Bill Gates goes nuclear.
Largely we agree that there is a problem with the production of CO2, and that we need to do something, the argument is about what, when, how much, and who is paying. It is a bit like insurance, you pay a bit now to mitigate the risk of ruinous pain in the future. Bill...
Leverage not control.
I suspect neither Coke or Mentos planned for the tsunami of videos on Utube and others demonstrating the effect of a Mentos in a bottle of coke. Nevertheless, it happens, and it remains to be seen if the popularity of coke-bombs impacts the brands in any way. Blend-it...
Why, not how or what.
For years there have been libraries written on the value of business purpose, vision, mission, and values, consultants have made a good living out of running workshops and managing implementation projects. Now, at a TED event, all the complication has been stripped...
Bespoke social network apps
What happens next? Mega platforms for social networking have overtaken many of our lives, from email, facebook, twitter, and the rest. All have the common trait of being "mass" platforms, designed to be used by anyone, with very modest generally available...
Marketing as an ecosystem
Marketing is much more than a menu to be picked from, it is an evolution of characteristics specific to a purpose a place and a competitive environment. Some is visible above ground, most is invisible, underground, the roots of the ecosystem, but the needs are...
Another management paradox
All species, including humans, are inherently adaptive, yet the organisations humans inhabit are by their nature resistant to change. The management challenge of the future is to figure out how to build an organisation that evolves sufficiently quickly to be ahead...
Outside the box
What a cliché this has become, and you hear it all the time, like most cliches, it has become so common, we need to go a step further. Outside the box, outside the room, outside the building? How far outside is far enough?. Surely it is more a matter of thinking...
“Democtratising knowledge” in demand chains
Democratising knowledge, isn't this a lovely term! I have heard it used on a number of occasions recently, and it came up again in an extraordinary TED presentation by Stephen Wolfram . In just two words it nails the complex changes happening in numerous ways in our...
Are they really friends?
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorised that the maximum number of people any individual could maintain a relationship with was 150, which has become known as Dunbar's number. It reflects the cognitive maximum for someone to know everyone in a group, and to be aware of...
Has the web has changed category behavior?
Running a qualitative consumer research group recently, one of the participants surprised me with a metaphor that made great sense. She said that the web had taught her to "forage", her term, looking for stuff of interest, checking out the Sku's available in a...