Dear treasure readers,
this week I have the shortest treasure so far. In less than 10 minutes you have digested all the nuggets.
Nugget #1 is a real innovation quickie. Everybody should have two minutes available. Sabine Eckhardt caught me with the title. Or did you know what the phrase “The horse does not eat cucumber salad” means? The moral of the story is that an idea or invention is not necessarily an innovation. This requires commercial success. What does it take to ensure that the conditions in companies are right? That is what Sabine will be writing in the coming weeks. I also approached this question a few weeks ago in my article “Sparks”.
Innovation-Thesis #1: The horse does not eat cucumber salad (2 min, text, German)
The second Quickie follows with Nugget #2. Again you need a maximum of two minutes. The article by Tandemploy explains ambidexterity. That’s what it’s been about in earlier treasures. In my opinion, many companies today have a manic focus on efficiency and operative business (exploitation, execution). Of course, the topic of exploration and innovation is neglected. But without sufficient bandwidth for innovation, no more efficiency efforts will be needed at some point. Example welcome? Thanks to Spotify, even the most efficient CD distribution today would no longer be able to achieve sales growth. Even companies that afford innovation laboratories often find it difficult to transfer their innovative ideas into the operative business. The article gives a few suggestions as to how the balancing act can succeed and which advantages result from these measures.
Innovation AND efficiency? Organizational ambiguity (2 min, text, English)
For Nugget #3 you just need a little bit longer. James Lawther talks about pirates. So he quickly had his place in the treasure. Pirates were criminals. Nevertheless, they were very agile and could handle complexity well. So as a company you can learn something from them. The Royal Navy was a flawless command and control organization. So it’s no wonder that many of the sailors got fed up with their employer at some point. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Pirates, on the other hand, were democratically organized and the salary was distributed fairly. New Work and New Pay existed already in earlier centuries. Very interesting is the example of a constitution of a pirate ship in James article. Which pirate practice would you like to try out in your company?
The Pirate School of Management (5 min, text, English)
At the end I would like to point out a new project: MutlandDE. In Germany, fear has been stirred up for weeks and doomsday scenarios have been conjured up. We should rather put our energy into supporting the many projects and initiatives that are advancing our country. Together with other courageous people I want to set impulses. Would you like to participate or support? Then please contact me via [email]tobias@companypirate.de[/email].