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The Comparing Trap

Harvard Business Review

In an adjacent office was a colleague who had written something like 12 books and was an internationally recognized scholar in the area of organizational innovation. Robert Merton was 46 when he won the award. Merton had the office on the other side of my office. He had a beautiful summer house near Cape Cod.

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Make Serendipity Work for You

Harvard Business Review

Merton and Elinor Barber.). So how might serendipity help us refine our understanding of innovation? Innovation is as much about looking at the past as it is about anticipating the future. Adrian Moorhouse is an Olympic Gold Medalist and Managing Director of Lane4, a global performance development consultancy.

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What an Economist Brings to a Business Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Walker’s innovation was to bind travelers to pay the prices they bid if the airlines and hoteliers on Priceline accepted the offers. Only the one I assert in my book Trillion Dollar Economists , that business managers may want to pay a bit more attention to the scribbling of academic economists. What’s the larger point to be made here?

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The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable

Harvard Business Review

In slightly more formal terms, Id suggest that they were able to take on, at least in tiny part, five of Robert Merton and Zvi Bodies six standard functions of a financial system: settling payments, providing information, setting incentives, pooling resources, and transferring resources.

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Three Times You Have to Speak Up

Harvard Business Review

I was thinking about that story by Thomas Merton during a recent board meeting. Minority viewpoints have been proven to aid the quality of decision making in juries, by teams, and for the purpose of innovation. Nilofer Merchant is a corporate advisor and speaker on innovation methods. But it's a skill worth pursuing.

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