Setting the Vision
In David Yoffie’s new Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs he and co-author, Michael Cusumano have reviewed Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs, strategy and leadership decisions and have identified five key lessons to...
A tale of two coffees
I have previously written how Keurig and Nespresso have been innovative in the development of home coffee machines, building on customer insight and building an annuity revenue stream. And while they are appealing to different customer groups there are a number of...
Are we there yet?
One question that I have been asked a few times his how long does it take before the innovation or a new business initiative starts to deliver substantial revenue. Or the variant of this question how big can the new initiative grow to in the short term, and the...
Whoops
In a previous post I mentioned that there was a significant benefit of One to One Communications - that is if you use it properly and add value to the customer. In that post I praised Vodafone for their direct comms and keeping me as a customer and increasing my...
Hollywood Disruption
There has been a lot of press around a service called Global Mode in recent weeks. And it highlights just how fast the internet is changing and disrupting established business models and how consumers are changing how they consume. Background In short global mode is...
Managing the Conversation
This is an interesting story in managing customer feedback on social networks, while this approached worked for Molten's I certainly don’t recommend it. Background of the story A group of diners ate at Mt Eden’s Molten Restaurant and were disappointed with the meal...
Nespresso: Making the Complex Simple
I was making a Nespresso coffee in the office the other day and realised just how much beauty, and simplicity there was in the Nespresso machine. They made a complex process into a simple and stylish product. We all love our coffees and the morning coffee has become...
Getting a yes is just the beginning
Getting to a yes is just the beginning of the process not the end. I have seen this play out over and over in a business. There is a massive amount of effort by a large cross functional team to present a business case to the board. They get a yes from the board and...
Bringing it all together
“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Mark Twain One of the biggest stumbling blocks of getting strategy approved is not necessarily because the strategy is a bad or wrong it is that it can’t crisply and succinctly be articulated...
Death of barriers to entry?
The statistics above are amazing enough in their own right but when you consider as most of these companies are less than five years old and Facebook is the grandfather being a worldly 10 years old. The advent of the e-commerce/ digital businesses has removed or...
