There is a compelling scene in HBO’s quasi-fictional Western, Deadwood, which qualifies as an instant lesson in the essentials of talent management. The 1870s mining boom town of Deadwood, which is just emerging from Wild West state-of-nature conditions, has attracted the attention of the robber baron George Hearst. Al Swearengen, the [...]

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Since New York Times columnist/blogger Marci Alboher just praised my ‘whimsical and thoughtful’ drawings and my previous article was all text, I thought I’d better hurry up and invite NYT readers onboard with a whimsical-and-thoughtful. Here’s my attempt at a right-brained model of Enterprise 2.0 capability maturity:

If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!

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For real estate agents, it is location, location, location. For businesses, it is talent, talent, talent. Neither of Douglas McGregor’s classic pair, Theory X and Theory Y, works anymore, and neither does any clever combination thereof. Whether you are a free agent, or a manager in a larger company, your ability to understand [...]

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In the history of innovation, Xerox (where I work) has starred in three stories so far: Xerography, personal computing and production digital printing. The first created the modern workplace, the second destroyed and recreated it. The third, probably the least familiar to end-consumers, since it is an industrial technology, might end up topping the first [...]

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This article is an introduction to an idea — outsider innovation — whose time has come. I’ll present the idea, and along the way include short reviews of three fun books about innovation (Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko, Make us More Innovative by Jeffery Phillips, and Awake at the Wheel by Mitch Ditkoff) that belong [...]

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Most people think of only one notion relating work and life: the work-life balance notion. You and I of course, are smarter, and we know that the relationship has been evolving over time.  Here’s a picture of this evolution. I’ll leave it for you to figure out how to correlate this to generational attitudes and [...]

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Big and complex problems sometimes do require require big and complex solutions. This thought was hammered home for me powerfully last week by way of a triple-punch: a conference I was attending, a book I was reading, and the earthquake in China. The conference was the IRI Annual Meeting, where I was part of a [...]

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Tom Hayes‘ Jump Point, a recent addition to the emerging World 2.0 canon presents an argument that evokes a foggy sort of deja vu. If you’ve been keeping up with the literature, you’ll probably frown a bit and think, “wait, this is familiar, somebody’s said this before.” But as you process the argument, you’ll realize [...]

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Economics as a subject has never enjoyed healthier times — a universe of Freakonomics clones is appearing and the subject is galloping along in popularity as an undergraduate major. Yet, these are also the most worrisome times ever for the subject, because it is in danger of losing sight of the big mission — building [...]

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I have been reviewing a good many books that fall into the loose category of ‘World 2.0.’ Books that attempt to organize our understanding of the impact of Web 2.0 and social media. Structure the blooming, buzzing confusion, so to speak. So I thought I’d go meta and attempt to visualize this emerging canon. This [...]

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