Copenhagen party flop
It is pretty obvious that the big party in Copenhagen finished like most big parties where there are lots of strangers with different agendas, in an unsatisfactory way for all. The nonsense of the Rudbott and his sidekick trying to ram through Parliament a unilateral...
Two ways to develop an innovation capability.
Innovation is about changing the status quo, doing something differently, going against the herd. You can make your intentions obvious by yelling about it, which is not often successful, or you can start changing the perspective of others by a process of intelligent...
Managing organisational ambiguity
In today's cross functional organisations, "Internal Marketing " has taken on a whole new meaning. In the past, functional battles were waged at the senior management level where the resource allocation decisions were made. Now, with cross functional teams and matrix...
Demand chain innovation pay-off
Turning a supply chain 180 degrees to become a demand chain is an inordinately difficult organizational challenge, not because it does not make sense, but because it requires organizations and the people in them to be able to see what has always been there, but from...
Accountability of marketing expenditure.
Too often marketing is seen as an expense, to be cut when things are tough. Often this is an outcome of a lack of accountability for results emerging from the investment made in marketing. It is in the interests of marketers to pro-actively take responsibility for...
B2B sales process evolution
Part of a small current assignment is looking for a simple ERP system for a SME client, now too big to rely on spreadsheets and simple accounting packages. Automatically, I went to the web, looking for user groups of similar software, and it got me thinking. The web...
Customer planning with the customer
You would not build a house without a plan, so why would you set out to manage your major customers without some sort of plan. For most businesses, their key customer base is the core of their commercial sustainability, so it is worth investing a few resources to...
The Demand camps and freemium
Demand for a whole host of products appears to be splitting into two camps, the price sensitive camp, and the risk averse camp. What other explanation can there be of the situation where you find people willing to pay for something that is on the net, just a "click"...
Portfolio management from the outside
Currently I am involved in a portfolio management exercise that covers brands, products, and projects on the books for a modest sized but rapidly growing business. A pretty standard exercise that most thoughtful businesses go through on a regular basis as a part of...
Social media, more than just a place to put party photos.
Social media is more than Facebook, Twitter and U-Tube, it is a suite of tools that enables rapid connections to be made, it creates and leverages knowledge, and enables very rapid development of an organisation of those who may be unconnected physically. Imagine,...