business strategy | Cooler Insights

August 29, 2012 • Content Marketing, Social Influence • no comments

Courtesy of the Big Trend Hunt

Social media marketing is no longer the preserve of the elite few. More and more companies invest in creating their own Facebook fan pages, blogs, forums, Youtube channels and Twitter accounts in a bid to reach out to their customers. The game is no longer about reach and eyeballs alone, but fans, followers and “Likes”.

Increasingly, forward-thinking businesses begin to realise that the principles of social engagement shouldn’t just apply to their marketing and PR departments. With almost everybody having an online presence – from the CEO to the office boy – companies can ill afford to ignore the need for the rest of the company (HR, Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Logistics etc) to “go social”.

Likeonomics: A Book Review

August 27, 2012 • Content Marketing • no comments

Rohit Bhargava and Likeonomics (source of image)

We are facing a crisis of believability in big businesses and brands.

Triggered by the collapse of the financial system in 2008, widespread deceit by big corporate brands and sheer volume of advertising “clutter”, consumers distrust big brands, companies and governments more than ever before.

10 Mega Trends for the Next Decade

August 16, 2012 • Blog • 1 comment

The Internet of Things is a Mega Trend for the next Decade (courtesy of Take Me To Your Leader)

If we can gaze into the crystal ball, what would the future behold? How would the next 10 years be like in terms of business, society and culture?

Thanks to an invitation from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), I discovered these answers in a talk given by Manoj Menon, Managing Director APAC of Frost & Sullivan at the recent PATA Hub City Forum 2012.

Inside-Out Versus Outside-In

August 14, 2012 • Blog • 1 comment

Courtesy of Bright Hub

There are two ways to look at one’s business: “inside-out” or “outside-in”. Let me go through each in turn.

The first approach starts with what one first possesses before looking at anything else. It raises questions such as what one’s organisation has in terms of capital, equipment, core competencies, human resources, customer relationships and distribution networks and how these could be leveraged upon.

August 2, 2012 • Book Reviews • no comments

Written by writer and brand consultant John Simmons, Innocent narrates the brand story of how Cambridge graduates Jon Wright, Adam Balon and Richard Reed built a “tasty little juice company” with a unique culture founded on strong values. Embodying the informal, casual wit of the company, the founding of Innocent is summarised on their website in the form of a charming story as follows:

“We started innocent in 1999 after selling our smoothies at a music festival. We put up a big sign asking people if they thought we should give up our jobs to make smoothies, and put a bin saying ‘Yes’ and a bin saying ‘No” in front of the stall. Then we got people to vote with their empties. At the end of the weekend, the ‘Yes’ bin was full, so we resigned from our jobs the next day and got cracking.”

What Chinese Want: Book Review

July 29, 2012 • Blog • 1 comment

With a population of 1.3 billion sprawled over a gargantuan 9.6 million sq km, the People’s Republic of China is widely known as the factory of the world. The middle kingdom’s dominance of global economic and socio-political affairs is impressive, with many regarding them as the “factory of the world”. Its ability to mobilise epic resources to achieve ambitious goals are also much-lauded.

However, what is the average Chinese person really like? What elements constitute the building blocks of China’s society – the very essence of being Chinese?

Four Ways to Boost Innovation

July 17, 2012 • Business and Management • no comments

Courtesy of Innovation Group

We’ve all been stuck in the desert of “been-there-done-that” before. Year after year, our company churns out predictable products and ho-hum services that hardly raises a yawn.

The result? Stagnating or declining sales even as our competitors waltz past us with exciting new products that captures the imagination and wows the media.

Hacking Work: A Smart Solution to Stupid Processes

June 24, 2012 • Business and Management • 1 comment

Courtesy of Technotraps

Beleaguered employees can now leverage on a “cheat code” to streamline work and increase their productivity – without getting into trouble.

With the subtitle “Breaking Stupid Rules For Smart Results”, Hacking Work by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein encourages workers of all stripes to utilise “benevolent” hacking to get their jobs done more effectively and efficiently.

Why “Repeatable” Business Strategies Work

May 23, 2012 • Blog • 4 comments

What is the secret of enduring business success? The answer, according to Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, is to develop repeatable business models. This is described in Bain’s website on Repeatability and highlighted in a recently published book by the authors.

Source of image

In this podcast on HBR Ideacast, Chris shares that businesses which keep changing courses and introduce unnecessary complexity in their systems are actually killing themselves. To cope with a fast changing, highly complex and unpredictable world, businesses shouldn’t introduce increasingly convoluted systems that add layers of bureaucratic layers that slow down work processes unnecessarily.

7 Trends for the Museum of the Future

May 10, 2012 • Business and Management • 4 comments

Interactive and educational gaming at the Maritime Experiential Museum & Aquarium

I’ve just read very quickly the Center for the Future of Museums (an arm of the American Association of Museums) well written report called TrendsWatch 2012 which outlined key trends in the development of museums. With lots of links to examples and highlights of cutting edge ideas in American museums, the report provides lots of food for thought for museum and attraction professionals.

Let me highlight the seven trends that they have identified and provide a local context to them.

Tag: business strategy