June « 2010 « ontheorganization.com

16opedimg-articleinline From Wes Davis in The New York Times:

FIFTY-SIX years ago today, a Bell System manager sent postcards to 16 of the most capable and promising young executives at the company. What was written on the postcards was surprising, especially coming from a corporate ladder-climber at a time when the nation was just beginning to lurch out of a recession: “Happy Bloom’s Day.”

It was a message to mark the annual celebration of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” the epic novel built around events unfolding on a single day — June 16, 1904 — in the life of the fictional Dubliner Leopold Bloom. But the postcard also served as a kind of diploma for the men who received it.

Two years earlier a number of Bell’s top executives, led by W. D. Gillen, then president of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, had begun to worry about the education of the managers rising through the company’s hierarchy. Many of these junior executives had technical backgrounds, gained at engineering schools or on the job, and quite a few had no college education at all. They were good at their jobs, but they would eventually rise to positions in which Gillen felt they would need broader views than their backgrounds had so far given them.

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From The Economist

Windy talk about innovation is mind-numbingly abundant. Unusually, however, the grandees taking part in a conference in Paris this week organized by the OECD received some pointed advice. The rich-country think-tank has unveiled a thoughtful new report on how governments can do better at spurring and measuring innovation.

The grandees were also unusually attentive. Many governments are facing not only slow economic growth but also big deficits and heavy debts. At the same time, problems such as global warming and rising prices for natural resources demand their attention. Innovation, the OECD argues, offers a way out. It is already the chief engine of productivity in the rich world, and thus holds out the tantalising prospect of sustaining economic growth on the cheap. It could also provide affordable fixes to the thorniest global problems, argues John Kao, the founder of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, which advocates the use of prizes and contests to encourage breakthroughs on social ills.

Monthly Archive for June, 2010

The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone

Growth on the Cheap: The OECD Tells Governments how to Unleash Business’s Creative Potential