Connected, the Columbia University Executive Education newsletter, features Rita McGrath and her colleague, Willie Pietersen, discussing Strategy is action, not just a word. Often, the reality is that “companies devolve to planning with no time… Read more »
Archives for March 2008
Expose Your Company’s Blind Spots
Rita McGrath has posted at the Harvard Business Review blog. Is your company unintentionally keeping your most senior people from getting the feedback they most need? It can easily happen as an unintended consequence of… Read more »
Discovery Driven Strategy: Options investments enable the right kind of failures (Amex Express Pay)
American Express has just announced that it is discontinuing the “Express Pay” offering that allows contact-less payments by consumers, along the lines of the popular Speedpass payment systems that were successfully implemented by gas stations… Read more »
FotoNation: Why new entrants to an industry often see opportunities incumbents don’t
This past Friday’s Wall Street Journal reported on a terrific little Irish-based company, FotoNation, that has achieved breakthrough growth by using software algorithms to solve problems that have bedeviled the photography industry for years. Red-eye,… Read more »
Enraged customers will create opportunities in the wireless space
Business Week recently described the sad state of the art of wireless phone services in the United States. Wireless companies, it seems, generate more customer complaints than any other industry. Even more than airlines. Wireless… Read more »
Innovation and the last gasp of dying technologies
In the January, 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Daniel C. Snow shared some research he’s been doing on product transitions—when one dominant design or conventional product gives way to a different or more… Read more »
Staples “M Line” an effort to escape brutal commoditization
As a long-time fan of stationery supplier Staples, I was intrigued to note that they are adding a whole new, more upscale, line of products called the “M Line”. The goal is to create a… Read more »
Business Models based on “free”
A point of departure for discovery driven planning is the selection of a unit of business, which implies a particular business model. In a recent edition of Wired magazine, editor Chris Anderson created a useful… Read more »
Revlon’s “Vital Radiance” – a failure to spark innovation led growth with some interesting lessons
In a bitter fight to grow against formidable rivals such as Proctor and Gamble and L’Oreal, cosmetics manufacturer Revlon tried the innovation route, with a new line of cosmetics called “Vital Radiance,” introduced in January… Read more »
Even private equity firms need to worry about management disciplines to add growth and create value
As the financial markets continue their dizzying spiral into a never-never land of losses (did I see that UBS lost over $11 billion in the fourth quarter alone???) I’ve been interested to watch the response… Read more »
Social Trends among the younger generation – opportunities?
I was recently at the Microsoft Global Accounts Summit, which is a high level meeting for the company’s top customers. Among the fascinating agenda items was a presentation by Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s entertainment… Read more »
New York Times quotes Rita McGrath
In a February 29, 2008 NYT article entitled Hoping to Make Phone Buyers Flip, Rita McGrath is quoted: “There is an awful lot of pressure to keep the wheels turning instead of putting money into… Read more »