Insights
Building a Community
The THNK School of Creative Leadership has grown to more than 500 people in its first five years. This rapid growth rate makes it necessary to understand the needs and potential…
Consume to Create
Creative activity surrounds us: hordes of teenagers have morphed from TV-addicted couch potatoes into YouTube movie makers. They have produced a stupendous amount of footage, ranging from silly cat videos to…
Disruptive Technologies
Have you shot a dronie? If not, you probably will soon. Dronies are selfies filmed by remote-controlled drones, registering your face and surroundings from the sky. Dronies are the natural…
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It's All About the Brick: LEGO's Modular System
It’s all about a modular system. It’s all about distinguishing those basic building blocks of your enterprise concept that can be assembled and re-assembled into numerous diverse offerings. Think about the LEGO…
Nature, Nurture or Act? – What Defines Entrepreneurs
There have been many research efforts devoted to cracking the intrinsic code of the Steve Jobs and Richard Bransons of the world. Are there certain personality types, characteristics, or genes…
Net Promoter Scorecore
In 2003, Fred Reichheld and Bain & Company coined Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the ultimate metric to predict growth by surveying whether a customer is willing to recommend your…
Effective Diversity in Teams
Having a diverse founding team seems integral to the success of a new venture. A “dream team” creates a certain spark and creative clash when its team members bring their…
Peer Coaching
A man is sitting in a boat, fishing. After hours of waiting for something to bite, the fisherman encounters another man sailing by and asks, “what am I doing wrong?…
The Power of Giving
How to be an effective giver in a world that rewards taking. At THNK we play something called Charlie’s Angels, a game designed to leverage the power of a…
Serendipity
The word serendipity comes from a Persian tale called The Three Princes of Serendip, written by musician and poet Amir Khusrow in 1302. It tells the story of King Jafer,…
Visioning: "The Slow Bake"
Abstract and adaptation from Originals – Adam Grant As it turns out, procrastination is a common habit of creative thinkers and great problem solvers. It is only when creative…
The Struggle to Raise Money
Thoughts on a blog by Seth Godin. When your small business is struggling, the thought of raising money feels like a life preserver. That possible infusion of cash is a…
Passion & Purpose - Why Work at a Startup
An adapted summary of Money vs Wealth by Maria Popova. “The moral challenge and the grim problem we face,” Alan Watts argued in his 1970 essay on the difference between…
Getting Your Market Entry Timing Right
Along with providing time to generate novel ideas, procrastination has another benefit: it keeps us open to adapting our strategy. Some executives formulate a strategy and then stick to it.…
Horses for Courses
Over time, society has developed a rich variety of organizational models. It is tempting to view this as an evolutionary development, with some models being more enlightened or evolved than…