Q: What do you think is the biggest source of Innovation? A: ….
A gem of insight from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella happened in the last minute of this interview by HBR editor Adi Ignatius: 'What do you think is the biggest source of innovation and why? Is it diversity, technical skill, humanity, employee equity, something else'?...
Does the Shewhart cycle still do the job?
Every improvement project at some point refers to the Shewhart cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act. I have used it extensively myself, but never been fully comfortable with the language of the last two points in the cycle, and the actions that the language implies. Plan, Do,...
Is ‘Go to Market’ a redundant strategy?
There are a number of common phrases used in marketing that should be redundant. ‘Go to market’ is often used before words like ‘strategy,’ ‘Plan’ and ‘Process.’ ‘Product/market fit’ is increasingly used in the context of digital products, as in 'seeking...
Ditch the siren song of the vision cliché
Having a vision, mission, purpose, all of them has become top of the consultant pile of 'must do's' for success. What a misleading crock of old cobblers! A vision in the absence of the resources, capabilities, and determination to get down in the weeds...
Should Marketing expenditure be capitalised?
Effective managers are sensitive to the differences between working capital and investment capital. The former is the money it takes to keep the business running, to generate the transactions, fill the gap between the sales registered in the P&L, and the cash...
The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ of price.
In competitive markets, price is a bit like a game, typified by the 'prisoners dilemma' of game theory, where two players acting in their own self-interest will result in a suboptimal outcome for both. In the classic scenario, you have two people, suspects of a...
The ‘one-percenters’ to supercharge profits.
One percent is a tiny fraction. A question I have asked many times of clients, and management in my former corporate life is 'who could not……… by one percent? The blank is filled in by a variety of items: Raise prices, reduce trading costs, reduce overheads,...
Do women or men have more/better ideas?
Machines do not, at least do not yet, have ideas. Ideas come from people, they are social things, emerging from social situations. We often find technical solutions to problems, but are they ideas? It seems to me that they are more the progressive peeling of the...
The four parameters of your ‘Current Situation’ audit.
The starting point of any review process is to define the current situation. In every case, the trends are as important, and often more important than the immediate position, as they are often leading indicators of what might happen into the future that will...
How to manage price for optimum profit.
We are all wary, in fact, usually very reluctant to put prices up, in case we lose customers. We ignore the sage advice of Warren Buffett who knows something about making a bob when he said: 'If you have to go to a prayer meeting before raising your prices, you...