Wavelength USA 2017 Pre-Reading Stimulus
Wavelength USA 2017 is fast approaching!
We have collated some interesting articles on the companies you are visiting and some other stuff we think you should know! We hope that these will provide some interesting stimulus and whet your appetite for the Wavelength adventures ahead. For those of you unlucky enough not to be on Wavelength USA 2017, get a taste of what we’ll be up to and there’s always next year….
Umqua
What the Best Change Leaders Know, and Why They’re So Hard to Copy
“…in a field that is about as traditional as it gets. Davis took over as CEO in 1994, when Umpqua was a tiny community bank with five branches in Roseburg, Oregon. It had $140 million in assets, was privately held (worth $20 million), and had a plain-vanilla strategy no different from thousands of other community banks. Today, Umpqua, headquartered in Portland, has 300 locations in five states, $25 billion in assets, and a stock-market value of more than $4 billion.”
Read full article here.
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
Your Customer Service Is Your Branding: The Ritz-Carlton Case Study
“When a company wants to update its branding, it usually looks to traditional branding considerations such as its logo, its use of typography, its colour palette, and possibly even whether it needs a new brand mascot…But if you want to understand what actually makes up your brand, and therefore what a rebranding would entail, you have to go a lot deeper than looking at your logo and colour choice.”
Read full article here. Rocketspace
San Francisco Workspace Launches in London and Fuels Race to Launch Trillion-dollar Tech Start-up
“’There will be a trillion dollar start-up sooner or later,’ says Duncan Logan, the Scottish founder of RocketSpace, the San Francisco-based technology ‘campus’ that is launching in London next month. The company has helped more than 1,000 firms, 18 of which are now ‘unicorns’ – private technology start-ups that have reached a valuation of $1 billion (£800 million) or more.”
Read full article here.
Netflix
Netfix re-defined American company culture – will it do the same abroad?
“It’s now all but certain that the company with $6.8 billion in revenue will achieve this goal: Netflix added a record 6.7 million subscribers in the first quarter (4.5 million from outside the U.S.), and the service is now available in more than 190 countries. But as Netflix aggressively expands internationally into new markets, the company is quickly learning what about their famed company culture translates abroad — and what doesn’t.”
Read full article here.
Great slideshow here on how Netflix uses it culture to help them focus on achieving excellence… Tesla
Tesla factory workers reveal pain, injury and stress: ‘Everything feels like the future but us’
“The appetite for Musk’s electric cars, and his promise to disrupt the carbon-reliant automobile industry, has helped Tesla’s value exceed that of both Ford and, briefly, General Motors (GM). But some of the human workers who share the factory with their robotic counterparts complain of grueling pressure – which they attribute to Musk’s aggressive production goals – and sometimes life-changing injuries.”
Read full article here.
Even Elon Musk Can’t Keep Tesla’s Stock From Hitting An All-Time High
“Most CEO’s take the position that their company’s stock price is too low. They inevitably talk about how large the company’s markets are and how the company will continue to grow. Elon Musk is the exception to the rule since he has mentioned multiple times over the past few years that Tesla’s market cap is too high (but he does tout how large the opportunity is and that the company could one day be valued as much as Apple).”
Read full article here.
Apple Co-Founder Bets on Tesla for Next Tech Breakthrough
“Apple may have long ago cemented its status as a technology titan, but Steve Wozniak thinks the next major technological innovation won’t come from the company he co-founded…One of the most innovative and obvious applications, according to Wozniak, is in self-driving vehicles. It is in this arena that the Apple co-founder said he is betting on Tesla, and its CEO Elon Musk, to develop the next “moonshot.”
Read full article here.
Parc
Palo Alto Research Center – formerly Xerox Parc – is the home of the modern computer. Here is an interview with its new CEO about innovation
“Speaking of how the organisation has changed, he says: ‘In 2002, Parc was spun off and we changed our business model from being a captive R&D centre for Xerox to being an innovation centre. We practice an open innovation business model.'”
Read full article here.
Other stuff….
LinkedIn Top Companies 2017: Where the world wants to Work now
“From Amazon to Allergan and Salesforce to Starbucks, this year’s LinkedIn Top Companies represent brands we know and love — as well as the firms that protect our devices and design our hip implants. These 50 companies span 21 industries and employ some 3.3 million workers across the U.S. They are where professionals want to work now.”
We’re lucky enough to be visiting 6 & 11 from this list.
When everyone is doing Design thinking, is it still a competitive advantage?
“…in practice, design thinking is a set of tools that can grow old with us. And I’d argue that in order to create sustained competitive advantage, businesses must be not just practitioners, but masters of the art.”
Read more here.
The Internet of Things
“Security issues may represent the greatest obstacle to growth of the Internet of Things. How can semiconductor companies help resolve them?”
Read more here.
Want to know more about our USA study tours? Click here to find out more about where we are going in 2016 and how to join us in 2018.