C. Minard's Depiction of Napoleon's Invasion of Moscow and Russia in 1812 and 1813

I recently finished reading Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin,” which is a great introductory and reference book on communicating with pictures.  I also spotted Seth Godin’s blog post commenting on this NYTimes post and its validity.  And last but not least, one of my favorite examples of multiple dimensions of data plotted on a single illustration is explained by Edward Tufte.  I mention all of these examples because it’s easy to make a bad picture, but not too hard to make a really good one.

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The minivan. The sport-utility vehicle. The modern take on American “muscle” cars. These are all areas that Chrysler has innovated in and marketed well over the past 4 decades. However, being the smallest of the Detroit “Big Three,” Chrysler has also had a troubled history of keeping up from a business perspective. It’s been through 2 bankruptcies, 3 mergers/acquisitions, and a variety of economic conditions that have ranged from great to grinding. So why does Chrysler matter, particularly from a product development perspective?

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An interesting article came up recently in the NYTimes that talked about how management models and practices have evolved, as opposed to the more commonly examined lens, as the original author put it, of focusing on the lessons to be gained for more precise economic policy and theory. In short, Mr. Lohr points to an insight by John Hagel III, the co-director of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, as particularly interesting. Read the rest of this entry »