Gloria Steinem shares lesson in change management over historical time 322.0
I am too young to know of Gloria Steinem, leader of the women’s movement in America, who was in the spotlight as fiery women’s leader in the late 60s and 70s. Yet watching her on Charlie Rose last night as they reminisced about the women’s movement and talked about its future, she taught me an [...]
Appropriate Technology by Jim Ayala and HYBRID Empowers the Poor 292.0
Bringing appropriate technology and empowering the poor is Jim Ayala’s passion. He set up HYBRID Social Solutions as a “for profit” social enterprise. It is the pioneer social distribution company in the Philippines, to empower the poor by giving access to appropriate technology. The innovative concept of social distribution builds on an insightful view of [...]
SYNTHESiST Working on an Appreciative Theory of Development 286.0
After two years, SYNTHESiST has moved from just looking at innovation systems and change management at firm- and industry-level into a tentative development framework for emerging markets. Using this Post as main source, I have created a Page entitled An Appreciative Theory of Economic Change and Development under Working Papers on the Sidebar at right. [...]
Social Innovation Digs Deeply Into Markets and Hierarchies 276.0
It is good to be a blogger with just the modest goal of enriching the conversation than to be a PhD student who has to go through the logical labor of a formal review of literature. I can get away with cherry-picking great conclusions from different books, journals and traditions without being locked into formal [...]
Change Management by Co-evolution of Institutions 273.0
Change management is part of my teaching focus and consulting practice but it clearly just applies at the firm level. At the sector or national innovation systems level, technical change with co-evolution of institutions and industry structure for catch-up by emerging markets seems more apt for SYNTHESiST. Thus to provide a focus with the apt [...]
Quality Engineering with Robust Design by Genichi Taguchi 258.0
The Taguchi method underwhelmingly called Quality Engineering (QE) have changed the face of industrial management all over the world. To me, that places Genichi Taguchi in the select list of SYNTHESiST change leaders. Taguchi’s QE, both on-line and off-line robust design, are not well known outside industry and are somewhat controversial to the community of [...]
8th GLOBELICS – Making Innovation Work for Society 257.0
Through SYNTHESiST, my work to enrich the conversation on innovation systems and change management in emerging markets like the Philippines gets me to meet interesting people – scholars who move their worlds with knowledge work. In two weeks, I will attend my first GLOBELICS, the 8th Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence [...]
Incentives or Industrial Policy for Economic Growth? 240.0
William Easterly criticized his fellow economists in international financial institutions for failing poor countries in their elusive quest for growth in his ‘hard-nosed’ (Solow) and ‘original’ (The Economist) 2001 book. In the Preface to this edition (2002), he writes “the World Bank encourages gadflies like me to find another job.” He had to move on [...]
Frederick Taylor Engineers Change for the Better Way 236.0
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1915) is considered the father of scientific management and first management consultant. He pioneered methods engineering and was the first to analyze work in detail and set them up as rational operations for efficiency. His innovative methods made workers in the West and Japan much wealthier than workers under Soviet-style [...]
Change Management for Business Life Cycles 223.0
The life cycle of firms conform to that of its underlying product, service or innovation. This life cycle follows the typical curve shown at left (Chart credit: Wikipedia). This same curve presented cumulatively is an S-curve with four identifiable stages: start-up, hypergrowth, maturity, and decline. These stages roughly correspond to the four technology phases. Management [...]
Learning from the National Innovation Systems of Emerging Japan 1/2
As with China now, emerging market Japan was accused of using an undervalued currency to build an export machine. Indeed, they may have dragged increasing the value of their currency to maximize yen returns until it became untenable for the country. Still, there were other explanations for their success that involved social innovation systems like [...]
Nine Prescriptions for an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem – HBR 218.0
I recommend the June, 2010 issue of the Harvard Business review for two wonderful articles: – on entrepreneurship, Nine Prescriptions for Creating an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem by Daniel J. Isenberg, and, – among the articles on change management, The Decision-Driven Organization by Marcia W. Blenko, Mchael C. Mankins and Paul Rogers. This is the first time [...]
