Bertrand Duperrin makes an interesting analogy in his post Will Adam Smith drive business in the future ? His take :

(…) Opposing a top-down and directive model an emerging relying on the existence of an “ invisible hand” that, in the same way as Adam’s Smith theory in economics, would make people personal actions and choices contribute to a collective purpose without the need of organizing anything.

I guess the difference between the enterprise and the market is that within the former, people (ideally) are working with the clear goal of collectively creating value and making the company richer. While in the latter the goal is to individually create value to make oneself richer.

Bertrand then sets a table comparing Enterprise 1.0 (strict), 2.0 (anarchy) and Rationalized 2.0 (ideal organisation).

My take : Bertrand’s Rationalized 2.0 is Enterprise 2.0 with a strong and clear leadership. The invisible hand in Adam Smith Enterprise is the leadership. Read more »

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There’s talk on the web about “thought leadership” (I prefer the term “thought inspiration”), so I felt like writing something about what sources, podcasts this time, inspire thinking with me. An obvious example would be TED, which I think most of us know, but today I’ll list a few that I listen to regularly, which you might not.

Here goes:

• The New Yorker’s Out Loud series: I find myself listening to a variety of topics through this 10 min. podcast, from Barbar the elephant and how its idea was inspired by French colonialism; to the murder of Russian investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya; to the history of (the horrible) auto-tune, which can make anyone a vocalist.
• Big Ideas, which is a Canadian educational broadcast on iTunes, and basically showcases some excellent lectures on topics ranging from: the sense and senselessness of stretching; to Naomi Klein on her book, The Shock Doctrine; to author Robert J. Sawyer on why Star Wars shouldn’t belong to the science fiction genre and is actually quite a devolution to that genre.
• Scene Unseen, in which two students of film go back and forth on movies that came out this week, as well as picking some pretty damn interesting DVDs to watch. A must-listen for film-lovers!

Of course, there’s also iInnovate, Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, This American Life, and the, now finished, Game Theory podcasts, some of which I’ve written about before on this blog, and which are most definitely worth checking out.

As might be clear from this selection, to me, thought inspiration (or leadership) can come from all kinds of directions, not just technology or business expertise.

Have some podcasts that you find interesting? List them in the comments!

Vincent

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