Calender

July 2010
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Silicon Valley may become Graphene Gulch

Some day you may see a workman replacing a location sign designating Silicon Valley. In its place the new sign could read Nanotube Valley, or maybe Graphene Gulch. That is improbable at best, but could be more accurate. Researchers are anticipating the day when it will be impossible to further miniaturize [...]

Death by a thousand cuts

For about a thousand years prior to the 20th century the Chinese used a form of execution known as death by a thousand cuts. That is an apt description of the consequences of the business as usual practices of many companies facing today’s challenges.For example, many executives function as though they were still in an era [...]

Innovate or miss the recovery

Innovation is garnering attention in the business media, but like crop storage in a grainery it has no value until somebody buys it. The companies are numerous that have come up with great ideas only to see somebody else turn them into business breakthroughs. Equally numerous are companies that are best described as arid innovation deserts. [...]

Clues to future corporate success

The first imperative is to deliberately, consciously wean the organization from excessive control, the methods most executives learned and practice in their profession. The late Peter Drucker explained, “Because the modern organization consists of knowledge specialists, it has to be an organization of equals, of colleagues and associates. No knowledge ranks higher than another; each [...]

Accurate forecast for 2010

Forler Massnick

It is time for the annual rite of attempts to forecast what will happen in the new year. In his book Rethinking the Corporation, Forler Massnick quotes Winston Churchill’s complaint, “The future is one damn thing after another.” Peter Drucker put an academic spin on it, “”Forecasting is not a respectable human activity and [...]

CEO angst revealed

Chief Executive Magazine asked a cross-section of of CEOs to write about their outlook for the coming year. Editor J.P. Donlon said he was struck by their twin concerns about rising government spending and increasing taxes and regulations, as well as the effect both would have on what they regard as a fragile economic recovery.

Donlon observed, [...]

Exciting glimpse of the future

Futurist and scientist/inventor Ray Kurzweil welcomes the new year with predictions of how technology will change humanity by 2020. Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand are among [...]

Today’s certainties become tomorrow’s absurdities

In an age in which the average tenure of CEOs has shrunk to about five years, and theories about how to manage successfully through economic turmoil have the lifespan of a tsetse fly, it is interesting to reflect on the amazingly prophetic writings of Peter Drucker who died nearly four years ago at the age of [...]

Marketers grapple with Web 2.0

Tim Berners-Lee

Is Web 2.0 a distinctly different application of Internet technology or, as Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee described it a “piece of jargon”? This is a serious question for marketing executives grappling with issues about where to spend advertising and promotion dollars in puzzling economic times.Initially the Web was used as a way of publishing [...]

Time to go from THINK to RETHINK

Forler Massnick

For about 90 years the leaders of society have been implored to THINK, most notably by IBM which adopted it as a slogan. That’s not good enough for today’s tumultuous times, according to the author of a book on the subject. The imperative watchword today is RETHINK. It keeps showing up [...]