Many budding entrepreneurs are filled with “ideas.” Of course, ideas are the germ of innovation, but an idea without a plan to make money is useless. I have often told my students, the difference between an idea and a profit-making business is the difference between an amoeba and a human being.
Read more...CEOs Robert McDonald of P&G and James Craigie of Church & Dwight are facing off in the laundry soap business, and one of them is slinging mud. Recent executive comments and division performance reports highlight that the battle in the soap aisle isn’t just about soap, it’s about the fundamental purpose of businesses in competitive markets.
Read more...To achieve results in business transformation, it is imperative to bring together subject-matter experts (SMEs) from different parts of your company who become your change leaders. Challenge them to use a clean-sheet-of-paper approach, or a so-called ‘green field’ approach, to develop a ‘genius’ solution. Read case studies of how.
Read more...Apple has had a beating both in the market and the press lately. Despite record quarterly profit, they lost their number-one stock spot to Exxon Mobil. By some prognostications, Samsung is rising in the smartphone market, and Huawei is taking a stronger foothold on the price-sensitive emerging-market field, while Apple is stumbling. Well, for those who failed to sell Apple at above $700 prices and now see it below $450, what did you expect?
Read more...Business guru Harvey Mackay stated, “The Japanese have a very simple way of describing the typical American marketing plan: READY? FIRE! AIM.” Sadly little has changed in American business. This is a major reason why the American economy is in constant crisis, and obsolete marketing departments built on late twentieth-century dogma now resemble the spending habits of Communist central planning: disconnected from reality, economically inefficient and lacking accountability to the right things.
Read more...Two academic giants, Nobel Prize Winner (in economics) Gary Becker of the University of Chicago and Kevin W. Murphy another U. of Chicago economics professor, argue that we have lost the war on drugs. So is it time to legalize and tax this industry?
Read more...The troubled economy of the past several years has challenged – and weakened – many businesses around the world. Although business leaders can’t manage the myriad external factors that impact their organization, they can take advantage of wounded competition through solid strategies.
Read more...Charting a winning corporate strategy is rarely an easy task, and 2012 has been particularly difficult for executive decision-making. Yet difficult times do not get executives off the hook for poor performance. A case in point: Sears is floundering while Target is advancing. What is driving the significant divergence in performance between these two competitors? Is a role reversal possible in the next 18 months?
Read more...Joan Magretta has written a book on Harvard Business School’s Prof. Michael Porter entitled: Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy. What should readers expect?
Read more...Business strategist Gary Hamel discusses his new book, “What Matters Now.”
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