Earlier last fall, walking in San Francisco, from the Caltrain station to Embarcadero, I came across a scene that is now etched in my memory. It was about 430 pm before the rush for evening dinner began. A group of restaurant workers, most of them Hispanic, stumbled out of a side door and were settling on the pavement of a by-lane, opening up packets of Chinese food that had just been delivered. They were clad in prim white kitchen wear, clean and tidy, which only highlighted the exhaustion on their faces, perhaps in anticipation of a long evening of toil. I continued walking around and came across the inviting doors of a Michelin-starred restaurant, emphasizing a contrast that is shockingly…
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Amazon’s HQ2 selection process has been described as a beauty contest, which misses the point. Amazon is definitely not going to pick a city based on popular opinion or consensus. An excellent theoretical framework to think about Amazon’s choice process for HQ2 is the idea of Innovation Tournaments. A good resource to learn more is the wonderful book Innovation Tournaments by my Wharton colleagues Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich, which I highly recommend. Innovation tournament typically involves several contestants going through a series of rounds, as pictured above (under a selection-criterion and pre-announced rules), until a “winner” is chosen. American Idol is a TV-show that typified this idea. Innovation tournaments are a genuinely great method to brainstorm and generate new…
Leave a CommentDerek Thompson’s writing is always enjoyable.1 In his Hit Makers, Thompson looks at two main questions: 1. What is the secret to making products that people like? 2. Why do some products fail in the marketplaces while similar ideas catch on and become massive hits? To address the first one, he shows that many of the viral hits have some strong shared features (timely exposure, MAYA rule2– most advanced yet acceptable designs, refrain and repetition for music, helpful economics, network effects, and the force of storytelling). But these features are, as Thompson himself argues, not exactly some “secret sauce”. I hope that the readers are not frustrated by the eventual answer to Why question: much of virality is due to…
Leave a CommentHere is a New York Times article by Farah Stockman that focuses on the story of a steelworker Shannon Mulcahy who had to go through the unenviable task of training her replacements when her job was outsourced to Mexico. It is good to see that journalism is alive and well. Stories that focus on one person are illustrative in the same way as business school case studies that focus on a firm. Shannon especially represents the admirable traits of every-day Americans: charity and decency. Outsourcing decisions are terribly fraught with real human costs, especially when there are few other economic opportunities for those whose jobs are outsourced, with no political solution on the horizon. I wanted to mention a few points that…
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