Susan Boyle, a 47 year-old unemployed woman appeared as anything but a leading candidate for British Idol success. (Blockbuster American Idol and its British spin off are talent shows for amateur singing talents.) Prior to her appearance, Boyle had spent her adult life caring for aging parents in a small Scottish town. No wonder the [...]

The President’s current political, foreign policy and domestic issues remind me of running a business in challenging times.
Never forget about customer experience and how markets change.
Our economy totally tanked. Yet the Obama administration and Congress marched forward into health care as if nothing was really different. A more moderate approach to health care [...]

My CEO client sent the following e-mail to his leadership team last week to prepare for this week’s retreat that I’ll lead. His e-mail is an example of terrific business model innovation leadership.
We will make mistakes as we go through this planning –this week and [...]

“You’ll find the style you want at the optometrist store on State Street,” my most stylish girlfriend advised. Sure enough, I walked into rack after rack of brands and styles upon entering the shop. While the amount of choice was reassuring at first glance – surely there is a look here for me – I [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

What sector do GOOGLE or TWITTER belong to after all?
The late Peter Druker once commented that most of the interesting work would be in the social sector, as that is where the unresolved problems rest. I wonder if he fully anticipated how non-profits are not the only enterprises focused on social issues. Many for-profit companies [...]

From Oslo
I attended an economic briefing from the Chief Economist of a major European bank yesterday. It was fascinating to hear the financial crisis and recession described from the perspective of the OECD, where the recession has been much worse than in North America. For example, Germany’s GDP fell 6.5% from its peak, [...]

Will Web 3.0 shatter axioms behind your current business model?

I am writing from in the future, thanks to a day with the University of Wisconsin Madison’s E-business Consortium conference. Experts are presenting the implications of Web 3.0 for marketing, supply chain management, IT infrastructure and information security. Aged-old assumptions underlying many business models no [...]