In a bid to increase the agility, quality, and speed of its product development process, companies are exploring with the use of external talent through crowdworking—a form of crowdsourcing in which work is offered through an open call to a crowd of potential participants who decide whether they want to submit their work for potential […]
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Many companies struggle to keep up with today’s supercharged, constantly evolving competitive markets, where customers needs, products and technologies change at ever-increasing speed. An in-depth study of the global telecom equipment leader Huawei Technologies by researchers from Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and China’s Zhejiang University’s School of Management offers a detailed lesson in what […]
Read More… from Super-Fluid Companies Keep Pace with Customer Needs
Developed in Japan, lean manufacturing introduced tools, processes and a mindset that eliminated waste and ensured the smooth flow of production without sacrificing quality. Kanban, a system that sounds the alert when a component in the production process is running low, and TPM, a proactive approach to equipment maintenance, are just two examples of lean […]
Read More… from Lean Manufacturing More Effective in Collectivist Cultures
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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Collaboration, either formal or discretionary (informally approaching others for guidance, information or assistance), is considered a virtue in today’s workplace. The advantages of collaboration are many, ranging from creativity and knowledge sharing, to teamwork, employee engagement and improved long-term results. However, an in-depth study of the interaction of physicians and health care personnel in one […]
Read More… from The Overlooked Productivity Costs of Collaboration
Learning from errors is central to human development. Learning in a business context occurs best when there is a mind-set of acceptance of human error, and furthermore the experimental trials that lead to successful innovation, new processes and better performance necessarily entail errors on the way. Due to the potential costs and negative, sometimes disastrous, […]
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Since 2005, the business units of California-based health care company Allergan has used cloud computing for a wide range of functions, from field sales effectiveness and travel and expense processing to HR performance planning and identity management. In 2010, the company adopted a ‘Cloud First’ policy, looking for cloud computing options before buying or building […]
Read More… from Six Imperatives for Companies to Embrace Cloud Computing
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 are organizational routines — routines in an organization that involve more than one individual — related to the effectiveness of an organizational design or redesign? Answering this question begins with understanding two important characteristics of organizational routines: purpose and business-unit specificity. Routines in an organization will have one of two purposes: an operational purpose, […]
Read More… from How to Design Organizational Structures by Understanding Organizational Routines
Many managers believe that quality is something that they as managers and decision-makers can control. Quality is internal and stable, unlike prices, which are subject to changing market conditions. Although prices are set internally, of course, these outside market pressures effectively, in the view of managers, take price decisions out of their hands (for example, […]
Read More… from Do Your Managers – Responses to Market Results Damage Profits?
