How do we measure and value resilience?
'Resilience' is a word we are hearing a lot these days and will hear more today. On this ANZAC day 2024, there will be a lot of words sprayed around that amount to acknowledgement of the resilience of ANZAC troops. They clung to the cliffs on the...
The hidden cancer of your battery-powered device
Suddenly, everyone is interested in batteries. When mobile devices took off after the launch of the iPhone, the demand for batteries with a longer life than the then existing chemistry could deliver took off as well. Panasonic held a dominating position in this...
Should we be ‘wisdom leveraging’ baby boomers?
The following is a post that I drafted at the beginning of the Corona epidemic but did not post. It is a personal reflection on ageism, that becomes increasingly relevant as older, retired workers I see around me now going bonkers from boredom. Few want the...
Should Dr Chalmers listen to Dr Kahneman in framing the coming budget?
We lost an intellectual giant last week, Daniel Kahneman. Psychologist and Nobel prize winner in economics, he along with long term collaborator Amos Tversky, created what has become known as 'Behavioural Economics’. So what you say. In 2010 Kahneman...
Does analysis give you the truth?
It seems that 'the truth' is a malleable concept. We are overwhelmed by opinion masquerading as fact, economic and social models designed to deliver a predetermined outcome, managed correlation equated to causation, and market research that asks the...
The only way to solve a problem.
The only way to solve a problem, particularly a significant one is to understand the cause of the problem and eliminate that cause. Rip the band-aid off. Taking a short-term action to address a symptom of a problem is just kicking the can down the road....
The beauty of monopoly
Democratic governments have always spent time talking about creating regulations to control monopolies, or at least the profits that can accrue to the monopolist. In Australia, it has only been talk, and choices to sell public natural monopoly assets to...
Are the two FMCG gorillas at a crossroads?
The retail landscape is changing, even as the two retail gorillas hunker down and set about extracting more from the current model. Following are a few of the macro trends I see that will continue to erode the current model that has been so successful....
Four strategic tasks for the owner of a successful SME.
Success of an SME means they have crossed that shark filled river where most SME's fall over. They have sufficient scale to employ functional personnel to address the day to day running of the business, and are returning the cost of capital and a bit...
What is the ‘right’ price for your product?
This is one of the most common questions asked, particularly when configuring a new product. The 'right ' price will be the pricing model that delivers superior value to customers while delivering optimal returns to the seller. Developing a pricing model...