Big Empty Glass Buildings

May 4, 2008

Commercial real estate owners, pay attention to this telecommuting/coworking trend.
A building is not a very liquid asset. There it is; it isn't going anywhere. It's only valuable if someone wants it.
Right now, most Americans have two spaces to spend their time in: their home and their office. When they're in one place, the other place [...]

Blind Sided by Your Values

May 3, 2008

As I write, bits and pieces come together in interesting ways...
There's a group of people in business who live to tell others what to do. They rose to power when humans settled down because they were the essential catalyst needed to turn a group of seat-of-their-pants hunter/gathers into an agricultural workforce.
Today we call them [...]

Communication Across Borders

April 29, 2008

 
The Irish Times' weekly business magazine, Innovation (pp.48-50) finally published an interview that I did with them a few weeks ago.  I was talking with them about my book, The Innovation Acid Test and, interestingly, the conversation quickly moved beyond that to our (Butcher and Bandit) current book about the rapidly emerging ecology of innovation among independents [...]

Choose a Job, Choose a Life

April 29, 2008

The current issue of I.D. Magazine has their annual Design + Business review section.  In the piece, one particular article got my attention: Choose a Job, Choose a Life.  They asked a dozen designers 'what was the best business decision you've ever made'?  Some of the answers were strategic in nature, others more poetic.  The [...]

Where Does the Rubber Hit the Road?

April 25, 2008

  
I spent yesterday at The Creative Space in Bryan, Texas.  Don't know much about Bryan, but The Creative Space rocks!
Software development firm Downtwon Cartel was cranking out work for a Houston based client, and design/media oriented Always Creative was jamming to euro-club grooves in the office one over as I talked with Cody Marx Bailey [...]

Tweeting Your Strategy—Update

April 21, 2008

Last week, I lobbed a bit of a challenge to our corporate readers (all 3 of them) to see if they could articulate their corporate strategy in a tweet. This thought-stream was prompted by a recent Harvard Business Review article which suggests that many senior managers can't succinctly state (in 35 words or less) [...]

Untethered

April 19, 2008

Three years ago I hit the road hard and learned about urban nomadism first hand. The biggest surprise...? How natural it felt... The second biggest surprise...? How easy it was.
Tony Bacigalupo posted links to two great articles on nomadism and mobile workers from The Economist to our Google Group. (Tony, thanks!)

Labour [...]

Talent Is

April 15, 2008

What is talent? A simple question to be sure, but answers to this question vary widely.
For many (old school) managers, talent still refers to fresh crops of MBAs graduating from top B-schools, you know, the same schools that make Business Week's annual list every year.  But what, exactly, is it that makes these graduates talented?  
They are very [...]

Nomads and Power, Part III

April 13, 2008

Continued from Nomads and Power, Part II.
The Hunter-Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy
In a most prescient article, written 8 years ago at the end of web economy 1.0 ("The Hunter-Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy: The Anthropology of Today's Cyber-Foragers"), David Berreby outlines clearly what we now see unfolding in web economy 2.0. Published in the [...]

If You’re Sensory Deprived You’ll Get Your Work Done

April 12, 2008

I've been trying to figure out how the design style office-drab came about. You know what I'm talking about--white noise, indirect lighting, no plants, rows of beige cubicles... Well, I've finally figured it out.
The core assumption underlying this style of interior design is the belief that workers will do their assigned tasks if [...]