Posts Tagged Under: research

Micro-Goals: How to Hit Targets, Learn, and Reorganize

Micro-goals are a novel concept in strategy. They allow a tactical segmentation of organizational plans. In a sense, it’s like re-creating your organization at a micro-scale.
Micro-goals are a way for your organization to learn. You use them to determine what outcomes are achievable by a small, very special, task force. Then you measure the progress of such a team and learn as much as you can.
Micro-goals, or how to hit targets, learn, and reorganize

Read More

Mocca Latte Anyone? Science Suggests Coffee Helps You Live Longer

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

The debate about coffee consumption posing health risks may be closer to a definitive answer following a 30-year-long study that ended in favor of the practice. Surprisingly, the rule seems to apply even to decaf drinkers. Grab a cup and read on.

The data gathered for the research was obtained from 167.944 women and 40,557 men as part of three separate surveys, with 19,524 deaths occurring in the female ranks and 12,432 in the opposite camp. Cause of death was obviously a key metric, considering that the research focused on a consumable whose effects on health are regularly called into question. So here’s what they uncovered

Read More

Research Uncovers Strong Correlation Between Competition and Creativity

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Collaboration has some undeniable perks, from brainstorming to actually building upon an idea. But what about creating things that don’t require the input of an entire team? A logo, for instance. Can the rivalry between a bunch of designers racing to draw the best design for one paying company actually improve the outcome? As it turns out, it can. But only when the competition dial is turned to just the right level

Read More

The Secret Sauce of Innovation Is Not So Secret

Photo by Riala on Pixabay

Innovation doesn’t grow on trees, granted. But it’s not that impossible to achieve either. Most people believe it takes genius, luck, and and huge capital investments. Actually, it’s much simpler than that.

Professors Chen Chen and Yangyang Chen of Monash University, along with Edward J. Podolski with La Trobe University have conducted a joint study to determine how employee treatment leads to corporate innovative success. Their findings, hardly surprising, confirm the often-ignored importance of morale in the workplace, a matter we consider paramount here at 4PSA

Read More

All Companies Want to Innovate (As Long As They Don’t Have To Change)

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Not too long ago, disruption was something found solely on the agenda of big enterprises. In recent times, small businesses have begun to exercise innovation as a way to stand out from the crowd. According to the 2015 State of Global Innovation report by Imaginatik, almost every company in every industry has put innovation at the top of their to-do list. However, not all of them can cope with the implications.

The service innovation company conducted the study with the goal of assessing just how disruptive today’s mid- and large-sized organizations have become. The surveyed industries, (with the percentage of companies polled in that field of work) include

Read More

Customers Want Complaints Answered Where They Were Posted

Photo by Neringa Šidlauskaitė on Unsplash

Funny story: I decided to change my ringtone to a real song by a real band, so I looked up “how to change ringtone on iOS.” I landed on a 1,000-word post that explained the nightmarish process. After decidedly sticking with my stock tunes, I felt like venting a little on Twitter.

Apple has always made it unnecessarily difficult to add and extract files to and from an iOS device, especially ringtones. It has to do with the stronghold on the content routed through iTunes. While it’s fair towards the artists, it’s excruciatingly frustrating for the end user. Surely there’s a way to please both parties. Alas, they’ve yet to implement it

Read More

Need Innovation? Foster Curiosity First

9 out of 10 workers acknowledge that it’s the curious person in the office that will most likely bring ideas and get promoted. But only 22% of workers describe themselves as curious, and only 12% say their employers are encouraging a strong desire to know or learn something. No wonder innovation doesn’t grow on trees!

Read More

Your Office Chair Isn’t The Silent Killer It’s Said to Be

Photo by Michał Kubalczyk on Unsplash

Sit-stand workstations are said to provide a solution to the sedentary lifestyle of office workers, but new research suggests that sitting isn’t directly correlated to mortality risks, as previous studies have claimed. And standing has almost the same results as sitting, the researchers say.

The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, acknowledges that sitting behaviors have long been linked with increased risk of all-cause mortality. However, it cautions that previous studies have examined single indicators of sitting or all sitting behaviors combined, whereas the current examination looks to enhance the evidence base by looking at type-specific prospective associations of five different sedentary behaviors (including standing) as well as total sitting

Read More