Posts tagged “strategy”
Leverage brillance: embrace weakness
Problems are opportunities. What will crisis drive you to do?
Bigham’s system
Strong process is core to small business success.
Haute coutre, universal appeal
It’s only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Foundations for air castles
For impact investment to thrive, the castle needs a foundation.
Three responses to recession
How pressing, playing the odds, and driving results changes the game.
Overview of Business+Strategy Posts
This category covers issues in business and strategy for entrepreneurs, SMEs and large corporations.
Convert core competencies for value creation
To enjoy consistently superior performance, you need to know where to focus your practice.
Strategic fit of place
Strategic fit, between the character of place and local industries, increases investment success.
When awkward is best
For small companies, awkwardness is an oft unappreciated asset.
Terrior. Not frightening. Not a dog.
How the character of place influences and shapes everything it makes.
Key ways story-arcs change business strategy
The best writers arc their stories to intriguing and unexpected ends. Can we arc businesses too?
Blue ocean revival
Within my small circle of aquaintences, Blue Ocean Strategy is popular again. Reading it through for the third time (the last time was more than a year ago), the book is so smooth and so rich compared…
Fiction society: moving beyond crowds
Before moving on to a review of John Ruskin’s book, On Art and Life, there’s one more bit to synthesize from the first two (here and here). Trouble is, I’m not sure how to…
De-patterning: refining the first stage of thought
After finishing New World, New Mind I was convinced of two things. First, more attention is needed around staging our thinking processes. Second, the authors didn’t had no idea how to do it.
So, while Cuban waves tickled…
Set up your mind for better decisions
Our ability to understand issues is increasing exponentially but our mental hardwiring isn’t being upgraded. We understand more every day but instinctively respond to events like monkeys.
Synchronizing greatness
Here’s an unsolved riddle: How do we get the minds of widely dispersed, brilliant people to focus on critical problems/opportunities? How do we synchronize greatness?
Dave Pollard brought this up a few days ago. He writes:
“……
Everything else is proofreading
Retro post: No. 99
Philip Pullman in the Guardian:
“It’s when we do this foolish, time-consuming, romantic, quixotic, childlike thing called play that we are most practical, most useful, and most firmly grounded in reality, because the world itself is
…
The evolution of intuition
Answer both of these questions based on intuition alone. Who’s going to win the NFL playoffs this year? What is the future of your company? Bet you’re ready to answer both but only willing to put one answer on the…
Killed by ninjas
Retro post #91
Great find by Johnnie Moore, John Kay’s article on Obliquity is excellent. Kay writes that goals are often best achieved when pursued indirectly – this is the idea of obliquity.
Like Johnnie it…
Making my name
There’s an unobservable line between ambition and growth. Where movement can be too early, just right, or too late. When does growth stop and stagnation take over? When is a switch premature?
I don’t think the answer is outside us.…
Things as they are (rather than what we wish they were).
Retro post: Revised based on “Look!” from November 30, 2004.
John Oliver (past President of DowElanco Canada Inc., a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Eli Lillys), once told me what he looks at when considering novel products.…
Purposeful thought
Action is directed by ideas. Action realizes what thinking has designed.
Breeder wanted
There’s been a big dust up between Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, and Werner Vogel (CTO Amazon).
The hubbub brings to a point several interesting dynamics:
1. Bloggers are…
Advice for visionaries
Christopher Alexander in an interview with Kenneth Baker:
“If you start something, you must have a vision of the thing which arises from your instinct about preserving and enhancing what is there. … If you’re working correctly,
…
sift experiment … evolved
[posted January 16, 2006]
Below is the purpose I had for sift when I started this experiment.
I’m still all in on those ideas but I think the purpose is quickly evolving away from purely entrepreneurs and purely business. Just…
Integral to strategy
Strategy is a mindful, present response to hope.
The difference between hope and strategy: hope is a prerequisite to strategy but not a sufficient condition. Action is also required but also insufficient. The equation must also include…
Optimize the ride
Past, present, future: What of strategy?
Life is now
The only moment for color, joy, love, and grace is now.
Functional todo’s
Whilst lolling despondently on the sofa: “When will I start doing the things I am great at? I keep doing things that help me be greater.”
Good friend in from old places: “Maybe guys like you just keep growing and…
Innovation: tactics and strategies
While I haven’t been posting at all, I have kept up on my reading. This post by Dave Pollard is worth noting.
Dave has an incredible capacity for synthesis and generating copious insights across a wide range of…
All parables, all together
Compiling a list of lessons, this post presents a series of parables on entrepreneurism, perfect-for-purpose, and peerless innovation.
Better for the effort
The consequence of absolute understanding? Perfect expression. Graceful execution.
Without peer
A gracefully executed work has no peer.
Free under attack
“Think about it, cheap is probably one of the worst marketing strategies around, surely then it stands to reason that free, which is pretty much the deep-end of cheap, ain’t going to be much better,
…
VC without the C
I’ve been given several great career options recently. Two were particularly fetching:
1. Stay in government but raise the game to another level — Start helping the highest level bureaucrats identify, learn about, and build strategies on long-range issues facing…
Shifting gears
I used to plant trees in the summer to put myself through university. It’s tough work but it pays well.
Tree planting is one of those few jobs that are so hard, so miserable, and so deeply testing that…
Free up time, use your brain
A friend just handed me a chapter from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline. In it Peter writes:
“At one of our recent programs, I talked to a manger who has worked in both U.S. and
…
Innovation by replication
I know I’ve been giving Dave Pollard props; but the guy does good work.
Today he has another piece I like. Today he’s describing four types of innovation and overlays it with the methodology from…
Strategy for small fish
Just found an article at HBS that compliments the things I said earlier today.
Part of the strategy for small niche businesses: leverage the capabilities of other players in your niche.
Entrepreneurs are like scientists
Last Fall I bought a copy of Seed magazine to read their piece on Revolutionary Minds: 18 icons and iconoclasts who are redefining science. The story on mathematician, Erik Demaine, tattooed itself on my mind and…
When sharks visit your blue ocean
Below is a review of a new book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.
I’ve got a question, when sharks come to your blue…
Blue Ocean Strategy
Just finished reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
I enjoyed the book. One of the entrepreneurs I work with, the career coach,…
The best sort of blue
The good part of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
The best part of the book is their Strategy Canvas. That paradigm alone…
When blue oceans turn purple
Reviewing Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
Here’s the bad:
The authors forget (or ignore) something fundamental to business — all great innovations…
Opportunity science
Great thought by Rob at Business Pundit.
Opportunity Science: in an age of increasing competitiveness, falling barriers to entry and ever increasing business opportunities, the advantage will lie with the companies that pick the best opportunities to pursue —…
What do you want to read?
Ok, I’m back.
During the break — in between changing diapers, burping babies and battling a wicked cold, I’ve been thinking about this blog. What’s it for? Who cares? What now?
I asked a few months ago who was reading…
Doula for start-ups
We used a labour coach. Maybe your company needs one too?
Abductive thinking — not about kidnapping
I love design, even if my vanilla background and black text don’t prove it. In grade five I discovered that Ms. Faulkner gave A’s for illustrated stories and B’s for the plain text version. By 13 I knew that ladies…
The overview
Having caught their attention with the 60-second pitch, you immediately followed with the 5-minute version and now you’re invited to do a full-blast presentation. How to?
Again, Bill Joss and Fast Company nail down next steps.…
Business book list for entrepreneurs
An aggregated, curated list of business books.
13+ questions for pitchers
I’m on the hunt for guidance on the all important, little exercised art of 60-second pitching. Yesterday’s initial landscape got me started but I still need to put the pitch together.
In June of last year On the heels of my heartfelt yop – Frickin’ amazing vs. the long tail – as if guided by benevolent deities, I found “What really works.” With bemused resignation I note the publication date of July 2003 –… Here’s a quick and dirty summary some work I’ve been doing with a company. I use some simple analysis to illustrate the impact of sift. By the start of 2004 the … Brad, at Feld Thoughts, writes about the importance of business measures. I’m glad he did because it confirms some recent suspicions I’ve been having. Let’s compare three of my favourite entrepreneurs. The first is a lawyer… “Why are you choosing this?” That’s such a gorgeous question. It’s complete answer either reveals: - all the information included in decision making, A few days ago I shared supper with the CEO and one of the executives of a small company here in town. The executive asked me to join them and discuss their company’s strategy — they’re navigating through a growth… I followed the crowd of slavering Hugh fans to Creating Passionate Users cause, you know, I want to be cool too. Blind enthusiasm is being replaced by a healthy criticism of Hugh’s, and now Kathy’s, arguments. Headlines like… Make the pool bigger. Look out, not in. Look in the dark, not the light.
I’m re-reading Edward O. Wilson’s book, Consilience. He describes the biological conception of scale that I tried to illustrate below. He breaks up the magnitude of action by space and time. So, for example, brain synapses…Conditions of success
sift happens
Business by numbers
Why are you choosing this?
- the criteria by which choices are being made,
- the rank of alternative paths…Stages of entrepreneurial growth
Be instead of do.
Principles for innovation
Entrepreneurial perspective on change