NYC and Amazon fall out — remarkable news politically, but very much along the framework we talked about in the blog. I also talk about how cities have become remarkably desirable. Bonus: trivia on Reservoir Dogs.
Leave a CommentTag: Innovation Tournaments
It increasingly appears that Amazon has chosen to split its second headquarters between Long Island City, NY and Crystal City, Northern VA — essentially locating a large portion of their upper management closer to the political and cosmopolitan classes (DC and NYC respectively). My favorite internet and business raconteur Scott Galloway – the author of the excellent The Four — had opined that it would always be New York. How did I do with my prediction? Earlier this year, my own guess was Nova/DC/Maryland area (although I had also hedged it with North Carolina). Amazon’s next biggest challenge is in running their AI platform. The biggest challenge for all platforms is regulation, which makes locating in the DC area as the perfect…
Leave a CommentAmazon’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…
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