Banks miss the boat?
If I were managing a business in financial services, I would be asking myself if I had missed the second wave of the "net-boat" that is rapidly becoming a force in financial services. Banks and other financial institutions have reduced their costs enormously by...
Know what you do not know
A great irony amongst the many I see, is that the skills required to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognise what a right answer looks like. Put another way, our incompetence in a field masks our ability to recognise our own incompetence....
Collaboration tools
Ideo is an ideas factory, its stock in trade is ideas and the resulting products, that others commercialise. As such, it has been a lab or case study in how to innovate as they have grown. As a small business, they all knew each other, collaboration happened as a part...
Customers as your sales force
Word of mouth advertising has always been the best sort, people put great store in recommendations from those they trust. The extension of this recently has been what I call "word of mouse" advertising, enabled by the networking capabilities of the net. Taking the...
Green business initiatives of 2010.
The "green revolution" may be denied by many, failing in the Parliament, and not engaging consumers as their utilities bills increase, but it is happening around us anyway. The world is greening, despite the best efforts of many to avoid the issues. Because there is a...
What goes ’round comes ’round
Australian manufacturing has been decimated over the last few decades, and whilst there is no single reason for this impact, the determination of the major retailers to use the opening of global sourcing options to reduce their costs and compete on price has been a...
Intellectual Capital and the crowd.
The Microsoft business model has resisted all efforts to introduce open innovation practices into its markets, and many would argue, has stunted its growth and innovative potential as a result. How rapidly things can change, even when you resist from a position of...
Performance appraisal time…. Already?.
New year usually signals it is time for one of the most misused management tools to be pulled out of the box again, the dreaded performance appraisal. Done well, a system to manage the performance of employees, and their managers is one of the most powerful tools to...
More than, rather than more of.
20th century marketing tools have their place, in the 20th century; they will be progressively less effective as we progress through the 21st. Mass media, mass distribution, superficial differentiation, and all the rest are failing to excite in the 21st. You need to...
A thought for 2011.
On the eve of a new decade, it is perhaps useful to consider the changes that have occurred, recognise that the pace of change is still accelerating. For myself, and I suspect most of my readers, to even try and anticipate the changes to come in the next decade, on...