When I was recruiting the best and brightest minds into management consulting, we always said that we wanted "out of the box" thinkers. And then we wanted them to conform to the rules and methodologies of the Firm. Such is the irony. I don't think it really hit me what out of the box meant until I watched a Project Innovation through Design Thinkin g webinar that was available for free on Stanford's Center for Professional Development site. It presented a question that asked, "How much can you make with $5 and 2 hours?" It turns out that the top 3 answers were this: One group thought like I did and framed the question as an investment one. They bought a bicycle pump and went out on campus to offer the pumping of tires for a fee. That really didn't catch on. So they changed their strategy and offered pumping tires for free, but asked for donations. They made considerably more by asking for donations than they did when charging a fee. An...
Management | Consulting | Leadership | Strategy