I study the innovation process, both in modern companies and industries and through historic events, and bring that perspective to the challenge of achieving sustainability. I was recently asked to discuss my perspective on the interdisciplinary nature of UC Davis’s sustainability efforts, and here were my comments.
The cost of networks
Not all networks are created equal. And I’ll take this moment to point out this more challenging aspect of innovation in general, and sustainable innovation in particular, having just ran across yet one more glaring example. Everyone, myself included, talks about the critical role of networks in the innovation process. We rarely talk about how those same networks go bad.
A conversation on Dot Earth around talking about, versus building, new companies
I had a recent conversation, continuing across two posts, in Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog earlier this week. The first was on a cool new company, Ecovative Design, that came out of RPI’s Inventor’s Studio and an interview of Eben Bayer, the CEO and co-founder: “A Young Green Innovator Turning Fungi into Jobs Muses on the Path to Breakthroughs” with some of my comments towards the end. The second is a Your Dot, an additional comment I posted on “The Innovator’s Challenge: Moving From Idea Networks to Action Networks” to elaborate on the challenges of building networks that do things…
Reid Hoffman on social networks
Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn wrote a wonderful article on The real way to build a social network that is a must read for anyone who recognizes the value of networks for innovation.
Sustainability and corporate governance
How can companies make the right decisions—for their communities, for their people, and for the environment—when governance laws force a (relatively) narrow focus on maximizing shareholder value?
The (long-time) coming revolution in sustainability
A series of recent articles on fighting climate change have called for “breaking every rule in the free market playbook” (e.g., Another year goes by, Capitalism vs. the Climate). Do we really have to break the system, or can sustainable practices move from the fringe to business-as-usual?
The iEconomy
The NYT article on Apple and employment, How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work , offers valuable insights into the future of manufacturing. But there is a way out. The story sheds light on the huge manufacturing infrastructure—some 700,000 employees strong—that manufactures Apple products in Shenzhen, China, and around the world. This is the future of manufacturing; its not ours and will likely never be. Three aspects of this story deserve pointing out.
in•venn•tion of the day… on management’s attention
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The normal dysfunction of organizations
The more corporations grow in size, power, and political rights, the greater our need to understand them. The greater our need, particularly, to understand how they so easily go bad. The recent in-depth article by Peter Thamel and Mark Viera, on Penn State’s Board of Trustees’s Painful Decision to Fire Paterno explains as much about the dangers of normal dysfunction in organizations as it does about the crimes committed.
in•venn•tion of the day… on time, money, and innovation
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Andrew Hargadon 