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Thought Experiment: What if Facebook, Skype and PayPal Merged?
Many people don't know that Bostonian William Crapo (Billy) Durant founded General Motors, and if you ever go to the old General Motors...
John Sviokla
Oct 3, 2022
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Convenience is No Longer a Differentiator
Blame Robert Wodruff. In 1923 he became president of the Coca Cola company at the age of 33, four years after his father Ernest bought...
John Sviokla
Oct 1, 2022
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Is Your Industry in Danger of Being Disrupted?
There is much talk about innovation -- and there are many approaches to creating new things, from the famous "open innovation" ideas of...
John Sviokla
Sep 27, 2022
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The CIO: The duck billed platypus of the C-suite
This post is co-authored with Chris Curran Information technology is the only part of the business which is both a line and a staff...
John Sviokla
Sep 24, 2022
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Vannevar Bush: I forgot he predicted Google and Wikipedia!
Did you ever have the experience of rereading something that you read a long time ago and say to yourself, "Wow -- this is so much better...
John Sviokla
Sep 23, 2022
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Diamonds in the Rough: Driven by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
There are many books that I have read over the years that had a profound influence on me, and are almost unknown. I don't know exactly...
John Sviokla
Sep 23, 2022
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Starbucks Crowdsources Two Obvious Apps That Every Retailer Should Have!
Starbucks has announced that they are fielding two applications, in test, that help users find their stores, explore the menu and...
John Sviokla
Sep 22, 2022
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The Netflix Prize: Designing a market for ideas... (Also posted at HBR)
There are a couple of key lessons every business can glean from the Netflix Prize. The first is that if you have a data driven problem it...
John Sviokla
Sep 21, 2022
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3rd Wave Capitalism: Radical business innovation begins anew
Last week, on Thursday night September 16, 2010, I had the good fortune of speaking to the Society for Information Management's (SIM's)...
John Sviokla
Sep 20, 2022
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Simplicity is Really Complicated with Paul D'Alessandro (Also posted at HBR)
Intuit just bought Mint.com for $170,000,000. Mint is a simple, web and phone based tool with a great design interface that helps people...
John Sviokla
Sep 18, 2022
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Sometimes It's Just Genius
Well, the more I stare at this poster by Milton Glazer, created to announce his own work, the more I think of the phrase: the eternal...
John Sviokla
Sep 17, 2022
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Will Knowledge Work Ever Escape the Grip of Frederick Taylor?
I think the most underrated thinker of the 20th century may be Frederick Taylor. Ironically, Taylor's influence on people's day to day...
John Sviokla
Sep 16, 2022
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Google's FastFlip: Good for us! Good for media?
Google's new fastflip technology which has launched with three dozen publishers -- including Slate, Cosmopolitan and the New York Times...
John Sviokla
Sep 15, 2022
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The "New" Control Revolution: Or why the current analytics trend is not a fad...
One of my favorite business books of all times is The Control Revolution by James Beniger. It has been some time since I read it, but as...
John Sviokla
Sep 14, 2022
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Thoughts on 9/11: How can we design resiliency?
I am enough of a utilitarian that when I think of tragedy -- like the sorrowful events of eight years ago -- I always ask: Did we learn...
John Sviokla
Sep 11, 2022
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Is “The Gig” The Right Way to Design Creative Knowledge Work?
Yesterday, my colleague Caroline Calkins and I were on the phone with Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic, and also helped...
John Sviokla
Sep 10, 2022
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Creative Work Unlocked by Crowdfunding: A disruptive innovation
The other day I received a downright inspirational email from my friends at IndieGoGo, a site dedicated to the collaborative funding of...
John Sviokla
Sep 10, 2022
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Designing Interaction 2.0: Microsoft Natal Reinvents “The Screen”, Google Wave Morphs “Context”
My friend, and Diamond Fellow, Dan Bricklin wrote a wonderful essay on July 7, 2009 called "New Modes of Interaction: Some implications...
John Sviokla
Sep 9, 2022
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Designing Promotions in the Internet Age: Groupon’s Five Key Lessons for All Companies
There is an interesting experiment happening on the web - where Groupon.com is putting out one deal a day, in sixteen cities across the...
John Sviokla
Sep 8, 2022
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Why the Internet Makes Me Closer to My Kids: Or how Jimmy Hendrix moved me toward the more utopian vision…
I think I'm an optimistic dystopian, because I have a much greater affinity for dystopian writers than utopian ones - but I believe we'll...
John Sviokla
Sep 4, 2022
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