Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
When you learn something new, when you have a new insight into the world, when you figure out how to do something that you couldn't do before, do you share that insight or do you try to keep it to yourself? If you are a big business, you probably try to keep that to yourself. … Continue reading Innovation Openness
In his book Deep Work Cal Newport shares a story about Clay Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term disruptive innovation. Its an idea I like quite a bit, especially since it is a big concept in healthcare right now, and I focused quite a bit on health policy and dabbled slightly … Continue reading The Basics of Disruptive Innovation
One of the things I am secretly fascinated by is workplace design in our modern knowledge work economy. I'm not so interested in where the copy room is located, how the office kitchen is built out, or what furniture/decorations are around, but the big high level design question: where will our employees sit to do … Continue reading Workplace Design
The last few weeks I have been thinking quite a bit about chain restaurants. At some point in the recent past, I started to really dislike your typical chain restaurant. Perhaps my wife and I were gifted too many gift cards to Darden Restaurants, but I find myself feeling slightly disdainful toward chains and longing … Continue reading Chaos and Innovation
There is a story that I hear from time to time in different contexts. Depending on the context, it is framed as either positive or negative, with different ideas about what our future holds and how we should behave. The story manages to hit political and social identities, aspirations and fears for the future, and … Continue reading To Wear a Sweater or Not?
In The New Localism, Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak discuss the elements needed for cities to continue to grow as economic engines of modern economies. The United States currently has a handful of dynamic cities across the country which are powering the national economy. San Francisco (really the Bay Area as a whole and Silicon … Continue reading Collaborative Governance
One of the case studies presented by Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak in their book The New Localism is Pittsburgh, PA, which has merged academic research institutions with business industry and supportive public policy. Pittsburgh has two major research universities within a block of each other, The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Experiences … Continue reading When Disciplines Collide
A lot of work from both the Brookings Institute and from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University comes across my radar. Oftentimes the perspectives of the two think-tank centers differ quite a bit, but one area where they align is on local economies. Brookings (a center-left think tank) and Mercatus (a Libertarian leaning academic … Continue reading Dynamic Economies
"While competing in this global economy requires new thinking, many cities continue to pursue zero-sum economic development strategies that subsidize stadia and steal businesses rather than incent innovation," write Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak in The New Localism. Our world's globalized economy scares a lot of people. Add to globalization new technological innovations and the … Continue reading Competing in a Global Economy
During my Masters in Public Administration, I had a seminar class about theories of the policy process. One of the theories that I enjoyed was policy innovation and diffusion theory in which a policy introduced in one jurisdiction gained traction and was subsequently introduced and adopted within another jurisdiction. Networks, physical proximity, and other characteristics … Continue reading Policy Innovation and Diffusion at the City Level