What happens when a behavioral ecologist uses a game theory exam to test his students’ proficiency at cheating? Even better, what happens when the same UCLA professor, Peter Nonacs, then confronts his students with a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma to decide their final grades? Both Nonacs and the students learned important lessons about Game […]
collaboration
Christensen: Capitalism Needs Work (Pt. 2)
Last time I talked about Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation as described in his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. Being a fan for several years now, I can’t wait for his new book, The Capitalist’s Dilemma to come out, which basically calls for a large dose of disruptive innovation for macro-economics and the free market […]
Christensen: Transforming Innovation and Capitalism
I can’t believe it has been 16 years since Clayton Christensen rocked the business world with his groundbreaking book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. The subtitle of the book is revealing: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. His book was a bestseller in 1997 and received the Global Business Book Award for the best business […]
Getting to a Shared Purpose Partnership
Mark Bonchek, chief catalyst of ORBIT+Co., writes in a post for the HBR Blog Network about the benefits of having a corporate purpose. Many are starting to profess the importance of purpose—for instance Simon Sinek, who has a powerful model for inspirational leadership that starts with with a golden circle and the question, “Why?” (His […]
Dell’s Journey to Vested Innovation
Dell is much in the news lately, and for good reason, what with founder Michael S. Dell’s controversial plan to buy out the company and take it private for $24.4 billion coupled with mounting opposition to his plan from no less an eminence than the financier Carl Icahn and other major shareholders. I’m not here […]
Clinton: Getting Into the Tomorrow Business
As you no doubt know by now I’ve been saying that the future of outsourcing and business success lies in collaboration, so it’s timely and nice when a former president also strongly endorses this idea. At the recent Dell World users’ conference in Austin, TX, President Bill Clinton’s lively keynote address before about 5,000 people […]
Ronald Dworkin: Moral Significance, Trust and Law
When I learned of Ronald Dworkin’s death last week in London at age 81, I was immediately saddened and then struck by how much his thinking on morality and law means to the Vested philosophy and the principles behind Getting to We. Mr. Dworkin, who died of leukemia, was a liberal scholar unafraid to tackle […]
Vested and Value Creation
There’s a short quote about creating value—along with a cute cartoon—that’s gone viral on the internet. It goes like this this: “I met a man with a dollar. We exchanged dollars. We each still had one dollar. Then I met a man with an idea. We exchanged ideas. Now we each have two ideas.” The […]
Coase: Are Economists Becoming Irrelevant?
Followers of this blog and the “economics of outsourcing” series know how much I admire Ronald Coase and the contributions he has made to economic thought regarding transaction costs, total costs, getting the math right and the emergence of modern outsource contracting. His groundbreaking work, stretching back to the 1930s, shed light on a new […]
Hands Down, Santa is the Top Outsourcer
We know that UPS loves logistics. At this time of the year UPA commercials stress the beauty of logistics — and don’t forget their jingle sung to the tune of “That’s Amore!” UPSers really have to love their job! They work extended hours seven days a week to make it happen. Warehouses add seasonal workers. […]
