Imagination as a Journey of Survival and Discovery
On April 18 I participated in a TEDx conference at my local community library in Westport, CT. TEDx programs were developed to help independent organizations create their own TED-like events in the...
View ArticleEmbracing Disruptive Change - Why Is it So Difficult?
A few weeks ago I participated in a lunch discussion in New York with a group of around 20 people from a wide range of ages and professions. The theme of the lunch was The Future of Work, but given...
View ArticleReflections on Ten Years of Blogging
The Internet era was born around 20 years ago, when Netscape went public in August of 1995 and caught the world by storm with its highly successful IPO. For many people, myself included, the Netscape...
View ArticleGame-Changing Basic Research: Benefits and Challenges
In April, MIT released The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit, - a report on both the long term benefits of basic research and the impact...
View ArticleThe Datafication of Business and Society
I first encountered the term datafication in The Rise of Big Data: How It’s Changing the Way We Think About the World, by Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Their 2013 Foreign Affairs...
View ArticleOpen Letter on the Digital Economy
A few days ago I received an e-mail from MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson inviting me to consider supporting an Open Letter on the Digital Economy that a small group had recently drafted. As he...
View ArticleThe Future of Financial Services
In 2010, the BBC and the British Museum collaborated in a project called A History of the World, based on one hundred objects from the collection of the British Museum, around which you can tell the...
View ArticleMan, Machine, and Work
The June, 2015 issue of the Harvard Business Review includes a spotlight on Man and Machine: Knowledge Work in the Age of the Algorithm. Another example that, as a recent article observed, “Artificial...
View Article“Flexible Security”: A Sensible Social Policy for our Digital Age
A few years ago I participated in an MIT roundtable that explored where future jobs will likely come from, given our increasingly powerful, inexpensive and smart technologies. Despite the presence of...
View ArticleThe Economic Potential of The Internet of Things
Like many technological advances, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been long in coming. Ubiquitous or Pervasive Computing dates back to the 1990s, when neither the necessary low-cost devices nor...
View ArticleThe Continuing Evolution of the On-Demand Economy
The past few years have seen the rise of what’s been variously referred to as the on-demand, collaborative, sharing, or peer-to-peer economy. Regardless of what we call it, this trend has captured the...
View ArticleBecoming a 21st Century Digital Tinkerer
I like to tell people that the key to being and/or sounding smart is to hang out with smart people. And, one of the names that would quickly comes to mind if asked to recommend who to hang out with is...
View ArticleCould the End of Moore’s Law Be Near? If so, What’s Next?
I recently read The Next Wave: A Conversation with John Markoff in Edge.org. Markoff has been a science and technology writer at the NY Times since 1988, as well as author and co-author of several...
View ArticleIs a Backlash Brewing Against Silicon Valley’s Perceived Insularity?
“Empire of the geeks… and what could wreck it” was the featured cover story of The Economist’s July 25 issue. “Silicon Valley should be celebrated. But its insularity risks a backlash,” reads the tag...
View ArticleTechnology and the Future of Media
Most everyone will agree that advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are radically transforming the business landscape. But, how are these transformations playing out industry by...
View ArticleThe Digital Evolution Index
Last year, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University published Digital Planet: Readying for the Rise of the e-Consumer. The report, - based on a research study by the Fletcher...
View ArticleReflections on Linux and Mainframes
A year ago, McKinsey Quarterly published a special edition, Management: The next 50 year, to commemorate its 50th anniversary. To illustrate how different the world was 50 years ago, its lead article...
View ArticleRealizing the Potential of the Digital Economy
A few weeks ago I attended the 12th annual Brookings Blum Roundtable on Global Poverty. Organized by the Brookings Institution, the Blum Roundtable brings together policy and technical experts from...
View ArticleCapitalism and Social Issues in the 21st Century
A recent NY Times article, The Sunny Side of Greed by Op-Ed columnist Frank Bruni, argues that corporations may well now be among the strongest socially progressive forces in the country. In issue...
View ArticleThe Evolution of Design Thinking
Design Thinking is the featured topic in the September issue of the Harvard Business Review with four articles on the subject. “It’s no longer just for products. Executives are using this approach to...
View ArticleIntervention Design: Overcoming Stiff Resistance to a New, Disruptive Innovation
The September issue of the Harvard Business Review features a spotlight on The Evolution of Design Thinking. With four articles on the subject, HBR’s overriding message is that design is no longer...
View ArticleThe Importance of Empathy in Our Services-Centric, People-Oriented Economy
A few days ago I read an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review, - Empathy Is Still Lacking in the Leaders Who Need It Most, - by Ernest Wilson, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications...
View ArticleThe Future of Jobs: Lessons from History
How will the job market evolve in our 21st century digital economy? What can we learn from history that might help us make such predictions? While there’s no guarantee that historical patterns will...
View ArticleBridging the World’s Knowledge Divide: Technology + Competition, Skills and...
A few months ago I attended the 12th annual Brookings Blum Roundtable on Global Poverty, a meeting that brought together around 50-60 policy and technical experts from government, academia, business,...
View ArticleDesign Thinking and the Workplace Experience
Design has long played a major role in product innovation. But in the last few years, a shift has been underway bringing design to the very core of the business. “The Evolution of Design Thinking:...
View ArticleTechnological Unemployment and the Future of Work
Few topics are as important, - and as challenging to anticipate, - than the future of work given our justifiable fears of rising technological unemployment. How are job markets likely to evolve in our...
View ArticleTwo-Speed IT Architectures
I recently read an interesting McKinsey article, Organizing for digital acceleration: Making a two-speed IT operating model work. The article argues that born digital Internet companies, - e.g.,...
View ArticleWhy Blockchains Could Transform How the Economy Works
The October 31 issue of The Economist featured the blockchain in its cover: “The Trust Machine: How the technology behind Bitcoin could change the world.” Its two articles on the subject explain what...
View ArticleThe Growing Value of Social Skills
I recently read a very interesting paper, The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market, by Harvard professor David Deming. Deming’s paper shows that over the past several decades, labor...
View ArticleThe Continuing Evolution of Cloud Computing
I’ve been closely following cloud computing for a number of years, having posted my first cloud blog in March of 2008. A few months later I gave a presentation at a cloud-based conference. The...
View ArticleDisruptive Innovation Revisited
Disruptive innovation was first introduced by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in a 1995 Harvard Business Review (HBR) paper co-written with Joseph Bower. The concept was further...
View ArticleThe Rise of the T-Shaped Organization
The concept of T-shaped skills was first introduced over 20 years ago, but its importance, - to both individuals and organizations, - has continued to rise. A growing number of articles have been...
View ArticleTrust and the On-Demand Economy
The intrinsic structure of companies has long been a subject of study, most famously by Ronald Coase, the eminent British economist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in economics. In 1937, Coase...
View ArticleLearning to Apply Data Science to Business Problems
This past semester I was involved in an interesting course at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, - Analytics Labs (A-Lab). A-Lab’s objective is to teach students how to use data sets and analytics to...
View ArticleWhy People and Companies Die While Cities Keep Growing
The Winter issue of strategy+business includes a very interesting article on theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, - The Fortune 500 Teller. Dr. West is Distinguished Professor and Past President of...
View ArticleThe Blockchain and Open Innovation
Transformational innovations don’t always play out as originally envisioned. Once in the marketplace, they seem to acquire a life of their own. Lest we forget, the Internet started out as a DARPA...
View ArticleThe (Uneven) Digitization of the US Economy
Digital technologies are all around us, - increasingly ubiquitous and commoditized. But, are they a major source of competitive differentiation? Are they still a strategic value to business? Can...
View ArticleCorporate Survival: Lessons from Biology
Having lived through IBM’s near-death experience in the early 1990s, respect for the forces of the marketplace is edged deep in my psyche. It’s frankly sobering how many once powerful IT companies are...
View ArticleLeadership in a Changing World
What are the critical competencies needed to lead in our fast-changing business environment? This question was the focus of a study jointly conducted by the professional services firm Heidrick &...
View ArticleThe Rise of the Platform Economy
What do we mean by platform? I particularly like this definition by MIT Professor Michael Cusumano: “A platform or complement strategy differs from a product strategy in that it requires an external...
View Article
