Courtesy of Jonah Berger
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Tag: HBR Ideacast
Four Ways to Boost Innovation
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.
Why “Repeatable” Business Strategies Work
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.
Ways to Embrace a Kinder Economy
Patagonia is the new yardstick for ethical and social businesses (image from Fortune Magazine)
Of late, I hear a common clarion call amongst leading thinkers for companies to pursue a more humane, ethical and sustainable business strategy. These proclamations allude to the fact that the current system of profit and GDP growth at all costs is broken, and that a more holistic and considered approach is needed.
The first is renowned management guru Michael Porter, who urged companies to adopt shared values when crafting their business strategies. Porter cites that the capitalist system which much of the industrial age economy is built on has been the cause of much social, environmental and economic woes, with companies (and their leaders) prospering at the expense of the rest of humanity.
How To Stick To Your Resolutions
Happy New Year! In time-honoured fashion, the start of the year signifies a time for us to make our new year resolutions.
These can be as massive as writing a book, scaling Mount Everest to something more manageable like losing 10 pounds, exercising every week, or having dinner with your family every fortnight.
Why Leaders Should Embrace a Higher Calling
Michael Beer (courtesy of Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute)
To rise above the vagaries of the uncertain economy, what should companies do? How can they manage the wrath of Wall Street and the severe backlash of a liquidity crunch?
Well according to Michael Beer from Harvard Business School, the answer is that companies should embrace a higher purpose. In an excellent podcast from HBR Ideacast, Beer shares some of the characteristics of these firms and the leadership styles that they embody.
Dynamic Pricing Secrets from Ticket Scalpers
If only pricing strategies are this simple (courtesy of Zimbio)
In a fascinating podcast with pricing consultant Rafi Mohamed, author of The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow, Harvard Business Review unveiled some pricing strategies from the grey market resellers of tickets. These ticket scalpers normally sell their wares on eBay, craigslist or other auction platforms, hopefully to generate a profit (or reduce their losses).
The scalping market in the US is huge, generating about US$3 billion of sales a year and resulting in loss of revenue to event organisers. There are four characteristics defining this market:
How to be Extremely Productive
Unfortunately, most of us do not have 8 arms (Source of image)
From organisational speed, let’s move on next to individual productivity. Once again, Harvard Business Review’s Ideacast features good ideas worth considering.
In “Productivity Secrets of a Very Busy Man“, Bob Posen, a senior lecturer at Harvard and executive chairman of a major investment firm, offers some great tips. Other than holding down two jobs, Posen sits on a few boards and manages to write a couple of articles a year.
Executing with Strategic Speed
Achieving speed doesn’t just mean being fast (image source)
You’ve heard of the saying “more haste less speed”. Apparently, this is true not just in life but in management.
Ed Boswell, former CEO of the Forum Corporation, shares in this clip from Harvard Business Review (HBR) that the most efficient firms pay attention to speed, pace themselves well, and take care of the people factor. By doing so, they can achieve up to 52% higher profit and 40% higher sales than the rest.
Why Companies Should Think Like The Media
Larry Kramer of CBS MarketWatch (source of image)
In the hypercompetitive world of producing and peddling information, one finds that media companies are often compelled to innovate lest they perish.
The advent of multiple social media and networking channels, mobile connectivity, and citizen journalism have accelerated the need for the media constantly keep abreast of the latest developments in their reader’s, viewer’s and listener’s taste and preference.