Business

Innovation is a skill, a teachable skill, just like management. If you focus on a handful of key principles, you can effectively drive innovation in any type of business.

Former President of Nintendo of America, led iconic console era

Innovative companies are not afraid of failure – they're willing to take risks, fail forward, learn from missteps, pivot, and keep going.

Former President of Nintendo of America, led iconic console era

Philanthropy is very much like business, there's not such a huge difference. In business you have a mission statement, in philanthropy you have a vision. I believe in philanthropy we want to do things that give back as much as we give, otherwise it doesn't have permanence.

Pioneering Software Engineer & Founder of Freelance Programmers Ltd

Remote work has turned the lights on in the room, it's allowing us to see the cracks and cobwebs, and we can never switch that light off again.

Harvard Business Review contributor & workplace dynamics expert

We're only just acknowledging the importance of those relationships. They're incredibly important because when they're positive, they're a source of joy, energy, productivity, and resilience. There's a lot of research that shows that when we have friends at work, we are more resilient, and we perform better.

Harvard Business Review contributor & workplace dynamics expert

I define disruption as being where the incumbent players and incumbents somehow deny what their customers are saying or want differently. A disruptor comes in, sees a problem more clearly, and in some cases has more freedom to attack the problem.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO

Social media has completely and seismically changed our industry in a way that is hard to express. Historically we would have largely been reliant on a few gatekeepers, but that has been completely flipped on its head with social media, in that anybody with a unique voice that is able to connect with an audience can be talent.

We see ourselves as the long term creative and strategic partners to our clients and that word – partner – is really important to us. We will put intellectual, human, financial capital around the ideas of our clients and make them happen. A manager is about somebody that has an opinion, who has the ability to take your dream from inside your head to a reality.

There is a certain kind of X factor that is really hard to define, but it is the thing that makes a person stand out when they walk into a room or makes you magnetically drawn to walk towards them at a party or a gathering. It is often about authenticity and being true to themselves, because I think most people are very good at reading what is and what is not authentic.

The tendency is to avoid the need for more options because anything that's unfamiliar, as human beings we tend to flee uncertainty. We naturally go towards what we already know because we know how to deal with something we have done before.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

Business problems are idea problems because like most other problems we face, they do not have one answer. The reality is, for any of the problems we face, there are a thousand possible answers.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

We believe innovation should be a continuous activity. It should be a capability that you are developing and attending to regularly. It requires a kind of fodder of new problems all the time in order to be refining and developing.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

Disruption is treated as an event, and it is a constant and that is the interesting sort of fallacy. As humans we want this state of consistency but if we are taking it as a hypothesis, we are constantly being disrupted, constantly changing and the groundwork we are standing on is shifting all the time.

The single best way to have a great idea is to produce lots of ideas. The number of new ideas your organization can produce is a metric for its ability to generate novel solutions to any given problem. Your ideaflow is the most crucial business metric that you've never considered.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

Taoism speaks to the interconnectedness of the universe, and how everything and everyone has an impact on everything and everyone. Governance must widen its' perspectives to think about the implications, and ramifications, of business in society.

Alibaba's vision statement includes a mention of how long it wants to last, and that is specifically 102 years. Jack Ma wanted Alibaba to be the only internet company that spanned three centuries.