Steven Johnson, in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, talks about great ideas such as the pencil, the printing press, Google and the flush toilet and wonders how flashes of innovative brilliance originate. Yes, there’s the proverbial light bulb moment of pure genius, but Johnson is more concerned about […]
governance
Outsource Magazine — May 2014
Villena, Revilla, Choi: Breaking down the “bright” and “dark” side of buyer-seller relationships Outsource Magazine column by Kate Vitasek published online on 7 May 2014. If you’ve been in the outsource industry for more than five minutes you probably know that buyer-seller relationships are, well, complicated. And just when you think you have the collaboration […]
Avoid the Good Idea Graveyard
The Good Idea Graveyard is that sad place where all those good ideas go that somehow seem to get lost in the shuffle, not prioritized, or were never really understood in the first place. Dr. Marla Gottschalk, an industrial/organizational psychologist, in a recent LinkedIn article Where Did Those Great Ideas Go?, reminded me of my […]
Another Side of the Elephant
Recently I’ve been on a kick to make sure that companies do not ignore the elephant in the room and to make sure the elephant gets out. There’s a corollary to those two posts for me that was prompted with the news this week that Popes John Paul II and John XXIII were canonized as […]
Dell’s Vested Vision: A “Legacy of Good”
A major corporate sustainability report from Dell contains some highly Vested ideas advocated by the company’s Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell. Dell’s 2020 Legacy of Good Plan—released late last year—is ambitious, realistic and philosophically consistent as it attempts to forge a long-term, multi-dimensional culture of sustainability both within the company and with its suppliers. “We […]
Nobel Economist Ronald Coase, Giant of TCE, Dies at 102
Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, a giant of modern economic thought and whose ideas about transaction costs and the nature of companies are a foundation of Vested principles, died this week in Chicago. He was 102. In “The Nature of the Firm,” which was developed and written while he was still an undergraduate and published in 1937, Professor […]
Boeing Needs a Vested Approach
A report in a recent Sunday Seattle Times reported Boeing faces an indefinite grounding of the Dreamliner – its newest jet—because of a battery fire on a 787 in Boston and the smoldering of another battery on a flight in Japan a week later. The article quoted anonymous Boeing engineers who are blaming the company’s […]
APQC SCM Community Call Webinar — October, 2012
SCM Community Call September 2012: Vested – How P&G, McDonald’s and Microsoft are Redefining Winning in Business Relationships By Kate Vitasek October 1, 2012 In the presentation, Kate Vitasek shares the real stories of how organizations are using a Vested approach to achieve award winning results by redefining how they “win” in their business relationships. […]
Outsource Magazine — August, 2012
Elinor Ostrom: getting involved in your own governance This month’s column pays a tribute to Elinor Ostrom, who shared the Nobel Prize award in economic science in 2009 with Oliver Williamson. Ostrom, who died at age 78 on June 12, was cited by the Nobel Committee for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” […]
Outsource Magazine – Honestly Dishonest – July, 2012
This month’s Outsource Magazine column: Honestly dishonest… If you follow this column you know I am a fan of some of the behavioral and transaction cost economists, including John Nash and Oliver Williamson. This month I am adding Dan Ariely to my list of big thinkers…
