Injecting new thinking into existing organizations, from within the organization itself, is difficult. Even when the need for "thinking different" is plain, entrenchment - of process, people, expectation - make diverging from set paths a chore. One entrepreneurial speaker is seeing an encouraging trend: Eric Ries, the driving force behind the "lean startup" movement, which…
Valuing “Institutional” Knowledge
It seems to me that institutional knowledge (IK) is like common sense. Much as there is rarely anything ‘common’ about common sense so is there rarely anything remotely ‘institutional’ about institutional knowledge. Most often, IK is the province of your more rabid ivory-tower, b-school types who use IK as an excuse to justify chairing more…
Back to the Future: Prodigy & Online Communities
In all the consumer sites I've worked with, we've consistently dealt - and re-dealt - with how best to manage and promote "the community," provide incentive to participate, reward the good, deëmphasize the unwanted. Prodigy's early effort to put their employees in charge of specific topics and give those employees the ability to "deputize" their…
The train home after the craah
The city's been beautiful all September. Today it was beautiful and sullen. It's not what happens when the market sets back but what comes after that gets people thinking. A lot's going on in response. An interesting time to be building a business - The market's not there to back you so you've got to…