Practically everyone has a machine-to-machine Internet of Things story they like to tell. It might be refrigerators automatically reordering milk, cows that send texts to farmers when they’re in heat, or understanding the demand for ice cream in real-time. We are living in a networked economy. The traditional understanding of networks is based on the…
Having been in the technology industry for the last 25 years, I’ve felt the need to be constantly learning just to stay current. When I was a developer, it was programming languages: FORTRAN, Pascal, C, Smalltalk, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby – I could never quite keep up. Over the last few years, I’ve experienced…
As a way of encouraging my team to take more risks, I’ve been espousing the philosophy “Failure is the new black” and have been cataloging quotes on failure from famous people. But increased risk-taking doesn’t just come from pithy quotes, it helps to provide examples of people who failed… and thrived. Here are four such stories:…
Seven years ago (!) I wrote a blog titled Management by Marching Around which suggested that traditional command and control leadership no longer worked in business – or in the military. Instead, I believe in management by influence (suggesting direction) more than by control (enforcing rules). I also recommend management by exception (tell me about…
Companies want to deliver an incredible customer experience.They also want to turn a profit, increase market share, and engage their employees. If those goals don’t seem surprising, it’s because they shouldn’t be. Forrester’s latest Customer Experience Index report finds companies that outperform their peers in customer experience are likely to turn customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers…