Category Archives: Innovation

Failed strategies, like nuclear incidents and plane crashes, only rarely occur due to one catastrophic exogenous shock.  These disasters, along with industrial accidents, oil spills, sinking ships and other man-made calamities, usually being the result of the cumulative effect of many smaller – individually insignificant … Read More →

What will it look like? How will it work? Why does it need to change? … I’ve just been in London at IBF and APICS first ever Best of the Best Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) Conference outside of the US, which was a great … Read More →

We Live in Dynamic Times Natural disasters, technological disruptions, transitory advantages, fractured markets, multifarious competitors, increasingly demanding customers and fickle consumers. Thanks to the military, we have a useful descriptor for the conditions and environment these drivers create; ‘VUCA’ – volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity… … Read More →

VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) is the new normal in global business.  After decades of building finely wrought supply chains, it took just a few days of “Black Swan” events in the past year to break them apart.  In fact, 2011 was a record-breaking … Read More →

Assuming you have made some big choices and so are clear on your organisation’s strategic direction – how are you going to bring your strategy to life

The London Underground Map has long been an example of fantastic graphic design and cartographic innovation; simplifying the complex labyrinth of the tube network and providing a straightforward representation of the many routes, connections and entry and exit points.  This is a particularly powerful depiction … Read More →

We want answers! We want accurate forecasts; we want to know the specific, measurable, actions that will give us the outcomes we desire; we want opportunities without the risk; we want certainty, whatever the circumstances; we want to be ‘in control’. Well intended, maybe, but … Read More →

Grandma is on to something.  Despite the rhetoric – annual reports, internal pronouncements and management fads awash with the platitudes of ‘transformational change’, ‘breakthrough performance’, ‘step-change results’, et al – most organisations still choose, consciously or unconsciously, the merry-go-round. In many ways this is understandable … Read More →

Making trade-offs is an integral part of developing meaningful strategies, a critical element of owning a particular space in your customers’ mind, and a powerful means of focusing your organisation on what to do to win – and just as importantly, what not to do. … Read More →