When I pull up to the village in which my mother grew up in
Bangladesh, I feel like I'm on the set of a cowboy movie. Two long streets
cross in the center, each bordered by a well-planned lineup of storefronts.
From this ...READ»
An ancient Chinese saying advises that you “borrow a road”
to reach your objective. If someone else has access to your customer, then
borrow his road to share this access.
An interesting permutation of this pattern is ...READ»
Last week I introduced an interesting hotel investment firm, Thayer Lodging. The owners, Lee Pillsbury and Fred Malek, were not new to the hotel game. They were part of a team that had driven jaw-dropping growth for Marriott Hotels. ...READ»
Every Friday vendors came around to play “lucky lotto.” These
vendors supplied food, chinaware, and table clothes to Lee Pillsbury
and Fred
Malek, the owners of Thayer Lodging, a
privately held hotel investment company that ...READ»
In my book The Way of Innovation,
I talk a lot about how consumer habits can become a powerful underpinning of a
company’s grand strategy. For example, when I was a loyal Starbucks customer (someday I’ll share why I no longer ...READ»
Last week I spent a day with Microsoft managers in Redmond,
Calif. Much of the talk was about Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. You may
have already read a lot about Bing – the massive marketing campaign of people ...READ»
There is so much more I want to say about Big Think, so many more patterns to
uncover, but time and space requires that we focus on just the core strategies
at work here. And from my perspective, Big
Think’s most ...READ»
Last
week I introduced a
compelling new web site – bigthink.com. Its founders, Peter Hopkins and Victoria
Brown, didn’t have enough initial funding to take competitors head on, so
they had to find different approaches ...READ»
What do Deepak
Chopra, Jerry Adams, Moby, Ted Kennedy, Wyclef Jean, Dennis Kucinich, John
Legend, Mitt Romney, and Mohammad Yunus have in common? They and 390 other big
thinkers are all waiting to speak to you, right now, thanks ...READ»
I’m in Colombia right now doing a
series of seminars for different groups and companies, including
Hewlett-Packard. As I travel across the globe, I see one positive sign of this
worldwide economic breakdown – people ...READ»
Over the last several
months, I’ve introduced companies that are successful while also doing good for
all stakeholders – employees, the community and shareholders. Many of the
companies that I have introduced are younger, ...READ»
I believe that success requires constant evolution and like all successful innovators, Global Medical Imaging (GMI) is ready to change again. Two years after successfully shifting its business model from only offering medical ...READ»
If everyone else is selling apples, you should be selling apple pie. If everyone else is selling apple pie, you should be selling apples. By aggregating or disaggregating things, you can step away from direct comparison with your ...READ»
In 2005 Ryan Dienst and his team were coming to a painful realization. The medical imaging device company they founded three years ago was in the wrong business. Global Medical Imaging (GMI) had built up a healthy revenue stream ...READ»
My 3-year-old son kept running up to a big boulder in our back yard. He wanted me to chase him; he wanted to play. Two minutes earlier we had a completely different plan in mind – two minutes earlier he was immensely excited about ...READ»
Every week I
share a few stratagems to help inspire my readers. But if you’re not familiar
with my books, Hide A Dagger Behind A Smile and The Way of Innovation, then you
probably find the stratagems interesting but not ...READ»
Every time my 3-year-old son sees a bottle of children’s Tylenol he asks for “petesina.” That’s his word for medicine or “medecina” in Spanish. Does he have a headache? No. Is he addicted to pain killers? I hope not. But ...READ»
On Wednesday I started an examination of an investment strategy firm that specializes in microfinance, Minlam Asset Management. As I interviewed one of Minlam’s founders, Mike Hokenson, I noticed a reoccurring theme that I see ...READ»
There has been a lot of positive feedback on my string of blogs themed “financial firms doing good.” It’s easy to get caught up in the negativity that pours out of our televisions and newspapers, but as I travel across the ...READ»
On my flight back from Rochester the other night after delivering a workshop to a group of CEOs, I was reading a fascinating article titled "Culture in Action" by Ann Swidler. In it I read the following ...READ»
While speaking with Randy Eisenman and Sunny Vanderbeck, the founders of Satori Capital, I found a new sense of respect for the idea of “time horizons.”
You see, over time, companies gravitate toward the expectations of its ...READ»
In business school, they still teach us the shareholder is king and that all corporate decisions should be made based on maximizing shareholder value. But if you see a wider view, a more holistic perspective, then you will see that ...READ»
