Best wishes for a joyous holiday. Here are the top trends I expect will shape our business models in 2010 and beyond and what leaders must do to address them. Downward pressure on prices in a copycat, increasingly global economy will magnify and become relentless. Before you spend more money pulling costs our of your [...]

Today we have a guest post from Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI. Today is my birthday, so I have asked my client Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI, Inc. to share some of his wisdom about the importance of leadership behavior in creating a winning business model. ELI offers its clients a foundational learning platform (training [...]

The technology sector is rapidly moving from companies competing as technology specialists to vertically integrated companies competing on solutions. HP acquires EDS and (pending) 3Com Corp. Dell quickly follows with acquisition of Perot Systems. Oracle buys Sun Microsystems (beating out IBM by 10 cents a share). Even Apple, the original vertically integrated company, is deepening [...]

Every company and industry imposes frustrations and compromises onto its customers. (Even Apple’s best-in-class I-Phone requires the compromise of AT&T’s more limited 3-G network and high monthly prices.) Eliminate a compromise or trade-off, and you have the foundation for a winning new business, new offering, or stronger value promise. It’s hard to identify the trade-offs [...]