Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 7/14/14

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Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms, to start off your work week. I’m pointing you to articles about leadership, strategy, industries, innovation, women and work, and work and learning now and in the future. Highlights include four questions to revolutionize your business model, NASCAR in a Digital World, owning our data, women’s leadership program delivers $6.5 million, and Google CEO Larry Page knows what you think about work.

Be sure to look for dots that you can connect.

Note: Some links require you to register or are to publications that have some form of limited paywall.

Thinking about Leadership and Strategy

From Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine: Four Questions to Revolutionise Your Business Model

“Innovation is about more than groundbreaking technology. Rigorous, systematic questioning of risks in your business model can unleash opportunities for game changing performance improvements.”

From Michael Birshan, Ishaan Nangia, and Felix Wenger: Preparing to make big-ticket investment decisions

“When the stakes couldn’t be higher, the quality of the decision making can make all the difference. Process improvements can help.”

From Henrik Bresman: Driving Organisational Change Under Pressure

“Intense pressure often calls for knee-jerk reactions. While firm responses are needed from leaders, they should resist the temptation to centralise control and stifle frontline ownership.”

Industries and Analysis

From Shan LiI: Vending machines going gourmet for upscale customers

“At Hollywood & Highland Center, mere steps from Hollywood Boulevard’s souvenir-hawking dives, tourists can drop up to $1,000 on fine caviar. But they aren’t pampered with white-glove service. Tins of the delicacy are dispensed at the tap of a button — from a vending machine.”

From Wharton: NASCAR in a Digital World: Making Devices Part of the Race

“The top spectator sport in America isn’t baseball, basketball, hockey or even football: It’s NASCAR. According to a recent Forbes article, one in three U.S. adults, or 75 million people, is a NASCAR fan. NASCAR races are among the most-attended sporting events in the United States.”

From the Economist: German lessons

“Many countries want a Mittelstand like Germany’s. It is not so easy to copy.”

Innovations and Technology

From Harold Jarche: Owning our data

“With the internet of everything (IoE), once everything is connected, where will our data reside? Who will own it and who will control it?”

From Walt Mossberg: How Apple and Google are merging the PC with the smartphone

“Back in the early days of handheld devices, Microsoft dubbed its contender the ‘Pocket PC’ and, indeed, designed it to emulate a small version of a Windows PC, because the PC was the main — often the only — way to perform digital tasks. My, how things have changed.”

From Mary Meehan: The 5 Traits Innovative Companies Share

“In 2007 Uri Neren, Innovators International, was commissioned by The Mayo Clinic to research the best practices of companies that most often succeed at innovation. His challenge was to build a curriculum for improving Mayo’s own innovation process. Along the way, it became much more than that.”

Women and the Workplace

From Sam Colt: These Are 11 Wealthiest Women In Tech

“The tech community has finally realized it has a diversity problem. Google recently announced it would offer vouchers for coding lessons for women and minorities. But women have been in the tech industry (albeit in relatively small numbers) for some time now. Some of those women have risen up to lucrative leadership positions in the C-suite and elsewhere.”

From Conor Friedersdorf: Why PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi Can’t Have It All

“While interviewing Indra K. Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiC0, at the Aspen Ideas Festival Monday*, David Bradley, who owns The Atlantic, asked two questions that elicited as frank a discussion of work-life balance as I’ve seen from a U.S. CEO. Below is a lightly edited transcript. The second question was preceded by a brief discussion of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.'”

From Anne Perschel: Women’s Leadership Program Delivers $6.5 Million

“Your company, and many others, invests millions on multi-year women’s leadership initiatives, but there’s little if any return on the investment.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From the Wall street Journal: LinkedIn Founder: How to Fix the Way We Work

“When Reid first founded LinkedIn Corp., he offered an explicit deal to talented employees: If they signed up for a 2-4 year tour of duty and made an important contribution to some part of the business, Reid and the company would help advance their careers, preferably in the form of another tour of duty at LinkedIn. This approach worked: the company got an engaged employee who worked to achieve tangible results for LinkedIn. The employee transformed his career by en­hancing his portfolio of skills and experiences.”

From Jena McGregor: Google CEO Larry Page knows what you think about work

“Page said he believes that people’s basic needs — housing, economic security, opportunities for the next generation — are actually pretty small, yet that their need to have something productive to do is quite significant. One of today’s big social problems is finding a way to reconcile the two.”

More from Wally Bock Last Week

By and About Leaders: 7/8/14

Pointers to pieces by and about Admiral Michelle Howard, Tony Gareri, Kevin Tracey, Shawn Qu, and Tim Cook.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 7/9/14

Pointers to posts by Les Hayman, Scott Eblin, Karin Hurt, Lolly Daskal, and Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie.

Stories and Strategies from Real Life: 7/11/14

Pointers to stories about Bead Boutique, Pirch, Husman’s, Zingerman’s, and Junior’s.

Miss Daisy and Mr. Jerk” was a popular post on my site last week.

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