How does a Dell engineer’s job change when they get to talk to customers? It opens up an information flow so they can co-create something better.

You have to earn the right to sell to somebody. That’s why Dell is building relationships with customers and becoming trustied advisors through the Dell TechCenter where enterprise level employees can connect with Dell technicians and engineers.

Dell’s TechCenter emerged from Dell’s recognition that they wanted to build a community specifically for enterprise-level IT administrators, a place where they could share ideas for building better solutions. From the beginning, Dell envisioned this as something much more than a customer support site. Instead, this was a place where enterprise-level IT administrators – whether or not they were Dell customers – could compare notes on issues directly related to their business, things like how to build better solutions using VMware, how to optimize storage, how to get more users on an exchange server. But it’s also, frankly, a place where technically savvy IT administrators can get away from the naïve questions of newbies and bond over shared complaints about the less adept folks they have to work with every day.

Today,...

Here at the MIX we believe that great ideas can come from anybody and anywhere in the world—as long as you're open and clever enough to ask for them. We're not sure how clever we are, but we're asking. We want YOUR great ideas when it comes to reinventing management. That's what the MIX is designed for—and that's why we've created the world's first Management Innovation Prize: the M-Prize .

Do you want to play a role in improving the technology of human accomplishment? If you have a real-world case of management innovation (a STORY) or a bold idea (a HACK) for overturning management-as-usual, here's your chance to make a difference and get recognized for it. The rules of the M-Prize are simple:

Who wins? Well, we all do. Every success...

Management is key to driving economic activity, and essential in today’s economic climate says Professor Julian Birkinshaw. His new book, Reinventing Management discusses that selecting a good management model can be critical in obtaining a competitive edge.

Read more on
London Business School's site .

Our excitement about MIX’s potential grows out of our own experience trying to generate new management ideas in unconventional ways.

HCL Technologies has experimented with a variety of ways to reinvent management – many of them described in a book by CEO Vineet Nayar, to be published by Harvard Business Press in June.

One is concept not described in the book is Unstructure. And what, you ask, is that?

Let’s back up a little. Evolution is necessary for organisms in nature to survive. The same is true for business. If companies are to sustain and evolve, they need to adopt a life-form that not only co-exists but also “co-evolves” with nature. That requires the individuals who represent business to relentlessly challenge the status quo, to engage in a global dialogue unfettered by corporate structures. It requires them – to use our newly coined term – to “unstructure” their thinking.

To help that process, we launched Unstructure, an ongoing discussion platform that takes the form of an “open to all” online forum[ www.unstructure.org] , various in-person gatherings around the world (including the upcoming Global Meet 2010 in Orlando), and an annual “white book” summarizing the discussions....

Every year or so we bring together hundreds of business and technology professionals and management thought leaders for several days of free-wheeling debate about the evolution of business and business management.
The gathering, called Global Meet , is part of something larger that we have dubbed Unstructure – an ongoing discussion platform that exists online, in publications, and in meetings around the world.
Unstructure’s theme for 2010 – including this year’s Global Meet, which occurs April 11-13 in Orlando – is the New Normal. Unstructure 2008 focused on Business Sustainability – how businesses could best deal with an increasingly threatening recession. The New Normal raises the question of how businesses can succeed in the aftermath of that recession amid a new set of challenges and opportunities.
The topics of discussion will attempt to cover various dimensions of the New Normal and ultimately produce a framework to help business decision makers navigate the changed environment. What makes the post-recession consumer tick? How must we redefine business risk? Is globalized innovation all it’s been cracked up to be? How are employee-employer relationships changing? How can a business maintain a pipeline of fresh leadership that will...

Mick Blowfield examines the recent Climategate scandal and explores the damage it can cause managers who are too easily mystified or misled.