Breakthrough Ideas for 2007
Harvard Business Review presented 20 breakthrough ideas for 2007 (free). Here are my favorites.
1. The Accidental Influentials
Duncan J. Watts
In his best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
argues that “social epidemics” are driven in large part by the actions
of a tiny minority of special individuals. The idea seems intuitively
right—we think we see it happening all the time. Nevertheless, this
isn’t actually how ideas spread. It’s better to focus on getting enough
plain, ordinary people to sign on.
2. Entrepreneurial Japan
Yoshito Hori
Japan’s economic rebound is generally attributed to the turnaround
of corporate giants and to industry consolidation. But it is also
fueled by the emergence of new companies led by entrepreneurs in their
twenties and thirties. An entrepreneurial Japan—no longer an
oxymoron—may ultimately overshadow the much touted start-up cultures of
China and India.
5. The Leader from Hope
Harry Hutson and Barbara Perry
Most business leaders shy away from the word “hope.” Yet hope has
been shown to be the key ingredient of resilience in survivors of
traumas ranging from prison camps to natural disasters. So if you are
an executive trying to lead an organization through change, know that
hope can be a potent force in your favor. And it’s yours to give.
6. An Emerging Hotbed of User-Centered Innovation<
Eric von Hippel
Most countries, developing and developed alike, view innovation as
a vital input to their economic growth and spend varying portions of
their national budgets to support it in companies and research labs,
for the ultimate benefit of essentially passive consumers. Denmark is
taking a different tack: It’s making “user-centered innovation” a
national priority.
7. Living with Continuous Partial Attention
Linda Stone
“Continuous partial attention”—distinct from multitasking—is an
adaptive behavior that presumably allows us to keep pace with the
never-ending bandwidth technology offers. Now there are signs of a
backlash against the tyranny of tantalizing choices.
9. When to Sleep on It
Ap Dijksterhuis
Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need to
arrive at a difficult decision, but don’t try to analyze it. Instead,
go on holiday and let your unconscious mind digest the information for
a day or two. Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost
certainly going to be the best choice.
11. Innovation and Growth: Size Matters
Geoffrey B. West
Newfound general mathematical relationships between population
size, innovation, and wealth creation challenge the conventional wisdom
that smaller innovation functions are more inventive. They may explain
why few organizations today have matched the creativity of a giant like
Bell Labs in its heyday.
12. Conflicted Consumers
Karen Fraser
Your customer data indicate strong consumer satisfaction: Repeat
purchase levels are high, and many customers have been with you for
years. Good news, right? Well, appearances can be deceptive. Buried in
the data may be a “stealth” segment of apparently loyal customers whose
ethical concerns make them ready to bolt as soon as an alternative
emerges.
15. Act Globally, Think Locally
Yoko Ishikura
Companies are usually told to “think globally and act locally.” But
thanks to their own global information systems and the Internet,
knowledge from faraway places can be acquired relatively easily and
cheaply. This means that firms have to discover and quickly incorporate
good ideas from these diverse sources before their rivals do.
19. In Defense of “Ready, Fire, Aim”
Clay Shirky
The bulk of open source projects fail, and most of the remaining
successes are quite modest. Still, open systems are a profound threat
to many businesses, not only because they outsucceed commercial firms
but, more important, because they outfail them.
(Hat tip: Renee Blodgett)
