What’s your growth strategy for 2020? Not every company can “be like Uber.” Bigger companies are more complex, which makes it more challenging to innovate. But not impossible. Big can be beautiful, says Gary Pisano, renowned Harvard Business School professor and the foremost authority on growth and innovation strategies for large firms and startups. Organizational progress…
The upheaval brought on by the pandemic is requiring many businesses and industries to pivot in response to rapidly changing market behaviors and consumer demands. Successfully changing direction in this kind of environment demands an entrepreneurial mindset, and Harvard Business School Professor Rory McDonald’s recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article drives that point home. A leading disruptive innovation expert, McDonald advises business…
Ideas – and the actions they trigger – have the power to change the world. It’s a mantra that propels organizations and individuals alike to innovate, push boundaries, and stimulate change and progress. Earlier this year, we shared that several of our clients were nominated for 2019 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards for their contributions to the…
Get ready to broaden your perspective, leaders. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, one of the world’s leading business thinkers and change-makers and recent recipient of the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award, believes the greatest future breakthroughs – the ones that will tackle the most complex, messy and recalcitrant social and environmental problems of our time – will come from…
A divided America agrees on one thing: corruption is rampant. But what we’re fighting here in the U.S. pales in comparison to the everyday exploitation of people in developing nations. In Paraguay, for example, the poor pay more than 12 percent of their income in bribes. That number is even higher in other still-emerging countries. An…
Can large companies successfully innovate? The popular narrative is the bigger firms become, the less nimble and dynamic they are. Small startups are the disruptors, while big companies are doomed to being static and inflexible. But according to Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School, this is a myth: large businesses can be just as innovative as startups….
Is your business successfully innovating to succeed in frontier markets? How are robots and wearables poised to transform health care? Do you have a strategy for living a happy life? These important questions are the subjects of five new TED Talks by disruptive innovation expert Efosa Ojomo, AI scientists Ayanna Howard, Rosalind Picard and Arnav Kapur, and leadership expert Karen Dillon….
Neither poverty nor prosperity are permanent conditions for societies; poor countries have risen from hardship to wealth within decades. But, by and large, we lack an understanding of how that transformation takes place. In a recent, critically acclaimed book, “The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty” (HarperBusiness, January 2019), authors Clayton Christensen, Efosa…
Innovation may seem like an overused “buzzword,” but research indicates it’s yet to lose its luster. The need for leading companies and economies to constantly reinvent themselves through new products, services and business models is an eternal demand of the marketplace. Stern Speakers’ roster features many of the leading innovation experts of all time. Here…
Many of our speakers are also acclaimed authors, and their latest books are starting and shaping conversations across every industry. From corporate innovation to the rise of artificial intelligence, here are five subjects to consider for your business needs. MASTERING “NEW POWER” IN A TRANSFORMED WORLD Nearly a year after it was first published, Jeremy Heimans’…
A new book by Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon is encouraging innovation and transforming the way the business world, governments, and NGOs think about global poverty – and the mutually beneficial ways they can tackle it together. In “The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty” (HarperBusiness, January 2019), the authors use numerous case studies to…
What are the biggest obstacles to driving your company’s transformation? Too often, leaders think of the barriers purely in terms of technical or strategic issues. But Nathan Furr, INSEAD professor and world-renowned innovation expert, argues that the real problem has more to do with basic aspects of human psychology – fear, habit and lack of imagination….
What is the biggest obstacle to large companies innovating and disrupting their industries? It may be perception. In an era where entrepreneurs are romanticized, we have become conditioned to believe that innovation begins and ends with small startups. Gary Pisano, the Harry E. Figgie Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a renowned authority…
Imagine you are in a high-level strategy meeting, and your team is attempting to arrive at a solution to an important problem. What is your instinctive course of action? The natural response of somebody who, understandably, does not want to appear unprepared, ill-informed or indecisive is to deliberate internally before speaking, and then deliver a…
Today’s executives face more pressure than ever before to deliver results while navigating a brand through the treacherous waters of financial and reputational risk. In a recent article for Harvard Business Review, legendary management expert Michael Porter and dean of the Harvard Business School Nitin Nohria analyzed how leading CEOs organize and spend their time. The authors concluded that while business…
Automation may solve the immediate problems of reducing costs and completing routine tasks; but when leaders take such a narrow view of it they fail to raise the big questions required to solve deeper business challenges. Hal Gregersen’s just-published MIT Sloan Management Review article, “Digital Transformation Opens New Questions — and New Problems to Solve”…
Much of modern American society is designed around the car, and the trend toward greater density and urbanization requires new ways of thinking about transportation, traffic patterns and parking space. The challenge? Life in densely-populated areas does not always include a personal vehicle. It’s in this gap – between existing product options and people’s needs…
By Brian Sherry June 20, 2018 Elon Musk recently made an admission that isn’t entirely in keeping with our tech-crazy times: “Humans are underrated.” Musk was speaking of the problems he experienced at his Tesla electric car factory after becoming overly reliant on artificial intelligence (AI) rather than human workers. In theory, AI boosts productivity and profit margins…
