Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
How to Future-Proof Your Organization Alison Randel, The Ready
I’ve been a fan of The Ready, a boutique consulting firm since the days they were known as Undercurrent. In this article, Alison Randel argues that middle managers need to have greater autonomy. They need to move from manager to coach, from enforcer to entrepreneur, from supervisor to problem solver and from steward to connector.
DevOps At Nike: There Is No Finish Line IT Revolution
Nike has been making headlines this week but this article isn’t about advertising. Rather, this article discusses something less glamorous, devops. The company embarked upon a “digital transformation” and there are some great insights into how they shifted. They in-sourced a lot of the development, pushed on open source and employed Agile. Ultimately, you can understand Nike changed their strategy when it came to technology and there was a clear benefit.
Bezos Unbound: Interview With The Amazon Founder On What He Plans To Conquer Next Forbes
Amazon briefly hit $1 trillion in market cap this past week and this interview with Jeff Bezos is timely. It is a bit of a puff piece but the article does a good job of showcasing all the different areas Amazon is competing in. The scariest thing? It feels like they are just getting started.
“Marketing Myopia” Myopia Henry Mintzberg
Mr. Mintzberg is a legend and I had the honor of meeting him briefly. In this article, he rails against the notion of marketing myopia, companies that want to define themselves in a sphere that is larger than their own without understanding their core capabilities. He is just as incisive and insightful as ever.
Why Venture Capital Is No Longer a ‘Lifecycle Business’ Fortune
Fortune interviewed the founder of Engineering Capital, Ashmeet Sidana, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing on technical risk. Sidana argues that venture capital is trending towards a more specialized fund approach. Venture will change from being a lifecycle business to a stage-specific business. That is one of the fundamental changes that will happen. This will affect the strategy of every firm — whether they’re focused just on seed like Engineering Capital or whether they are traditional investors like Sequoia or Benchmark
