Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work.
Product Development: 9 Steps for Creative Problem Solving [INFOGRAPHIC] Ronald Brown is a successful startup CEO with an extensive background in technology and consumer marketing. His new book, Anticipate. The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success is available via iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Creativity is the main prerequisite for innovation. However, our culture emphasizes critical thinking to the near exclusion of creative thinking (although it was the key to success in the Information Age).
Today's business is dominated by global complexity and commoditization. What constitutes creative thinking? In business, the process of generating and commercializing a good idea has been honed by creative industries for more than a hundred years. To Create Long-term Shareholder Value, Start with Employees - Kenneth W. Freeman. By Kenneth W. Freeman | 12:38 PM October 12, 2011 This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The CEO’s Role in Fixing the System. When I first became head of MetPath in 1995, a troubled Corning subsidiary that eventually became Quest Diagnostics, I dropped in on what was one of the largest clinical testing laboratories in the U.S. As I walked the halls, I found that almost no one would look me in the eye.
Something was clearly wrong. When I tried to get to the bottom of it, HR not only couldn’t tell me the voluntary attrition rate, they couldn’t even give me an employee headcount. The attrition rate turned out to be 45%. As Raymond Gilmartin writes, people work not just for money but also for meaning in their lives. That would require, as Dominic Barton observes, balancing financial metrics with measures that track the ability to forge internal alignment.
Why employee satisfaction and not customer satisfaction? Eventually, the voluntary attrition rate fell to approximately 10%. Four Strategy Gurus to Avoid - Scott Anthony. By Scott Anthony | 3:29 PM October 12, 2011 About a year ago I miscalculated — badly — on the Microsoft Kinect. In terms of speed of adoption, only Apple’s iPad has rivaled the Kinect. Aside from some tough comments on my blog, the long-term repercussions were low. That’s pretty much what happens to a pundit who gets it wrong — nothing. Life is tougher for the strategist. A prescient call provides career rocket fuel, while the wrong one can be career limiting. The non-user. The projector. The freeze framer. The opiner. As an occasionally unhelpful pundit myself, I hope I’ve helped you dodge these dangerous characters — or at least put their opinions into perspective. The Web & Business Tools Startups Use Most [INFOGRAPHIC]
Putting the likes of the super-funded aside (Color, anyone?) , most early-stage startups operate on tight budgets and spend their dollars sparingly. A bevy of web services have made start-up costs all the more affordable, but now there's the conundrum of nearly too much choice. The folks at BestVendor surveyed 550 startup staffers — most in marketing and executive administration positions — on their favorite tools for email, accounting, web analytics, CRM, productivity, design, storage, payment processing, operations and so forth.
Their answers, in aggregate, speak to the growing trend in startups moving toward predominately cloud-based operations. The most popular selections also highlight the rising stars (Dropbox) and impressive veterans (Paypal and Salesforce) in the business-to-business services sector. So what's hot among startups these days? Check out the infographic below for even more insight on the web and business services that today's startups are selecting en masse.