Personal Growth — October 6, 2011

Innovation Requires Idea Connectors

Companies need formalized processes for people with ideas to get to people with the influence to move on them, so the best new ideas actually reach those who can exploit them.

bigthinkeditor

What’s the Latest Development?

Combing the outside world for potentially useful innovation ideas is necessary but not enough. Managers must find ways to ensure the best new ideas reach those who can exploit them. Some do this via an “idea connector” who links up the “idea scouts”—people with well-developed knowledge and social networks outside their company but limited networks within it—to the R&D engineers and others who can develop suggestions.

What’s the Big Idea?

Companies need formalized processes for people with ideas to get to people with the influence to move on them. Central to Google’s success in this is VP Marissa Mayer, who holds three weekly sessions where she is accessible to all Google employees who want to pitch a new idea. She brainstorms with them before deciding whether to champion the ideas to company leaders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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Culture & Religion

Farewell to the Man who Reframed IT’s Frontiers

The man who changed the world: Apple founder Steve Jobs dies weeks after quitting as boss of firm he started in his garage. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg praises his “mentor and friend.”