Strategy & Marketing
Can Apple Stay Ahead of Google?
Competition between Apple and Google has arrived at a more adversarial phase marked by Nexus One’s entrance into mobile phone market. Apple has a substantial lead in establishing this ecosystem. Developers have created more than 125,000 mobile applications for Apple devices—seven times as many as exist on Android—and the endless diversity of apps has helped the iPhone quickly pick up 14% of smartphone share. However, it is yet to figure out strategy to help app developers make money and attract large number of mobile advertisers to complete the ecosystem and create a bandwagon effect…
View the article
Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?
It’s a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else…
View the article
Why Be an Ethical Company? They're Stronger and Last Longer
A focus on short-term profits to the exclusion of all else led to the current financial crisis. And guess what? Companies with the steadiest moral compasses have sailed through it…
View the Article
INNOVATION IN BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
Five Technologies That Could Change Everything
Space-based solar power, advanced car batteries, utility storage, carbon capture and storage and next generation biofuels are the disruptive technologies which will likely change everything in the next few decades…
View the article
10 Ways to Identify an Impending Product Launch Disaster
Pragmatic Marketing presents 10 ways to identify an impending product launch disaster: 1) there are no goals for the product launch; 2) the launch strategy is based on a set of deliverables from a launch "checklist;" 3) the launch plan contains unrealistic timeframes and expectations; 4) sales enablement training is based on product features; 5) significant effort is spent creating collateral for people who never read it; 6) no single person is responsible for driving product launch results; 7)the launch plan is based on hunches, not market evidence; 8) the launch plan mimics your competitor; 9) existing customers are not adequately considered in the launch plan; 10) the launch team isn't a team. This article points out solutions to each of the problems...
View the article
Is Your Company Brave Enough for Business Model Innovation?
IBM is in a process of introducing its "Spoken Web" to help market its ERP program in areas where literacy rate is low. Historically, the company has come up with new complementary business models when it brought new products into the market…
View the article
LEADERSHIP & ORGANIZATION
Make Us to Choose the Harder Right Instead of the Easier Wrong
Bob McDonald, the new Chairman and CEO of P&G, is a well-recognized leader in corporate world. As a cadet at West Point, he encountered, in the Cadet Prayer, the phrase, "Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong." It's a phrase that he says guided him at West Point and beyond, and which he repeats often today. Although West Point's influence is evident, McDonald doesn't practice a military-style brand of leadership and doesn't behave as a staunch military man. In his mind, Patton-style charismatic leadership is not really leadership. "He's a West Point grad, but he doesn't behave as if he's a staunch military man…
View the article
Consistent Contributor and Organizational Change
Cooperation is risky business—group members who place their own interests above the greater good can scuttle the whole endeavor. But cooperation is everywhere, and research shows consistent contributors may be the key to successful groups…
View the article
How Ted Kennedy Got Things Done
It has been said that when Republicans wanted to drum up financial support all they had to do was invoke the name of Ted Kennedy in a piece of direct mail and the funds would roll in. That a man who was an anathema to some could over time become so revered by men and women on both sides of the political aisle is a tribute to Kennedy's ability to connect personally, as well as to his dogged perseverance in causes that mattered to him. How Kennedy was able to bring sides together is a virtue that leaders at every level need to master. While leadership in the corporate sector can come largely from the executive suite, to get things done well you need to act more as a legislator. That involves working with and persuading people who don't agree with you. Regardless of what the CEO desires, initiatives do not happen until people on the ground embrace them; and that's where peer-to-peer leadership, the kind that occurs in legislative bodies, works...
View the article
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Critical Insights Vol 1. Issue 1
STRATEGY & MARKETING
How Can a Business Achieve Both High Quality and Low Cost?
High quality at a low price? While the key elements here – quality and cost—seem to be conflicting factors from classic teachings of corporate strategy, businesses strive for that combination. Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash. provides us an interesting case of how a business can be creative in achieving both high quality and lower costs…
Is It Safe to Follow Market Leaders?
Psychological studies have shown that people confronted with uncertainty tend to look to others for cues on how to behave. The psychologist Robert Cialdini calls this phenomenon "social proof." Social proof helps to explain some of the most startling paradoxes in human behavior. Managers try to figure out how to deal with discontinuous changes in market, they tend to follow their most successful peers , who have repeatedly proved their ability to make the right decisions in the past. In other words, they engage in benchmarking. Usually this is wise. When fundamental changes occur, however, looking to others within one's industry, especially market leaders, can be a recipe for the demise of everyone in the industry...
Customers Are Not Always Right
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/06/innovation-customers-competitors-leadership-managing-marketing.html
Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.” Even though voice of the customer is a critical element of product development process and they do know what could be improved in terms of existing products, they are not in the position of anticipating disruptive innovation or synthesis of incremental innovation that can offer something that they never see before…
INNOVATION IN BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
Innovation Made Incarnate
When employees are inspired by their leaders, innovation becomes much more fruitful. Much of Apple's success relies on the inspiration CEO Steve Jobs has fostered in employees. This article lists seven steps to turn inspiration into innovation: 1) make inspiration an imperative; 2) install and empower a chief innovation officer or CIO; 3) set goals and create enthusiasm to meet them; 4) create the right culture; 5) imbue inspiration as a start-to-finish endeavor; 6) observe, measure, and know; 7) never relent…
How Ford Got Social Marketing Right
Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, "agents" used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter…
LEADERSHIP & ORGANIZATION
Five Ways to Lead with More Compassion
Having fun in leading others is important to leaders. To do so, put the following in action: 1) assume the best in others; 2) understand what makes them tick; 3) serve their needs; 4) accept responsibility; 5) assume the best intentions...
Seven Communication Mistakes Managers Make
Seven communication mistakes managers make are: 1) making controversial announcements without doing groundwork first; 2) lying; 3) ignoring the realities of power; 4) underestimating your audience's intelligence; 5) confusing process with outcome; 6) using inappropriate forms of communication; 7) ignoring acts of omission...
An Exercise in Changing Yourself
Even though we feel that we need to change our own behavior times and again, we quickly either push it on the side or forget it all together - after all we are busy all the time. An exercise introduced by a psychologist is simple and proved to be effective…
MORE BLOGS BY WINSTON
Persuasion Story:
Strategy Framework
Persuasion Framework
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
