Category: Uncategorized

It’s no secret that information technology is core to modern business. To make the most of IT investments and innovations, chief executives must understand how technologies enable their company’s competitive advantage. Yet how many of today’s CIOs are considered the leading candidates to succeed their CEOs? Precious few—a weakness that CEOs and their boards should consider changing.

Zombie corporations, zombie pension funds and even zombie CEOs prowl the landscape.

In the course of U.S. economic cycles, geography played a key role in the rise and fall of regional economies. This is no longer true.

An American takes on France—and the world.

There has been a sharp increase in companies reporting that competitors are trying to recruit their top people, according to a global survey released by Right Management, the talent and career management unit within ManpowerGroup. Nearly two out of three employers now complain that other companies seek to hire away their organization’s leaders compared with just 42% last year.

The Obama Administration is launching competitions to create three new manufacturing innovation institutes with a Federal commitment of $200 million across five Federal agencies—Defense, Energy, Commerce, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. To build off the initial success of a pilot institute headquartered in Youngstown, Ohio, the President announced in the State of the Union that his Administration would move forward and launch three new manufacturing innovation institutes this year. The President will continue to call on Congress to act on his proposal for a one-time $1 billion investment to create a network of 15 manufacturing innovation institutes across the country.

Successful innovators often rely on instructive failure, particularly when it tempers success and corrects for arrogance. Ninja innovators never stop learning from others.

Automation of processes that increase yield and raise productivity, is the core of what people think of when they speak of smart manufacturing. Smart is not limited to process change but opens the door to the use of new materials. Rather than stocking inventory 3-D printing capability allows custom built job-lots of one. Smart is certainly transforming manufacturing but it also transforms companies themselves. Witness Valin Corp. a San Jose supplier to the semiconductor that nearly perished in the wake of the dotcom bust of 2001.