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A rapidly expanding number of organizations have begun to use high‐performance, completely digital networks, like the Internet, to coordinate activities and to develop products and services that serve very wide geographic areas. Now, primarily as a result of the Clinton Administration′s National Information Infrastructure initiative, the entire nation has begun to buzz with talk of the whys, wherefores, and how‐tos of making this way to doing business the rule rather than the exception of twenty‐first‐century life and enterprise. This paper surveys the politics and economics of the contemporary networking scene, and presents four general stratgies for making progress in the current climate of great change and uncertainty.

As an organization's ability to innovate cost‐effectively becomes evermore important so too does its need to develop a provocative metrics culture that both complements and reinforces its prototyping culture. In this extract from Serious Play: How the world's best companies simulate to innovate — a book Tom Peters says he wishes he had written — Michael Schrage shows how prototypes are stimulating new thinking about and new practices in innovation metrics.

This conceptual paper analyses cultural changes in the use of the concept of “play” in managerial ideologies and practices since the 1980s.

The paper uses Koselleck's approach to conceptual history in order to map how play is used in new ways by contemporary organisations. Organisational cultures characterised by “playfulness” and “fun” are used as technologies of self‐governance. It explores a variety of sources which show how this metamorphosis of play into a management tool has occurred.

The appropriation of play by management indicates a significant propensity in the contemporary culture of work. A more complex cultural process is unfolding in the ways in which play and work are recombined and intertwined: work organisations are increasingly places where people work more on themselves than they do on work. Work has become a central therapeutic stage set for engineering and managing souls, well‐being and even “happiness”. In an increasing number of cases, highly managed play settings make corporations resemble frenetic Dionysiac machines in which the Narcissistic modern self seeks an utopia of perpetual fun.

The paper proposes a novel approach to critiques of managerialism. Equally, it offers a new conceptual avenue for the historical analysis of managerial ideas. The result is an original interpretation of the way in which management practices function in their wider cultural contexts.

Highlight the management dilemma disruptive innovation poses and examine what the leading management theorists have to offer as a solution.

The author examines six leading theories of innovation and three alternatives to disruptive innovation.

The leading theories that try to solve the paradox of innovation don't work and the alternatives to disruptive innovation merely delay having to deal with the dilemma.

The author reviewed many theoretical approaches to innovation management and selected six for commentary.

The author argues that the theorists are looking at innovation in the wrong way. Because innovation is a paradox, the solution lies in rethinking the fundamental assumptions.

First article that examines the logic behind the leading disruptive innovation theories and refutes their advice.

The cure for stultifying complexity—redesign the organization so that information and information technology drive simplification.