MEDIA

Earlier in a Food for Thought, I described the difference between Collaboration and Cooperation. Confusingly enough they both have the prefix “Co-” and the suffix “-tion”. I would like to dwell on this confusion adding 5 more “Co-tions” to get the whole picture on...

In another Food for Thought I have told you that a study of more than 600 companies reveal that innovative companies differentiate themselves from stagnating companies mainly on 2 things; The clearly dominating factor is risk-taking/uncertainty-handling ability and...

Professor Göran Ekvall from Lund University has created a questionnaire that was successfully and extensively tested in more than 600 companies. This was done in order to check what factors constitute the Creative Climate within a company and which of these factors...

In 1995 a large study was initiated by IRI in the US in order to see how large companies ensured that breakthrough innovation could happen at their companies. The companies studied were really big ones such as IBM, 3M, DuPont, Air products, Johnson & Johnson and...

During my whole business career at multi-national companies, I have watched the attempts to decrease the number of projects in order to let people focus on as few as possible – just as was addressed in an earlier Food for Thought (Multi-tasking is a myth). It is de...

One of the major findings in mankind’s history is realizing the value of working together. Without it we would have starved to death about 100 000 years ago because a single man going hunting is very inefficient (I know – I am a hunter). We have also seen a very...

In large corporations we have learned that we need to work with both Exploratory and Exploiting Ways of Working. To have this tension or bifunctionality is also called to be ambidextrous. A blogger, Tim Castelle (in Blogging Innovation), has brought up the theme of...

I can’t help it, but to me failing sounds so negative. And I believe you agree with me. Nobody wants to fail. Even if we have slogans like “Fail early and cheap in order to succeed sooner” we have a hurdle to overcome in accepting the word “failure” as something...

Vårt samhälle har alltid befunnit sig i ständig förändring – det är bara hastigheten som har varierat. Och nu är den definitivt både hög och ökande. För att som ledare då lyckas förbereda och styra sin organisation mot framtiden kan följande tio tankar vara till god...

A couple of years ago, I (Bengt Järrehult) was interviewed by a consultant as part of a preparation for an internal conference. When I mentioned the word “cascading” he laughed. I asked why and he said “you’re the 4th person I am interviewing, and you have all...