The Life’s Work of a Thought Leader - An Interview with C.K. Prahalad

Coimbatore Krishnarao (C.K.) Prahalad would have celebrated his 69th birthday on August 8, 2010. He was one of the most influential and original strategic and management thinkers of the last 50 years. He was also a friend to strategy+business and, most significantly, a friend and mentor to management thinkers and practitioners all around the world — particularly in India, where he was born and educated, and in the United States, where he lived for most of his career until he passed away from a sudden lung illness on April 16.

Click to read more ...

The Three Types of Innovation Failure That Are Intolerable - Scott Anthony - Harvard Business Review

I read with interest David Simms' recent post about the power of positive failure. I of course agree with the general perspective — given the probabilistic nature of innovation, failure isn't always a bad thing, and all things being equal, you'd support someone who has tried, failed, and learned over someone who has never tried. The interesting thing to me is that this isn't a particularly new perspective. Failure has long been a badge of honor in Silicon Valley; thought leaders like Henry Mitnzberg, Rita McGrath, and Tim Brown note how failure is an essential part of successful innovation. Yet, in most organizations a fear of failure persists.

Click to read more ...

Why Storytelling Worked For Us and Some Tips from Salesforce's Marc Benioff - BusinessWeek

The co-founder and CEO of the $1 billion company offers advice on how to shape and articulate your vision for your own brand Software-as-a-service pioneer and salesforce.com (CRM) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff credits storytelling as one of the primary reasons for his company's rapid success. "Communication is probably the most essential part of my job," Benioff told me in an recent interview about his new book, Behind the Cloud. The book describes how salesforce went from idea to $1 billion company in less than a decade. Whether you own a small business, run a large company, or have a great idea for The Next Big Thing, consider these seven tips from Benioff about how to shape and articulate your vision.

Click to read more ...

Leadership or Management - Where Does Your Bias Lie - Randy Komisar Interview | Fast Company

In the life of a company, every dog has its day. So says Randy Komisar, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has spent the last 25 years launching technology startups. Komisar is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where he specializes in working with technology entrepreneurs. "I'm not attracted to them because of the bottom line," he says. "I'm attracted to them to them because of the top line--they change they can make." His own pedigree: co-founder of Claris Corporation, CEO of LucasArts Entertainment, CEO of Crystal Dynamics, founding director of TiVo, senior counsel at Apple Computer, author of two books, and "virtual CEO" to an array of fledgling companies. In this Q&A, he warns of the classic mistakes of manager-wannabe-leaders, the perils of too many bullets and not enough Zen, and why CEOs are like dogs.

Click to read more ...

Imagining the Future of Leadership. The Soul of Leadership by Ángel Cabrera - Harvard Business Review

For years some of us warned against the perils of an economy driven exclusively by self-interest (made evident by the financial disaster of 2008) and vigorously argued for management, like other professional disciplines, to require its members to accept a code of conduct and make a public commitment to do no harm. We even went as far as to propose various versions of such a code of conduct, and now some of these codes have actually been adopted by MBA students (e.g. the MBA Oath started at Harvard), business schools (e.g. Thunderbird), and international associations (e.g. the Forum of Young Global Leaders). The Oath Project was established last year, as well, to propose a universal professional code of conduct for managers, the current draft of which has been endorsed by organizations such as the United Nations Global Compact, the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders, Net Impact, and the Aspen Institute.

Click to read more ...