Listen to What Innovators Don't Talk About - Michael Schrage - Harvard Business Review

While working away on my laptop at a hotel breakfast, I couldn't help but overhear the four gentlemen poring over an iPad two tables way. Their intense discussion revolved around rolling out their high-tech prototypes in a medical care complex. Since I've written about prototypes and prototyping, I couldn't help but eavesdrop. Forgive me. The foursome represented a mix of medical care complex personnel and what was clearly an entrepreneurial innovator with a potentially high-impact idea. I'll skip the technical details, but this was clearly a sophisticated group who were both smart and ambitious. The prototypes were their gateways to success. Their debates included whether it made more sense to

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Marco Tempest: A Beautiful Commentary on Creative Practice | Video on TED.com

Using sleight-of-hand techniques and charming storytelling, illusionist Marco Tempest brings a jaunty stick figure to life onstage at TEDGlobal. A beautiful commentary on creative practice!

Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves? | Video on TED.com

MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly -- the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It's a big concept at early stages; Tibbits shows us three in-the-lab projects that hint at what a self-assembling future might look like.

Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences | Video on TED.com

Every new invention changes the world -- in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.

The Death—and Reinvention—of Management - Stephen Denning

I am currently working on an article that synthesizes the thinking in a whole host of recent management books that propose the reinvention of management, including: Reinventing Management by Julian Birkinshaw, Reorganize for Resilience by Ranjay Gulati, The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, Peak by Chip Conley, Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar, Drive by Dan Pink, The Design of Business by Roger Martin, The Dragonfly Effect by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, Open Leadership by Charlene Li, Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee, Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn, Buy-In and A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter, as well as my own book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management. While doing full justice to none of the books individually, I have taken a shot in the article at drawing out the common themes

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