Joelle Nebbe-Mornod's List: agile project and team management

• A mismatch thus exists between the way companies are organized for the effective operations of their current offerings, and the emerging needs of their customers and the marketplace in general. The situation is not much different in universities, where a similar mismatch exists between legacy disciplines and organizational structure, on the one hand, and the changing nature of knowledge and the talent required to address the world’s emerging, multidisciplinary infrastructure, economic and societal problems.

• technologists and scientists, - are out there in the real world, in the marketplace, in areas like healthcare delivery, energy and the environment, systemic risk management and so on. So, if the toughest problems that inspire the biggest breakthroughs are out there in the marketplace, then that is where the research people should personally go, and hopefully come up with innovative solutions to the problems, as well as new ideas that might lead to fundamental advances in sciences and technology.
• But, how about tapping into the collective wisdom of the employees in the trenches, the best of which are surely full of ideas on how to improve the products, services, processes, business models and policies of the company? No research lab can ever make up for that kind of real world knowledge. How can you somehow get those employees seriously involved in the innovation and market strategies of the company - and through them, - also get access to the ideas of the clients and partners they deal with every day. How do you do that without taking them out of their daily jobs, - which few of them would want anyway? If the key to their expertise and ideas is that they live where the rubber meets the road, removing them from the marketplace action seems self-defeating.
• I have become convinced that most highly talented people, - especially those destined for high management and technical positions, - are essentially ambidextrous when it comes to their work. They are able to do their day jobs with flying colors, while simultaneously participating in innovation activities, as part of virtual teams working with their equally talented colleagues across the business and around the world on complex, strategic company problems.

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