“That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back”
Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Macmillan 2011
“Given the rising innovative power and knowledge that can so easily move from the bottom up now—the power to invent, design, manufacture, improve, and sell products—and not just from the top down, Carlson sees the following mega-trend barreling down the highway: “More and more, innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb. Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart.” Therefore, “the sweet spot for innovation today is moving down.” We call this Carlson’s Law: Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb. Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. This makes it all the more important for every worker to be a creative creator or creative server and for every boss to understand that the boss’s job is to take advantage of Carlson’s Law—to find ways to inspire, enable, and unleash innovation from the bottom up, and then to edit, manage, and merge that innovation from the top down to produce goods, services, and concepts.  Click here 

“Carlson’s Law” – an interview with SRI International President & CEO Dr. Curtis Carlson
SFGATE August 29, 2011

Todd Miller  Click here

Thomas Friedman On What’s Required To Rebuild A Once Strong Brand
Forbes 10/19/2011

Allen Adamson
“AA: In your book you refer to this dynamic as “Carlson’s Law,” which speaks to the role of management, whether CMO, CFO, or CEO, in our hyper-connected, fast-moving workplace. Tell me more about this.

TF:  Carlson’s Law – our term, not his – is that things that come from the top down are slow and dumb, and things that comes from the bottom up are smart, but chaotic. The role, actually the challenge, for management is to find the right level of top-down and bottom-up – which is the sweet spot for innovative solutions. And the sweet spot is moving down because it’s the people who deal with the customers day in and day out who know what’s actually happening out there.”  Click here

The Tech Beat: Businessweek Archives
Steve Hamm July 26, 2006
“Carlson’s deceptively simple thesis for bringing discipline to innovation makes solid sense–and could make a difference for companies that, indeed, are under the gun to innovate or die.”  Click here

SRI’s Curt Carlson Wrote the Book on Innovation
Innovation
Dean Takahashi: August/September 2010

“You ask them (an employee in a company) to describe their innovation system. If they can’t describe it, they don’t have one, no matter what the CEO says.” Click here

Innovating the Future
SRI’s Curt Carlson and Bill Mark in Conversation with John Markoff of the NYT Click here

Center for Innovation and Change Leadership
Robert DeFillippi, Professor of Management and Director of The Center for Innovation & Change Leadership at Suffolk Universitys Sawyer Business School, speaks with Dr. Curtis R. Carlson, who had just received the Suffolk University Award for Innovative Excellence.  Click here and here

Video interview on Dailymotion with Curtis R. Carlson,
Click here