The folks at Fast Company and Forbes this month released their annual “most innovative companies” lists. Like many of us, I look forward to these lists every year. By championing those companies bold enough to challenge the status quo, they inspire all of us to do something different. By sifting from masses of companies the

The future matters. Just ask anyone, or any organization, who thinks they don’t have one. All of your greatness today – your people, products, partnerships, brands, operations, capabilities, culture, customers – will not matter for long unless they are working together, as part of a strategy, to create your future.

For years I’ve sat on the opposing side of hierarchy. That rigid concept in which orders are barked down from above and complied to from below has robbed our corporations, governments, and social institutions of freedom. Many of the management thought-leaders we, at Outthinker, admire argue the same. Gary Hamel, for example, wrote “The real

Last week, I was accepted on the Thinkers50 Radar list, composed of 30 management thinkers to watch in 2019. How I made the list, I am not quite sure. The entrepreneurs, researchers, advisers, and organizational leaders included in this list constitute a humbling collection of minds.

Do your people go into the kitchen … or do they go home? When Kat Cole, a waiter at a local Hooters, learned there were not enough cooks that day to serve food, she watched as other waiters hung up their aprons. No food to cook means no food to serve, they figured.

When many hear the word Blockchain, they think immediately of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This is an unfortunate mistake. You can classify types of Blockchains across two dimensions:

Some claim Blockchain will fundamentally change the world. Others dismiss it as hype. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Naturally, reaching your own conclusion of what Blockchain might mean for the world, your industry, or your business requires an understanding of what it is. Here we attempt to cut through some of the noise

We usually get it wrong. When trying to predict the path of innovations – which ones are hype, which ones are real, which ones will take hold, and which ones will fall out of favor – our record, as humans, is poor. We think this is because, in the study of innovation, people overlook a

For years I have been selling Outthinker: our workshops, certifications, speeches, membership, etc. And to be honest, it has felt exhausting. Waking up to long lists of tasks, burning red, overdue, people to follow up with and check in with. Long flights banging away email outreaches when I could be drafting the next chapter of

Just delivered an Outthinker training for Viacom’s sales organization in New York, now jetting to LA to do the same there. It is at moments like this, when I am doing what I love, delivering work that impacts people and businesses and getting time to write on the plane, that I feel in the zone.