THE SPARK TO GREAT INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP By Carol Thompson I live in Austin, Texas, a city with more than its fair share of entrepreneurs. And while entrepreneurs are most often known as innovators, I think they share another important quality: PASSION. Some are passionate about creating a breakthrough product or service that solves [...]

HOW CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS ARE CHANGING BUSINESS,COMMERCE AND THE ECONOMY By Jim Brazell Sociologist Marshall McLuhan once said, “Each major period in history takes its character from the medium of communication used most widely at the time.” The emerging communications medium of the 21st century is robotics. Rather than walking, talking robots as we usually imagine, [...]

IDENTIFYING TALENT CAN TURN CAPTURED DATA INTO REALIZED OPPORTUNITIES By Michael J. Penney The McKinsey & Company study, “Big data: The next frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity,” reaches two conclusions business leaders will quickly realize. First, there are huge opportunities available for improving marketing in organizations with the use of data analytics; and second, [...]

THREE CRITICAL SECURITY TRENDS EVERY CEO NEEDS TO KNOW By Theresa Schwab Recently a manufacturing company came to me wanting assistance with their network. Apparently, the company who sold the network equipment was only good at installation, but not as good with supporting the equipment. Installing security equipment without properly configuring it is like driving a [...]

KEEPING THE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT TANK FULL By Mark Frein Every decade seems to bring with it a new term for employee satisfaction. The term of the last 10 years is “engagement,” usually defined as an emotional commitment by an employee to put in extra effort. We don’t want employees to simply be satisfied – we [...]

STRATEGIES TO HELP CEOS CREATE A FOCUSED AND COHESIVE COMPANY DURING AN IPO By Lois Melbourne Changes within any company – office relocation or a C-level change – create natural uncertainty among employers and employees alike. That’s a given. But a long-time private company that becomes public is filled with entirely new challenges and repercussions. [...]

DON’T MESS WITH TEXANS (OR ANYONE ELSE, FOR THAT MATTER) By David J. Lineman One of the challenges to managing a business today is the growing list of regulations. With the dramatic rise in identity-theft and cybercrime in general, data protection laws have been popping up at the Federal level and in all 50 states. [...]

WILL YOUR COMPANY’S REPUTATION GET TWITTERED AWAY?   By Liz Alexander, Ph.D. In some industries, facing a crisis is an everyday risk of doing business, which is why we might have expected more from the CEOs of British Petroleum (BP), Carnival Corporation, and Toyota Motor Corporation with respect to crisis management. Yet gaffe-prone Tony Hayward [...]

WHAT FORWARD THINKING CEOS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MANAGING IT COSTS   By Raja Pabba and Rakesh Singh The difficulty in managing IT costs for large enterprises has increased in the past 15 to 20 years because of the complexity inherent in managing IT Systems, which includes proliferation of sourcing IT services from multiple vendors, [...]

HOW TO ALIGN THE 4 AREAS NEEDED TO CREATE MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL VENTURES By Bob Barker In this new wave of technology, you can’t do it all yourself; you have to form alliances. -Carlos Slim Helu “Partnerships are a waste of time.” It’s hard to find a CEO who doesn’t regret having pulled the trigger on [...]

THE ART OF SUPPRESSING THE NEED TO “FIX” EVERYTHING By Joel Trammell I’m lazy and I am not ashamed to admit it. I think it makes me a better CEO. How can someone who has built successful organizations from the ground up be lazy? Aren’t startups famous for their around the clock work hours and [...]

HOW SMALL BUSINESSES CAN GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE USING CLOUD COMPUTING By James Higginbotham Small businesses are using cloud computing to find new ways to compete with larger companies. The challenge is to understand what cloud computing is and how it can be used as a competitive advantage. What is Cloud Computing? At its core, [...]