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...
Thee secrets of successful innovation
Successful innovation rarely comes from a formulaic approach where the marketing department has a brainstorm, prioritises the outcomes, then they progress through a "gated" process culminating in a launch. Usually it comes from three sources: A sufficiently close...
Don’t listen to just your customers
Another of the management paradoxes littered through this blog , and this one is counter to almost everything I have ever written. In the context of true innovation, listening to customers exclusively leads you to adjusting, improving, repackaging what you currently...
Healthy deckchairs
It is a scary thought, but roughly 30% of our economy (Public sector expenditure) is subject to the disciplines of neither the market or democracy. Bureaucracies are institutions that thrive on complexity, it is far easier to make an existing process more complex,...
Transactions and obligations in a demand chain
Isn't it interesting, when we pay for something, we have an expectation of what that transaction will deliver to us, but there is little sense of lingering obligation. However, if we just do something for someone, any small piece of kindness or consideration, it...