Megaprojects are large, technically complex, multi-year, billion-dollar (or more) engineering and financial ventures that somehow overcome challenges, turbulence, risk and resistance to eventually meet the needs for which they are built. To better understand the success factors of megaprojects, it is more useful to think of them as games of innovation, rather than the linear, […]
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Is sarcasm in the workplace as destructive as usually assumed? While sarcasm — in which people express one thing by saying the exact opposite — is rampant in organizations, most leadership and communication books urge people to avoid sarcastic remarks, which are considered a negative form of communication. However, a team of researchers argue that […]
Crowdsourcing and social media channels have largely replaced the private channels between a lone individual and an organization with a public debate in which external contributors not only submit suggestions but also vote for and comment on suggestions made by others. In the best cases, these interactions evolve into a vibrant initiative, granting the host […]
How can new product development (NPD) teams best generate ideas and develop them into viable concepts? The ‘obvious’ answer — through interaction and working together — is not necessarily the right or best one. While some studies suggest group debate and group brainstorming offer significant benefits — for example, the ability to combine and integrate […]
Read More… from When Suspending Group Debate Enables Innovation
In the 1940s, psychologist Jean Piaget suggested that children use their hands-on experiences of the world around them to build and develop their knowledge. This theory went on to shape the modern approach to learning, moving it away from lecturing to passive audiences to actively engaging participants. Similar is the science behind a method known […]
Read More… from How LEGO® Helps Strategic Thinking and Idea Generation
Can the loss of an integrative and humanistic approach to management be to blame for the recent economic crisis? According to the authors of this paper, meaningful and holistic management can help address the major management challenges that managers confront in today’s social and economic crisis. They refer to a 2010 IESE symposium, ‘Facing the […]
Scenario planning (SP) and early warning scanning (EWS) are considered important to ‘managerial cognition’. They help leaders understand how the future might unfold and they alert top management to new developments and ‘issues’ – typically conceived as opportunities and threats. They help leaders understand how to reconfigure resources to match or create market change – […]
Read More… from Scenarios Planning + Early Warning Scanning = Strategic Advantage
From the Atari arcade games made popular in the 1970s-80s, to Angry Birds on iPhones across the world, video games have grown significantly in popularity and sophistication over the past few decades. This year sees the 65th birthday of the first patented video game, the ‘Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device’. Most of today’s workers have […]
Rather than develop strategies for coping with future challenges, managers often blame market turbulence or unexpected events when a crisis occurs. This “corporate déjà vu” takes place in many organizations. How can companies avoid the blame game and instead manage better in hostile environments? Could the solution lie in genetic codes found in nature? Hostile […]
Read More… from Leveraging DNA to Survive in Hostile Business Environments
What is ‘shared leadership’? How is it fostered and developed, and what insight can be taken from musicians about this phenomena? This Idea looks at the performance practices of musicians and the leadership challenges that arise in this field to explain why a single responsible leader within a hierarchical system can lead to problems within […]
Read More… from Ensemble Leadership: Lessons from the Orchestra Pit
