Innovation
Why Zappos Pays New Employees To Quit – And You Should Too
Zappos, the Nevada-based online shoe and accessories retailer, has an interesting twist on new-hire bonuses. After applying and being chosen for a job, employees get a month of paid training. Then they’re offered $1,000 to leave. It’s a test of commitment, meant to see if money is what matters to workers. The amount offered has [...]
Yes, You Can Innovate Like Google
The words “Google” and “Innovation” have been used numerous times in the last few years… and all of us undoubtedly admire “The Google Way”, their talent acquisition, management and retention strategies etc. However, we usually shy away from adoting a subset of those ideas, with the usual answer - “we’re different”. In this video, Tom Davenport describes how Google uses chaos to quickly [...]
Green City
San Francisco has made great progress towards becoming a “Green City”. Voluntary programs like “Green Business” that encourage businesses to take proactive actions that are good for their bottomline and the environment, is just another example of the city’s innovative approaches towards greening. Mayor Gavin Newsom talks with Dana Goodyear on what it means to [...]
Simple designs that could save millions of lives
Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal. About Amy Smith: Mechanical engineer Amy Smith’s approach to problem-solving in developing nations is refreshingly common-sense: Invent cheap, low-tech [...]
Innovation at Google
Innovation for its own sake is useless. Period. And no one knows this better than the company who redefined the rules of information search. In this interesting 50 minute presentation, Google CIO Douglas Merrill tells us about innovation at Google. He highlights the importance of speed, the user experience, machine translation, defining innovation, relevance and [...]
