clair015

About a year ago, a journalist asked me: “The current crisis; you could see it as the failure of corporate governance in general, and boards of directors in specific. What radical new ideas do we see coming out of business schools in terms of how we could organise governance and boards better?” I answered him what I thought was the truth: “Ehm…. not much really”. Last week, I was in Prague, for the Annual Meeting of the Strategic Management Society ; a bunch of business school professors talking about their research. I attended a session which featured a panel of five senior professors who specialise in governance and boards. I couldn’t resist asking them the same question as the journalist had posed to me: “What radical new ideas do you have in terms of how we could perhaps organise governance and boards better?” Their answer was basically the same as mine, with equal levels of eloquence: “Ehm… not much really”. In fact, after a slightly stunned silence, one professor replied to me: “...

“ Steve Jobs – the man was fallible ” is what I wrote in October 2011. I guess it seems pretty innocent now – although there may some remnants of people who still feel offended by it – but, believe it or not, one year ago it actually triggered a small barrage of hate mail . Since then, I have read or heard others describe him as a terrorist, an asshole , and a psychopath  (which, given that many US presidents have been shown to have had psychopathic tendencies may not even be unlikely). Hey, all I said was that he was “fallible”! But all these people, in the wake of calling him a terrorist, an asshole, or a psychopath, without exception, also described him as a genius. And a person who built the greatest company on earth, changing all of our daily lives in the process. But, in fact, I am not so sure of that either… I don’t mean this as some lame attempt at a final insult – suggesting that he wasn’t even responsible for building this great company – but as a genuine question: Would...