Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

With an appropriate level of collaboration, a team can be productive and efficient in delivering its goals. It can be effective in its mission -- whether the mission is to provide operational excellence, service or solution fulfillment, or decision making for strategic business and technology alignment.

Of all the factors that determine your power as a negotiator, none is more under your control than the investment you make in becoming a more skilled negotiator. Negotiation is an area of personal competence and involves theory, practice, and skills.

Over the past several years, two disruptive ideas about how firms can innovate (and subsequently create and capture value around innovations) have gained considerable momentum. The first idea is that of open innovation, which Henry Chesbrough defines as:

I've been spending the last few months working on a very practical business process project with an organization that is serious about improving its business processes.

Innovation in high-tech industries is often driven by technology roadmaps, through cycles of technological substitutions: 1G (TACS) is substituted by 2G (GSM), which is substituted by 3G, and then 4G/WiMAX; 130 nm CMOS is substituted by 90 nm CMOS, which is substituted by 65 nm CMOS; Application 1.0 is substituted by Application 2.0, which is substituted by 3.0; and so on.

This is the next in a series of Advisors that attempts to answer the question "What do agile executives and managers actually do?" A previous Advisor identified a number of practices or areas of responsibility for agile leaders (see "Making Middle Managers Catalysts for Agility," 25 November 2009).

A meeting was held at Motorola near Chicago several years ago, and nobody came. Well, almost nobody -- one guy did turn up. It was a good meeting, and several important decisions were made. Sandeep in Bangalore, India, dialed in, and so did Pat in Cork, Ireland, and Yaron in Tel Aviv, Israel.