Paul Polak on Innovation to Reduce Poverty

Paul Polak has dedicated himself to the proposition that corporations can help the 2.6 billion people in the world living on less than $2 a day—and make a profit doing so. His various ventures are all dedicated to finding practical solutions to attack poverty at its...

Clay Christensen discusses Managing Disruption

Clay Christensen defined the term disruptive innovation after studying why companies fail while listening to their best customers and making what seem like good business decisions. In this interview, he discusses how to identify, think about, and manage disruptive...

Youngjin Yoo on Design in the Generative Economy

Digital technology is clearly changing the products and services that we use every day, but Youngjin Yoo sees a much more fundamental change. He believes the rise of digital technology is changing the very essence of products, making them generative. Increasingly,...

The Limits of Crowds

During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, many people proposed crowdsourcing the solution. In this column, I discuss the naive expectations of some crowdsourcing initiatives and the erosion of trust in experts. I identify five criteria that may be prerequisites for...