Most Innovative Companies in the World March 23, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Methods & Strategies, Entrepreneuring , add a commentThe March 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine profiles their view of most innovative companies in the world. It’s an eye-opening and interesting read, in particular that the companies named hail from all industries: automobile, high technology, airlines, retail, attire. I have listed the top 10 below, and I like the selection of Google and Nike, but don’t get P&G and WalMart and especially CurrentTV, which doesn’t really have a business plan or an audience. What do you think of this list?
#1 GOOGLE
Google is different, even on a list of distinctive companies. Here, more than a dozen describe what life is like at a place where no goal is too audacious, agility means more than power, and even cafeteria food represents an opportunity to change the world.
#2 APPLE
Careful readers of this magazine may be scratching their heads right now, in light of our recent cover story laying out the many challenges facing Apple. But the company has had, indisputably, one hell of a run. In the past year alone, three major new products — iPhone, iPod Touch, and Leopard OS — fueled triple-digit revenue growth. So while analysts forecast a more earthbound Apple in 2008, it deserves praise. And extra points for style.
#3 FACEBOOK
In 2007, the social-networking juggernaut had variously impressed with its ability to reinvent the wheel (opening its platform to outside developers) and drawn cyberpickets with its boneheaded missteps (trying to sell advertising by telegraphing its users’ every move). But after a year lived dangerously, Facebook is officially A-list, with a $15 billion valuation to boot, thanks to Microsoft’s $240 million investment. That’s nothing to throw (more…)
Bottled Water: Luxury vs Necessity? August 9, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , add a commentJust read an interesting Fast Company article while on vacation about the $15 billion bottled water industry. Check it out here. An exerpt:
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We–a generation raised on tap water and water fountains–drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we’re raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We’ve come to pay good money–two or three or four times the cost of gasoline–for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets–$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
When we buy a bottle of water, what we’re often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We’re buying the convenience–a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn’t the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we’re buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn’t just good, it’s positively virtuous.
Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We’re moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That’s a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 8 and 1/3 pounds a gallon. It’s so heavy you can’t fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water–you have to leave empty space.)
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water “varieties” from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it’s just a bottle of water–modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don’t need–when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation–it’s worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
How’s Your Dialogue? June 21, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Methods & Strategies, Leader Zone , add a comment“When it comes to improving performance, most organizations’ problems can be traced to their inability to think and talk together at critical moments.”– Paraphrased from William Isaacs’s book Dialogue, p.3
How do you talk to your staff? How do you conduct a meeting? Do you generally have good dialogue with your staff, first talking, then listening and then responding appropriately? Doug Sundheim of Fast Company tells us that “What passes as “communication” in most organizations is nothing more than people talking AT each other. Firing different opinions around a room with little structure to productively move any action forward. The dialogue is dysfunctional - meaning that it doesn’t produce a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. Eventually, when a decision must be made, it’s often the person who has spoken the loudest, longest, or with the most conviction that wins - whether it was the best idea or not.”
Good dialogue can be boiled down to 5 key elements - Listening, Respecting, Suspending, Voicing, and Inquiring. When dialogue breaks down, it’s usually because one or more of these are missing between the players involved.
Think of an unproductive conversation you’ve recently had. Consider the following questions to see where you might have been contributing to the problem.
1. Listening - Did I truly hear what the other person(s) said?
2. Respecting - Did I respect their opinions - even if I didn’t agree with them?
3. Suspending - Did I suspend my own opinions long enough to create an opening for new perspectives?
4. Voicing - Did I say what I truly thought and felt in a responsible way?
5. Inquiring - Did I probe for clarification when things weren’t clear?
6. When you find that one or more of these are missing, experiment with ways to bring them into the conversation.
