Archive for the 'Newsletter' Category

By Schumpeter vie The Economist

Image by Brett Ryder

THE Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car, became a symbol before the first one rolled off the production line in 2009. The Tata group, India’s most revered conglomerate, hyped it as the embodiment of a revolution. Frugal innovation would put consumer products, of which a $2,000 car was merely a foretaste, within reach of ordinary Indians and Chinese. Asian engineers would reimagine Western products with all the unnecessary frills stripped out. The cost savings would be so huge that frugal ideas would conquer the world. The Nano would herald India’s arrival just as the Toyota once heralded Japan’s.

Alas, the miracle car was dogged with problems from the first. Protesting farmers forced Tata Motors to move production out of one Indian state and into another. Early sales failed to catch fire, but some of the cars did, literally. Rural customers showed little desire to shift from trucks to cars. The Nano’s failure to live up to the hype raises a bigger question. Is frugal innovation being oversold? Can Western companies relax?

Two new books—“Reverse Innovation” by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, and “Jugaad Innovation” by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja—suggest that the answer to both questions is No. Mr Govindarajan, of the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College, has advised General Electric on frugal innovation and co-written a path-breaking article on the subject with GE’s boss, Jeff Immelt. “Jugaad Innovation” is the most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject (jugaad is a Hindi word meaning a clever improvisation). The books show that frugal innovation is flourishing across the emerging world, despite the gurus’ failure to agree on a term to describe it. They also argue convincingly that it will change rich countries, too. More…

By Stephen A. Miles and Nate Bennett via Bloomberg Businessweek

“Free Sean Payton!”

The T-shirts were available on the Internet just minutes after the National Football League announced the one-year suspension of the New Orleans Saints head coach over his role in the bounty system used to reward players for injuring opponents. Such an unprecedented ruling by the league creates a fascinating leadership dilemma for the Saints organization. Payton has been so successful as team leader that ownership has become unduly invested in him. Just as we have seen some corporate boards become too enamored of a flawed CEO—and as a result too tolerant of aberrant behavior—Saints owner Tom Benson is behaving as if he is too enamored with Payton. Holding the position for him is a mistake.

It is interesting to wonder if a high-performing team—and the Saints have indisputably been just that under Payton—can maintain the magic while its leader is performing a penance. Might the suspension motivate the players, creating a “win one for the Gipper” moment that lasts the entire season? The 2013 Super Bowl takes place in New Orleans, and Saints players and fans have already tweeted about how sweet it would be to see Commissioner Roger Goodell hand the Lombardi trophy to the Saints owner on the team’s home field.  More…

By Fredric Paul via ReadWrite Enterprise

Not to beat a dead horse, but there are a lot of people out there who are very, very upset at the idea of sharing their social media logins with employers or potential employers. I’m not talking about the ACLU, and a couple of senators asking the Justice Department to look into the matter. I’m talking about real people worried about being asked to give up their personal information and privacy. The only way you’re going to get their Facebook password is to pry it from their cold, dead hands.

At least that’s the impression I got from the 24 comments on my earlier post (When Your Boss DOES Have the Right to Your Facebook Password) as well as dozens more culled from lively discussions on a number of LinkedIn groups.

Admittedly, the comments on LInked in groups like SMB IT Connection and Publishing and Editing Professionals are most likely coming from a self-selected group of Web leaders and technology and content professionals. That’s who reads ReadWriteWeb, and that’s also who belongs to the LinkedIn groups where I posted my original story. I don’t disagree, but it’s ironic that the most sophisticated techies, the ones most involved in pursuing their business and personal lives online, are the most adamant that the two never, ever get mixed.  More…

By Natasha Singer via The New York Times

Many management coaches teach executives specific skills toward becoming better mentors, delegators or supervisors.

Not the minds at Minds at Work, in Cambridge, Mass. The company, founded by Robert Kegan, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Lisa Lahey, a development psychologist who also teaches at Harvard, guides executives through a step-by-step process of self-examination and gradual behavioral change.

The program is based on the idea that, like dieters with a weakness for doughnuts, many executives want to change but behave in ways that impede their progress. So, rather than teaching technical skills, Minds at Work gives managers structured exercises to help them pinpoint the ingrained habits and beliefs that are undermining their goals.

One manager who says she wants to be a better delegator, for example, may be taking over projects at work because deep down she fears that her staff isn’t up to the task, Dr. Lahey says. Another manager may also say he wants to delegate more, even as he hip-checks his staff off of projects lest they do a better job and outshine him. These kinds of self-protective habits make people resistant, or “immune,” to change, she says. More…

By Jonah Lehrer via The New Yorker

In the late nineteen-forties, Alex Osborn, a partner in the advertising agency B.B.D.O., decided to write a book in which he shared his creative secrets. At the time, B.B.D.O. was widely regarded as the most innovative firm on Madison Avenue. Born in 1888, Osborn had spent much of his career in Buffalo, where he started out working in newspapers, and his life at B.B.D.O. began when he teamed up with another young adman he’d met volunteering for the United War Work Campaign. By the forties, he was one of the industry’s grand old men, ready to pass on the lessons he’d learned. His book “Your Creative Power” was published in 1948. An amalgam of pop science and business anecdote, it became a surprise best-seller. Osborn promised that, by following his advice, the typical reader could double his creative output. Such a mental boost would spur career success—“To get your foot in the door, your imagination can be an open-sesame”—and also make the reader a much happier person. “The more you rub your creative lamp, the more alive you feel,” he wrote.

“Your Creative Power” was filled with tricks and strategies, such as always carrying a notebook, to be ready when inspiration struck. But Osborn’s most celebrated idea was the one discussed in Chapter 33, “How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas.” When a group works together, he wrote, the members should engage in a “brainstorm,” which means “using the brain to storm a creative problem—and doing so in commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective.” For Osborn, brainstorming was central to B.B.D.O.’s success. Osborn described, for instance, how the technique inspired a group of ten admen to come up with eighty-seven ideas for a new drugstore in ninety minutes, or nearly an idea per minute. The brainstorm had turned his employees into imagination machines.  More…