Five Core Skills Required to Be A Disruptive Innovator - Fast Company - Kaihan Krippendorff

At a McKinsey alumni webcast on creative strategy last week, the presenters mentioned a book due to be soon published by INSEAD professor Hal Gregersen, Jeffrey Dyer of Brigham Young University and Clayton Christensen of Harvard. The authors have spent six years interviewing thousands of innovative businesspeople and concluded there are five key traits innovators share (the Innovator's DNA as they call it). Whenever I hear numbers like "six years" and "thousands of interviews," I grow a bit skeptical. That's usually academic code for "If I think about every conversation I can remember..." But their conclusions suggest some interesting New Year's resolutions for those wishing to make 2011 a more innovative year.

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Six Social Media Trends for 2011 - David Armano - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

It was a banner year for social media growth and adoption. We witnessed Facebook overtake Google in most weekly site traffic, while some surveys reported nearly 95% of companies using LinkedIn to help in recruiting efforts. In my outlook for last year, I cited that mobile would become a lifeline to those looking for their social media fixes, and indeed the use of social media through mobile devices increased in the triple digits.

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The Big Question for 2011 - Will Gamification Change Social Media - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

It doesn't matter whether I'm talking to an investor, C-suiter, or an entrepreneur. Most of them — like most of the general public — answer the question, "What does social media mean to you?" with "It's stuff that helps you make 'friends, digitally!! Do you want to be my friend?" "Sure" I usually reply. And then I say: "But thinking of social tools that way is a little bit like using a positronic brain multiplier from the 25th century to tie your shoelaces faster. Here's a more powerful, resonant — and disruptive — way to think about social media.

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Leading Outside the Lines - How To Synthesise Metrics and Informal Communication - Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan, s + b

Integrating formal metrics and informal communication can lead to new levels of performance. Ed Carolan knows a lot about making soup. He also is a master at using performance objectives to motivate frontline workers. From early 2007 through 2009, Carolan was the general manager for StockPot, a business group within the Campbell Soup Company that makes fresh refrigerated soup for the food-service industry. (He has since moved on to become senior vice president and general manager for the snacks division of Pepperidge Farm, another Campbell Soup brand.)

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Wanted: The Next Great Management Idea - Management Innovation Exchange

Here’s a chance for the world’s MBA students to put their expensive education to work and maybe even make a few bucks in the process. The Management Innovation Exchange, an project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century, and HCL Technologies, a global IT services provider, are offering more than $50,000 in prizes for the best new game-changing management ideas. The HCL MBA M-Prize competition is open to all current graduate business school students and will honor “the best new idea for making organizations more adaptable, more innovative, more inspiring, and more socially accountable.”

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