Design thinking: wasted hype?
Perhaps unfortunately I was on the receiving end of a rant about design thinking last week. It was a passionate, articulate, and informed rant, but a rant nevertheless. There is no doubt in my mind that design thinking is a competitively crucial capability. In this...
Another slice off the cut FMCG loaf.
Years ago there was a line in the film "Breaker Morant" where the breaker, played by Bryan Brown said of a young ladies virtue "another slice off a cut loaf will not be missed" . I never forgot the line, and have used it often, usually to make the point that a...
Don’t be boring!!
So much of life is boring, the same, dull, unemotional, repetitive, unimaginative, and missable crap….please miss me!!. About the most boring, pointless and annoying "presentations" I have ever seen, are the safety announcements on planes before take-off....
Value transformation in agriculture
The agricultural supply chain that has dominated the way we get our food has evolved as a fragmented, opaque series of transactions that occur to fill the gap between the producer and the consumer. Many of these transactions add no value to the consumer, rather, they...
8 Sales prospect categories
Automation of the marketing and sales "funnel" has many productivity advantages, so long as the implementation of the software works, which is always harder than the smiling assurances of the automation salespeople would indicate. However, there is one benefit that is...
The Value Gap
Engaged in an innovation portfolio management assignment a while ago, we struggled to define why one project should continue to suck up resources in preference to many other seemingly worthy opportunities. We tried all sorts of models, financial and strategic, and...
Algorithms are the new gatekeepers
There have always been gatekeepers, those people who make the decisions about what you see, what you have the opportunity to buy, and weather or not you can participate. The supermarket buyer determines what goes on the shelves, a faceless committee determines what...
The old duck metaphor.
A story on myself. I am in the middle of a small project that requires considerable collaboration amongst people not used to collaborating. Always challenging. In a conversation over the weekend with an old mate, wise in the ways of start-ups, he offered me a gentle...
Modern marketing Trinity and the glue
Sick of the avalanche of unsolicited email coming in to your inbox? Most of us are, and my kids have reacted by virtually turning email off, and using social media to communicate with those in their circles. The volumes however, continue to go up, as email simply...
Simplifying innovation
Innovation takes up a lot of my time, and whilst successfully bring a new product to market is a huge task, challenging as it does all sorts of personal, organisational and financial barriers, it can nevertheless be broken down into a few, simple two dimensional...