If you'll indulge me, I'd like to give a little face time to the Marissa Mayer -- oh, let's call it a "situation."
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Some folks (both men and women) are asking whether we'd be having this conversation if the still-new Yahoo CEO were a man. I think we would. But I also think a lot fewer of us would be having this conversation and it would be a lot more "inside baseball"-- in other words, a story left to your nittier, grittier business and technology media outlets. Five hundred people at the company that handles my personal email can't work from home anymore? Boohoo! If Mayer weren't the mother of a new baby, would every radio and TV talk show, magazine, newspaper, and website give a hooey about Yahoo's work-from-home policy? I'm going to have to give that a big "uh, no." And that, right there, is where the kernel of the real issue lies -- no one cares about Yahoo. That's what Mayer needs to change.
So, this week's Searchlight leads off with the outlet that addresses the crux of that issue. Yes, the calls of hypocrisy and being out of touch are not without merit, but building a personal nursery for your baby next to your office isn't going to influence Yahoo's future. Trying a different, albeit unpopular, way of working just might.
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As blogger Dominic Basulto said in The Washington Post's innovation blog, the right corporate culture is what leads to innovation. Right now, Yahoo's culture is wrong. Maybe if these "Yahoos" spend a little more time together, they'll come up with greater innovations than changing my email interface every other month.
Finding inspiring feats of innovation really isn't difficult. In fact, look no further than this week's second item: a video camera created by MIT scientists that can "see the invisible." If you're feeling overly humbled, hang in there: There are a couple of important examples of tech failures too.
- To be sure, it touches many topics, but in the end, Marissa Mayer's memo heard round the world is about a business decision.
- Anyone looking for true innovation in technology would do well to make like Good Will Hunting and spend some time hanging around MIT.
- All the antivirus products in the world won't guarantee your network's safety. Unfortunately, this is not hyperbole, according to a recent cybersecurity study by independent testing company NSS Labs.
- The consequences of taking big data out of context can be really sickening.
- I could tell you that in June 2012, the number of objects stored in Amazon S3 reached one trillion and how that relates to other eye-popping stats, but it's way cooler coming from this cloud storage infographic.
- What do Monty Python and the Holy Grail and data analysis have in common? If you say "nerds," you're only partially correct and I encourage you to read this blog post.
Let us know what you think about the story; email Karen Goulart, Features Writer.
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