People have been predicting the end of Hollywood as we know it for a long time. Talking pictures were first dismissed as a novelty, then eventually embraced. Television proved destabilizing for the studio system that … Read more »
Articles
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – November 2022
Discover This! A collection of ideas to spark your thinking, by Rita McGrath November Happenings After a two-year wait, I finally made it to Dublin to attend the Business Excellence Institute’s awards gala, at which… Read more »
How’s your teaming going?
The traditional model of how teams progress goes by stages – forming, storming, norming and performing. While it’s easy to remember, teams today don’t necessarily follow that model. They’re dispersed, virtual, temporary and potentially remote…. Read more »
Flywheels vs. Relationships – Why your business architecture matters to your initial marketing plan
In developing an initial marketing plan, it is crucial not to be confused about what kind of business architecture you are building in order to establish your initial metrics for success. Geoffrey Moore has a great… Read more »
Boris Johnson, How the Powerful Escape Consequences and Jeff Pfeffer’s Fantastic Book
One of Pfeffer’s 7 rules of power is that “Success Excuses (almost) Everything: Why This is the Most Important Rule of All. Which perhaps explains why Britain’s Boris Johnson was able to hang onto power… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
What Everybody Ought To Know About Planning Under Uncertainty
The article “Discovery Driven Planning” was published in 1995. The book-length treatment came out in 2009. And yet, we’re only now catching up to what entrepreneurs and corporate innovators have long understood – when… Read more »