As Daniel Kahnemann has pointed out to us, while the human brain is a remarkable organ, it also has its limitations. One of these is that it is built to conserve energy. What that in turn… Read more »
Thought Sparks
Eyes glaze over when we talk about inflation? You’re not alone. But what you don’t know can hurt you.
Chart credit: https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year For anybody born after about 1985, meaning most folks under 40, all this talk about inflation seems kind of old-timey. Indeed, as Public Radio host Kai Ryssdal (citing a story in… Read more »
Pandemic – and reopening – surprises
When an inflection point comes to a head, human beings are remarkably ingenious in adapting to its requirements. It may not be fun, but we figure it out. But when the changes wrought by the… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – May 2022
Dear colleagues: It sure was nice to be back in person on our gorgeous new Columbia Business School campus. My course on growth and change, called Leading Strategic Growth and Change received an evaluation of… Read more »
Who knew there is so much in common between the rare successes in mega-projects and innovation?
Photo: The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry Bent Flyvbjerg studies spectacular mega-project flameouts. I study (often) spectacular innovation mis-steps. Who knew the process that produces both has so… Read more »
Counting down Our Top Ten List of Discovery Driven Planning misses – Part 2 (5 through 1)
Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience… Read more »
Counting down Our Top Ten List of Discovery Driven Planning misses – Part 1 (10 through 6)
Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience… Read more »
Startups in distress – we’ve seen this movie before
Wired magazine offered an article on the state of things in startup-land and discovered, astonishingly, that “The Bad times are Coming for Startups.” But not every startup, of course, mainly the ones that blithely ignore entrepreneurship… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – April 2022
Dear colleagues: Just when you thought the world has learned the many lessons of discovery-driven planning, some huge, ambitious project gets shot down yet again – whether for business reasons or otherwise – and we… Read more »
Bright Promise and Dashed Hopes – The AT&T Media Strategy Saga
Big, expensive unions of large and unwieldy companies almost never work out well. The sudden termination of CNN+ is but the latest casualty in a long history of things that began with a lot of… Read more »
You can’t avoid the digital dimension of your business, even if you wanted to!
Asking what your digital strategy is today is a lot like asking what your electricity strategy was at the turn of the last century. Seems absurd. Yet both questions reflect how a shift in an… Read more »
Say what???? The optimistic launch and ignominious end of CNN+
The announcement that after an expenditure of something like $300 million, CNN was going to pull its CNN+ streaming service after just a month in operation sent shock waves through the media and entertainment ecosystem…. Read more »