The challenge of the first
Ever thought about how markets happen, how the emerge, how they grow? A new market has to have a first customer, most marketers look to the value proposition, the competitive landscape, the distribution channels, the mechanics of manufacturing, the service offering,...
SME’s need to adapt or die
Being a supplier to FMCG retailers is really, really hard. The two gorillas are demanding, unreasonable, and often just plain stupid, at least that is a suppliers assessment. If you asked the retailers, they would just be doing their jobs, maximising the revenue and...
Collaboration and the cost of yesterday
Ronald Coase was first to recognise and articulate the economic relationship between individuals and the co-coordinating structures necessary to organise the work of individuals, coining the term "Transaction costs" in his 1937 essay "The nature of the firm" Coase...
Too busy!!
Busy, busy, busy, everyone is too busy to do anything important. We have had a reshuffle of the federal cabinet, busy people, dedicating limited time to gay marriage and other such important matters, a client of mine is so busy some the basic management stuff simply...
Retail hat dance
From bricks and mortar, to the web, and now to mobile apps. What is next for retailing? There was a blue last week between the current and previous MD of David Jones, about who wore the blame for DJ's being slow into e-selling, billionaire Gerry Harvey is often...
“2 X 1” strategy matrix
A variation on the classic Boston Consulting model of product portfolio management the classic 2 X 2 matrix, dogs, cows, stars, and, and, and, everybody forgets the fourth category. Usually it is depicted with a "?" in the matrix, and records those projects that are...
Costs of risk.
The formula for risk analysis of innovation could be written as: Likelihood of failure X Cost of failure. Therefore, in a traditional hierarchical organisation, there is an ingrained reluctance to take risks and perhaps fail because of the financial cost, whereas in...
11 requirements for Collaboration co-ordinators
Currently, I am in the middle of a project that seeks to find a way to motivate a collaboration between a group of industry and government bodies on a pressing problem. None of these bodies have a culture that welcomes external collaboration, they often seem to have...
Overnight success.
An idea is the outcome of all that has gone before, resulting in the "eureka" moment, the equivalent of the singers overnight success after 10 years of work in obscurity, playing smokey bars, gaining experience and honing skills. Usually, ideas emerge from relative...
3 requirements for Respect
Respect is a word bandied about a fair bit, but what does it really mean in an organisational sense? It seems to me that respect is rarely built by an avoidance of conflict, rather by the willingness to meet it head on with three behavioral characteristics: Using...