Achieving faster, better, cheaper, and more creative innovation outcomes with the 5x5 framework: 5 people, 5 days, 5 experiments, $5,000, and 5 weeksWhat is the best way for a company to innovate? Advice recommending “innovation vacations” and the luxury of failure may be wonderful for organizations with time to spend and money to waste. The Innovator’s Hypothesis addresses the innovation priorities of companies that live in the real world of limits. Micha...

Who do you want your customers to become?According to MIT innovation expert and thought leader Michael Schrage, if you aren’t asking this question, your strategic marketing and innovation efforts will fail.In this latest HBR Single, Schrage provides a powerful new lens for getting more value out of innovation investment. He argues that asking customers to do something different doesn’t go far enough—serious marketers and innovators must ask them to become s...

"Jobs To Be Done is key to building successful products, and this book masterfully gives a step–by–step guide on how to put it into practice."—Melissa Perri, author of Escaping the Build TrapThese days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice–to–have, it's a strategic imperative.The Jobs To ...

How companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify know what "you might also like": the history, technology, business, and societal impact of online recommendation engines.Increasingly, our technologies are giving us better, faster, smarter, and more personal advice than our own families and best friends. Amazon already knows what kind of books and household goods you like and is more than eager to recommend more; YouTube and TikTok always have another video lined up ...

"Jobs To Be Done is key to building successful products, and this book masterfully gives a step–by–step guide on how to put it into practice." —Melissa Perri, author of Escaping the Build TrapThese days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice–to–have, it's a strategic imperative.The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) hel...

What is the best way for a company to innovate? That's exactly the wrong question. The better question: How can organizations get the maximum possible value from their innovation investments? Advice recommending "innovation vacations" and the luxury of failure may be wonderful for organizations with time to spend and money to waste. But this book addresses the innovation priorities of companies that live in the real world of limits. They want fast, frugal, and high impact innovations. They...

Who do you want your customers to become?According to MIT innovation expert and thought leader Michael Schrage, if you aren’t asking this question, your strategic marketing and innovation efforts will fail.In this latest HBR Single, Schrage provides a powerful new lens for getting more value out of innovation investment. He argues that asking customers to do something different doesn’t go far enough—serious marketers and innovators must ask them to become something differen...

Deploy Empathy will help you learn the skill of interviewing your customers—learning to truly listen to them—so that you can pull out their hidden needs, desires, and processes.Empathy is a skill that anyone can learn. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you'll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks.B...

We're in the midst of a revolution. Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people's behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders.This is no mere tech issue. The transformation requires a complete rethinking of the way we organize and manage work. And, as ...

These stories from Quanta Magazine map the routes of mathematical exploration, showing readers how cutting-edge research is done, while illuminating the productive tension between conjecture and proof, theory and intuition. Listeners of The Prime Number Conspiracy, says Quanta editor-in-chief Thomas Lin, are headed on "breathtaking intellectual journeys to the bleeding edge of discovery strapped to the narrative rocket of humanity's never-ending pursuit of knowle...

There's a precise moment that falls between working enough hours to be productive and working too many hours, yielding a diminishing marginal return. The difference between the person able to master this and most Americans that fail miserably at it is quality of life! If one continues to work past this moment, a negative return will ensue, and that negative return produces guilt. It lowers the amount of time for recreational activities and spending time with family.An alarming 39% ...

Burnout has become one of the most talked about workplace topics, and its impact is far-reaching. The 24/7 pace of work, constant demands, and scant resources can easily put busy professionals on a path to burnout, a cycle that has only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout affects the health and well-being of the entire organization, yet most attempts to help focus on quick-fix strategies aimed at individuals. Something is missing. In Beating Burnout at Work, Paula Da...