Promoting innovation, from boss-less offices to tweaking big data

Sometimes innovation begets innovation. This week, check out a gaming company that took the rather innovative step of eliminating hierarchy in the workplace and found it led to — innovation. On a similar note, see how Harvard’s dabblings in big data have led to some innovative results. If that’s not inspiring enough, this week’s roundup also includes some advice on how to keep your best employees and help shape them into leaders.

• Bosses? We don’t need no stinking bosses. A peek inside gaming company Valve, where a lack of hierarchy and other unconventional business practices are promoting innovation.
• If you happen to be a boss, however, check out this advice on how to retain high-potential employees. Turns out, sometimes it’s the managers of those employees who need coaching.
• And speaking of promoting innovation, Harvard this week released “big data for books” — metadata on more than 12 million books, videos, maps and more from its 73 libraries. The university is looking forward to seeing how the information is used. They’ve already gotten a small glimpse: A group of hackers, given one day and information on 600,000 items, created such things as visual timelines of when ideas became broadly published.
• In a workforce increasingly reliant on management skills, these experts weigh in on why IT leaders of today shouldn’t forget about fostering leadership skills in the next generation.
• Got Mac users in your organization? You might want to watch where they’re sticking their USB drives.