Critical Insights Vol.1 Issue 2

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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...

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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...

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