Open Innovation: Does it work?
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Open Innovation: Does it work?

Open innovation is a big trend today in innovation management. Where are its strengths and limitations? A discussion with Atizo. Today, I had a long chat with Isabel Steiner and Sabine Hofer from Atizo, an entrepreneurial platform for open innovation. Atizo is a platform where companies can post a question to a crowd to get more and better solutions. This is called open innovation…

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Thomas Middelhoff or how to earn money with a bad business model

Thomas Middelhoff was the CEO of the now insolvent German retail conglomerate Arcandor formerly known as KarstadtQuelle. Thomas Middelhoff has a good sense for timing. He left Arcandor in March 2009 just 3 months before the company had to file for bankrupcy in June. What made his stint at Arcandor so remarkable was not that he turned around the business of…

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Trust, Bankers and Soldiers of Fortunes – You get what you pay

The Swiss private banks are under pressure to change their business model. It is not just pressure from other states that want to fight tax evasion via exchange of information on bank customers but also from employers that try to sell stolen customers’ data  to foreign governments. The big news in Switzerland is that an informant, crook or thief –…

Culture and the Business Model: We are humans
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Culture and the Business Model: We are humans

In the discussion on business model innovation an important point is missing: the culture in which the business is conducted. A business is all about people “creating” customers. Businesses are not a technical machine with input and output factors. Businesses are places where human beings work together for a common goal and therefore the culture in a business is a…