Lean operations undermine “offshoring?”.
Some time ago I mused that perhaps the worm was slowing if not turning, in relation to local manufacturing, rather than buying in from China as the default option. The crisis in the US, far worse than anything in this country, had to lead to structural change in the...
Creativity and Innovation.
Often these two terms are used interchangeably, as synonyms, but that are not. Creativity is a part of the process of innovation, an integral and key part, but nevertheless, just a part. It is, as Sir Ken Robinson so memorably said in his great TED talk, "Creativity...
Marketing & Demand Chain Transparency
The retailer Patagonia has as a part of its corporate values a reverence for the environment, it is a core part of their corporate values, and highly relevant to their target market. They wear their hearts on their electronic sleeves by opening up their demand chain...
Search Engine Optimisation paradox
There are lots of people flogging various digitally sophisticated SEO techniques, and they appear to be making a living. However, it seems to me that after all this time most key words worth having, have been taken, registered, and everyone is following similar SEO...
Social media coming of age
Social media to many "50 something's" who run most of our large businesses, is just code for wasting time that should be spent productively, but the reality is that social media is rapidly evolving into a potent business tool in several pretty fundamental ways. As we...
Drivers of Innovation
Pixar is amongst the great "innovation factories" of recent decades, along with PARC, 3M, Apple, and a very few others. Part of what makes Pixar so effective is a question answered in this McKinsey interview with Brad Bird, the director who won two Oscars with...
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...