Tag Archives: innovation

How to Think Like Steve Jobs

Last week, we published TEN STEPS AHEAD: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us in which veteran journalist Erik Calonius explores the phenomenal achievement of entrepreneurial visionaries.  He explains how legendary thinkers like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson have an uncanny ability to not just see, but to shape, where the world is heading.

Fortune.com just posted a great excerpt from the book about how these leaders make their ideas come to life.

For more stories like this, you can check out Erik Calonius’ new blog or follow him on Twitter.

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The Children’s Book MBA

Portfolio author Jonathan Fields has a great new blog post up on children’s books with powerful lessons for businesspeople…and more pretty pictures than your typical business school textbook. His picks include The Lorax, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Giving Tree.

My additions to the list:

Harold and the Purple Crayon: a powerful primer on innovation with limited resources.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: essentially a story of succession planning—who do you recruit to take over your successful confectionary business? Why not run your candidates through a guantlet of on-site performance tests under the guise of a factory tour?

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We have the technology!

The newest episode of the Penguin Business Beat is now live on the Penguin Video and Radio Network:

Do you feel like technology controls your life? Do you get anxious if you spend a day without checking your email or wander out of service range with your iPhone? On this episode of the Business Beat, Laura Clark and Courtney Young look at the role technology plays in business and our lives. Can we wield it to do our will? Or are we actually just slaves to technology? As Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly argues in his new book, What Technology Wants, technology has its own agenda for us, whether we like it or not. But, as he explains in an interview with Courtney, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh and a serial entrepreneur, explains how we can make use of one particular new technological development for business gain. Adrian Zackheim, publisher and president of Penguin’s business book imprint, Portfolio, discusses the role technology plays both in the content and the distribution of business books. Jack Covert of 800-CEO-READ shares one of the best books for understanding technological innovation,Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. And a friend from Penguin operations stops by to share a book he uses to keep his department running smoothly.

Books featured in this episode:
     

             

To listen, click here.

You can also download the show on iTunes or follow us on Facebook!

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The Recipe for Success

Why is Apple so innovative? Why did the Wright Brother achieve flight? Why was Martin Luther King, Jr. the leader of the Civil Rights movement? There are other computer companies. There were others trying to develop flying machines. And there were many other Civil Rights activists. Simon Sinek knows the answer and oddly enough it’s that they all started with WHY. Check out this great video of Simon sharing his discovery and insights at TED. The recipe for success is not money or the perfect marketing conditions. If you start with WHY it seems you can conquer any obstacle and achieve anything.

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Innovation in India

Interesting article in today’s New York Times about how, despite the popularity of outsourced jobs there, many in India worry that the country is still behind other large nations in innovation. As the Times says:

Even as the rest of the world has come to admire, envy and fear India’s outsourcing business and its technological prowess, many Indians are disappointed that the country has not quickly moved up to more ambitious and lucrative work from answering phones or writing software. Why, they worry, hasn’t India produced a Google or an Apple?

India’s advantage in the global marketplace seems to be its large population, and therefore its labor potential. But its risk-averse financial system along with a culture that looks down on unconventional career decisions, has kept it from catching up to the rest of the world in new ideas.

The New York Times: In India, Anxiety over the Slow Pace of Innovation

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