Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, its origins, and what we can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John Cleese offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of cultural insight and comedic genius. Specifically, Cleese outlines “the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative”:

1. Space (“You can’t become playful, and therefore creative, if you’re under your usual pressures.”)
2. Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”)
3. Time (“Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.)
4. Confidence (“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”)
5. Humor (“The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.”)

Fail. Change. Love. And Other Advice To New Grads, 5/20/2013

It’s no secret that recent crops of college graduates have been more risk averse than some of their predecessors. They’re more likely, for instance, to go for the job they could get rather than the one they want. And who could blame them? The uncertain economy hasn’t given young people much room to explore their passions and try out different ways of working, different ways of being a professional.

As the dean of a management school (Wikipedia), I give students a few parting words as they prepare to walk onto the commencement stage—and into the real world. 

A Lesson in #Ecosystem Leverage: Court releases email trail of #SteveJobs putting the squeeze on book publishersbusinessinsider.com/the-steve-jobs…

— Ron Adner (@RonAdner) 23 mai 2013

The free Stocard app puts all your loyalty cards into one app on your phone, Downloads:(iPhone / Android).

www.stocardapp.com, @stocardUK

IE alumni news, IE ALUMNO LAUNCHES SUCCESSFUL RETAIL LOYALTY APP IN SPAIN – STOCARD, May 6, 2013

Are you tired of the mess in your wallet overfilled with loyalty cards and coupons? – The free Stocard app collects all loyalty cards on your smartphone and is now available on the Spanish app store. Providing users with personalized offers and coupons, Stocard creates a unique communication channel, through which offline retailers can reach young mobile customers. Moritz Heck joined Stocard after completing his dual degree at IE Business School last December. He is convinced that the Stocard app has the potential to change the offline shopping experience. Working as CFO & Head of Business Development he can put the entrepreneurial knowledge into practice, which he acquired during his MBA and Master in Finance at IE Business School.

The Stocard app has already replaced about four million plastic loyalty cards for more than one million users in several countries. Now it also puts Spanish customers’ wallets on a diet. Stocard currently ranks 1^st in the Spanish app store – just a few days after its launch. “Smartphones are the future. They can completely replace all loyalty cards with the free Stocard app for iPhone and Android”, says David Handlos, CEO and founder of Stocard.

Stocard is very easy to use: Simply scan your loyalty card with your smartphone’s camera. The app then creates a digital version of the card on your phone. Stocard already supports 100 default loyalty cards – from Club Vips, over El Corte Ingles to Shell Clubsmart. If a rare card is not on the list, you can type in the store’s name by hand and easily add the desired card. Whenever you want to use your loyalty card, just show your phone with the digital copy and receive discounts and rewards, just as you would with the plastic card.

In May Moritz will be able to put his IE experience into action, when he will pitch Stocard at the biannual IE Venture Days in Madrid. Stocard has been announced as one of the ten finalists presenting in front of VCs from across the globe. This will be an excellent opportunity to find potential international partners for Stocard’s future expansion in Europe and beyond.

ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/5/17/mobile-is-eating-the-world

Nov. 21, 2011

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-neuroeconomics-revolution

May 15, 2013, The Motley Fool

I recently interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in his office at Columbia Business School.

In this clip, Stiglitz answers the question, "What is something that is taught in the modern business school that gives a flawed sense of how risk and financial markets work?"

Many readers won't agree with Stiglitz's views, but that's fine! Leave your rebuttals in the comment section below.

Here's what he had to say (transcript follows):

Stiglitz: Too many economists wanted to believe that markets work well. They had an incentive; they had an interest in believing that markets worked well. That isn't particularly true in business schools, that the business of a business school is business, and you want to believe that markets work well. But unfortunately we have a long history of markets not working well. The Great Depression was a reality, it actually occurred.

And in fact, if you look over the history of capitalism, there have been economic downturns repeatedly in the history of capitalism. There have been credit bubbles, there have been bubbles of all kinds of; real estate bubbles. So markets have exhibited irrationalities, excessive volatility and to me, one of the thing that I just find so striking is how in this period, say after 1980, economists could turn their back on 200 years of capitalism, 200 years of capitalism when things didn't work well...

A New Bubble? An Old Meme?

...As my last couple of posts on the subject of a “market bubble” suggest, I harbor doubts about the justification for the buoyant markets...

Urs Müller, Ulrich Linnhoff and Bernhard Pellens discuss the development of their award-winning ESMT case on Borussia Dortmund.

About the case

In its 100th year of existence in 2009, Borussia Dortmund (BVB) was the only German soccer club listed on the stock exchange. With three days to go before the annual shareholders' meeting on 24 November of that year, the club's managing directors, Thomas Tress and Hans-Joachim Watzke, went through the year-end figures one more time. Although the situation had improved since 2005 when the club was on the brink of insolvency, the closing accounts once again showed a negative net income. After nine years as a publicly traded company, the BVB had to report its fifth loss, this time for 5.9 million euros, which added up to a cumulative loss of more than 145 million euros. After the passing of a century, many stakeholders were concerned about the way forward. What was the organisation's purpose? What was more important, finally making a profit and meeting shareholders' expectations, or playing for the fans and the club's honor? What could the managing directors offer to their shareholders, who had seen the value of their shares drop from 11 euros at the IPO to less than 1 euro in November 2009?...

Do you remember the last mobile ad you saw? And did it influence you in any way? #HBRchat

— Sunil Gupta (@guptsunil) February 21, 2013

DESCRIPTION (Sunil Gupta)

Many companies envision mobile ads becoming an integral part of their communications strategies. But there's a growing consensus that ads don't work on mobile devices; consumers just don't like them. Instead of creating tiny banner ads, smart marketers will turn to apps to reach customers and engage them. Effective apps will do one of the following: 1) Add convenience. Banking apps, for example, let people pay their bills online, and airline apps let them check in and monitor the status of their flights. 2) Offer unique value. In South Korea, commuters can use an app to order groceries while waiting for their trains. 3) Provide social value. Apps on Facebook and other sites let users send gifts to their friends. 4) Offer incentives. Apps that give away mobile minutes, for instance, can entice customers. 5) Entertain. Red Bull and other companies have devised popular games focused on their brands. "Mobile advertising" is often a hollow phrase, but mobile apps can enable marketers to communicate with consumers in a format that enhances their lives and offers long-term value.

The new Times Higher iPhone / iPad app has landed...and it's free for 6 weeks! ow.ly/lfbmM

— TimesHigherEducation (@timeshighered) May 21, 2013

@imd_bschool Prof Peter Killing receives award for outstanding contribution to the case method bit.ly/103aTPs twitter.com/your_ecch/stat…

— ecch (@your_ecch) 16 mai 2013

ecch Case Awards 2013

Presentation of the outstanding contribution to the case method

Peter Killing received the ecch Case Award for outstanding contribution to the case method from Richard McCracken, ecch Director, at a special presentation at IMD on 3 May 2013. IMD professors Anand Narasimhan and Kamran Kashani also spoke at the ceremony and gave an insight in to why they believe Peter is such a worthy winner of this award.

On Amazon

In Great Minds in Management, Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt have brought together some of the most influential and original thinkers in management. Their contributions to this volume not only outline their landmark contributions to management theory, but also reflect on the process of theory development, presenting their own personal accounts of the gestation of these theories.

The result is not only an ambitious and original panorama of the key ideas in management theory presented by their originators, but also a unique collection of reflections on the process of theory development, an area which to date little has been written about by those who have actually had experience of building theory.

In their concluding chapter, Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt draw together some common themes about the development of management theory over the last half a century, and suggest some of the conclusions to be drawn about how theory comes into being.

Contributors:

Chris Argyris, Albert Bandura, Jay B. Barney, Lee R. Beach, Kim Cameron, Michael R. Darby, Robert Folger, R. Edward Freeman, Michael Frese, J. Richard Hackman, Donald C. Hambrick, Michael A. Hitt, Anne S. Huff, Gary P. Latham, Edwin A. Locke, Henry Mintzberg, Terrence R. Mitchell, Richard T. Mowday, Ikujiro Nonaka, Greg R. Oldham, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Lyman W. Porter, Denise M. Rousseau, W. Richard Scott, Ken G. Smith, Barry M. Staw, Richard M. Steers, Victor H. Vroom, Karl E. Weick, Oliver E. Williamson, Sidney G. Winter, and Lynne Zucker