Creating the Center for Edge Innovation

Another example I mentioned is our research center. We have this belief that thinking needs to be at the edge in order to really ultimately add value to our clients. So we formed the Center for Edge Innovation. And this center is helping technology companies shape their market place versus being shaped by market forces. So to be out in front and actually leading in the change instead of following market trends. And that’s the basis of what the center is really studying. Our center leaders are responsible for over 500 papers and six bestselling books. And I want to tell you a little bit about them because this is again, one of my examples of being able to innovate inside a big organization. So we went out and decided we wanted to find some of the most eminent folks in technology to bring into our center. So how many of you have heard of John Seely Brown? Anybody? A few of you? OK. So John Seely Brown co-leads our center. John Seely Brown was the Chief Scientist at Xerox for many years and he ran Xerox Park right here in Palo Alto. And you guys know that Xerox Park was responsible for many of the innovations that we take for granted even today in Silicon Valley. So John, or he's referred to as JSB, ran Park and now he co-leads our center. John Hagel was a partner in Mackenzie for a long time. He was a very prolific writer, speaks a lot and really comes more from the business angle and JSB comes more from the technology angle. So the merger of those two is a really great combination. And then Lang Davison was the editor of the Mackenzie Quarterly for 12 years and we were able to hire him away and the three of them make up the leadership in our center. Their work can be found in BusinessWeek.com every month. They're in Fortune, Forbes and that periodical on the other side of the country, Harvard Business Review. And so they're very well respected for their writing. They've a lot of active blogs as well. Their ideas are not just the subject of papers ...