline infrastructure have become weaknesses.

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Resolution 2011: Make Your Strategy Coherent

Harvard Business Review

Focus on capabilities rather than just fixed assets: Fixed assets, including brands, are more difficult to leverage across diverse businesses and tend to expire, become obsolete, or give way to related services. Define precisely how your way to play adds value for your chosen customers (e.g.,

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China’s Growth: A Brief History

Harvard Business Review

Some find evidence of a clear improvement of total factor productivity since market-oriented reforms began in 1979, estimating that the increase in TFP contributed about 40% to GDP growth, roughly the same as that contributed by fixed asset investment. There was also a slowdown in TFP after the mid 1990s. by the end of that period.

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Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage

Strategy Driven

These choices historically conferred advantage – first-mover, scale – but asset-based scale advantages have diminished in recent years, thanks to technology, cheap information, and outsourcing. Assets are important, but they are, increasingly, table stakes in most competitive industries; everyone in the game has them.