“Values”. What does it mean?
"Values" is a widely misused term, one that is often a key break out subject at the annual senior management off site session, subject to sage pronouncements, then usually ignored. Having participated, and more recently facilitated many of these sessions over the...
Innovation in Afghanistan.
Straying from my usual "beat" I read the Rolling Stone article that caused the downfall of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. It seems to me that he was fired, not because he was insubordinate, but because he failed to manage the politics...
The power of candor
Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, the worlds largest manufacturing company recently made some unflattering remarks about the Chinese and US leadership, and has been widely pilloried. What happened to freedom of speech? We seem to have become immune to the facts, or one persons...
Fact and hyperbole.
It is often pretty easy recognise marketing hyperbole when we see it, particularly in a category where we have some knowledge. However, in a category where we have no knowledge, it probably is not as easy to pick the fact from the flummery, so even some of the more...
Statistics and thinking
A statistical analysis should give a black and white answer, and it does, but the answer is only as good as the information that is used, and the manner in which it is used. It follows then that the application of analytical tools should be in the context of a way of...
To improve health, get Lean
In the last federal budget there was money allocated to the task of digitising health records allocated, and there was some pretty unedifying comment on the amount, the progress to date, and the implications on privacy. What dross. Australian health costs are huge...
The original takes the premium
The easier it is to quantify, the less it will be worth. This appears to be a pretty harsh judgment, but the reality is that if you can quantify and standardise something, it can be copied. This is the case, until you consider the value created by subtle differences,...
Peak oil?
We are pretty familiar with the notion of "Peak Oil" the point at which the consumption of oil is greater than the rate of discovering new sources, giving us a doomsday outcome at a calculatable point in the future, but is it such a new idea?? William Jevsons an...
Walk and talk marketing
Those who say one thing and do another have always been at risk of being found out. Now, the capabilities of the net make it virtually inevitable, with the downside risk to your brand being multiplied by the probability of being found out. BP has spent millions on PR,...
Proximity enables engagement
As a group, you may not like something. A style of music, a literary style, a type of product, a group of people, but when you see one of the group individually, and find you like it, or them, the rest of the genre becomes less confronting. It is the same with brands,...