Amanda Lang on How to Get Ahead in Business

By Jonathon Gatehouse via Maclean’s
Monday, October 22, 2012

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Amanda Lang, CBC’s senior business correspondent and the co-host of The Lang & O’Leary Exchange, knows a few things about reinvention. After originally setting out to become an architect, she ended up as a print journalist instead, and later made a successful leap to the small screen. Her new book, The Power of Why, examines the relationship between innovation and success, both in business and in people’s personal lives.

Q: Why a book on innovation? It doesn’t seem like that novel a topic.

A: Productivity—as I spend time persuading our national news desk—is not a boring subject. It is the key to our economic prosperity. And we’re failing miserably at it—it’s tragic. So for years now I’d been giving these speeches about productivity and afterwards people would come up and say, ‘Great, now you’ve scared us to death. But what can we do about it?’ And I didn’t have a response. So I started to dig into it and what I discovered is that there is an easy answer and it’s innovation. If we can find a way to spark more innovation we’ll get greater productivity.

Q: One of the things your book argues is that we tend to view innovation too narrowly. What’s your definition? Read full article >>