Here’s a recommendation. One of the bloggers I like an awful lot is Dean Roger Martin of the University of Toronto’s Rotman Business School. He’s a prolific writer and blogger, and not afraid to take on conventional wisdom.
It should be said that he’s Canadian. That’s important because it reflects a certain very human perspective. Though Martin is a capitalist to the core, one way to think about his perspective on politics and business is that he’s slightly to the left of the American center. He’s a capitalist, but he also believes strongly in community responsibility and will take on rampant American capitalism. (My background in American intellectual history keeps surfacing. Can’t help it.)
He also has all the right American business background: he was co-head and director of Monitor, the strategy consulting firm headquartered in Cambridge, and, of course, holds an A. B. in economics from Harvard, along with its MBA.
BusinessWeek described him this way: Roger Martin is the leading proponent of design thinking at business schools. He doesn't mean merely teaching students about the importance of cool-looking stuff. He sees value in the designer's approach to solving problems -- the integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business. Martin's take on the future of management is shooting through innovation circles: "Businesspeople will have to become more 'masters of heuristics' than 'managers of algorithms."' What does that jargon mean? Martin is saying that corporate managers will have to become flexible problem-solvers rather than sophisticated number-crunchers if they're to be creative and successful. "With the forces of competition today, it will make the difference between success and mediocrity.
Martin has his own blog at rogermartin.com, and writes regularly for the dailybeast.com, and at hbr.org.
Martin really shows his thinking and his colors in his HBR blog, Why business has lost our respect.
His unique perspective should make him a natural for your blog roll.
