DPL Reading List – November 24, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
How Creating An Entrepreneurship Function Can Help Sustain Corporate Innovation – “Innovation can no longer be seen as a novelty sideshow. It is the work of every CEO and their top executive team to lead their companies in the creation of an entrepreneurship function. Our business schools and top management thinkers have work to do as well.”
The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs – “We live in a different era today. Artificial intelligence has arrived and is trickling into everything we do online, from the way we unlock our phones to how we do our jobs. Now, with the MoMA exhibition, the Connection Machine is getting its due.”
5 Ways the Best Companies Close the Strategy-Execution Gap – “Too many companies still follow a “Plan-then-Do” approach to strategy: The organization works tirelessly to create its best forecasts about the future market and competitive landscape. Leadership then specifies a plan that it believes will position the company to win in this predicted future. This approach may have made sense when first popularized by GE and others in the 1970s, but in today’s fast-paced world, the “cone of uncertainty” surrounding future market and competitive conditions is too great for companies to prescribe every element of a multiyear strategy. The Plan-then-Do approach is obsolete – even dangerous.”
How Futura Became The Most Ripped-Off Typeface In History – “You’ve never used the real Futura. Instead, you’ve used either a copy—one of Futura’s many contemporary competitors created shortly after its release in 1927—or a copy of a copy, one of the dozens of digital Futuras now on the market. Many more knockoffs are just simple reproductions adapted to new formats; many of these even inhabit the name Futura, despite their genealogical or stylistic differences from the original designed by Paul Renner for the Bauer Type Foundry.”
How Driverless Cars Will Change the Feel of Cities – “Autonomous vehicles promise safety and efficiency. But nobody knows what it will be like to live with them.”
What We Can Learn From How Netflix Mastered 24-Hour Disc Shipping – “Netflix began as a shoestring startup bolstered by a group of passionate entrepreneurs with a crazy idea, and persistent Lean Startup experimentation ensured the company didn’t fail. That spirit of innovation is what makes it one of the most successful brands today.”
The IT Transformation Health Care Needs – “Policymakers and economists talk constantly about “bending the cost curve” in health care—turning a bloated, wasteful system that is growing more rapidly than the economy into one that spends much less and grows at a slower pace. We have seen IT bend the cost curve in many other industries. Our research suggests that the same can be true in health care, and there are pockets of success to point to. But the necessary work is only just beginning.”
