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Fueling Innovation: How Microsoft Finally Got It Right

Leading Blog

Inside the company, morale was at an all-time low. Nadella championed numerous innovation programs, including allocating physical spaces for Microsoft employees to work with local entrepreneurs, creating accelerators to incubate new businesses, and hosting a global hackathon that became one of the largest innovation events in the world.

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How to Tell If a Company Is Good at Innovating or Just Good at PR

Harvard Business Review

There are a variety of legitimate reasons for companies to bolster their innovation capabilities, ranging from fighting against current and emerging competitors to raising morale and attracting younger employees. How do you plan to accelerate the path from idea to impact? There are companies that pursue innovation with rigor.

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The Two Questions to Ask Before You Innovate

Harvard Business Review

A meticulously constructed business plan showed how the venture could thoughtfully expand into six major cities in China. While it was very clear what the team planned to do, its members hadn''t verified their assumptions about why they were going to do it. Certainly, the end goal of many innovations is to generate financial returns.

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How to Manage an Insecure Employee

Harvard Business Review

Is it hurting morale? At the time, Anand was helping to build an incubator for Verizon and the employee — we’ll call him Peter — was a front-end Android developer who had been hired as a contract worker. ” The third project didn’t go as planned, though. He was improving.” The team was annoyed.