Staying Competitive In A Customer-Centric World It's a common misconception that knowledge is information when actually, it's the human capacity to take action facing uncertainty. In other words, when you face a problem, how quickly and efficiently can you find and use the knowledge you need to solve it?
Updated Fri Feb 10, 2012
Where To Find Inspiration When The World Tells You To Give Up We've all been there: You were launching a new product, leading a once-exciting project, or growing your business. Things started out fun and you made some initial progress. Then you hit a dip. Your progress slows, your passion evaporates, and everywhere you look the signs seem to be saying “give up.” How do you generate the energy to push on?
Updated Wed Feb 1, 2012
How To Craft A Killer “State Of Your Life” Address We all have our own State of the Union address. When we are pitching investors, motivating employees, seeking support from bosses, we are delivering our own personal State of the Union address, and how effective you are at delivering this determines whether you get funding, excite your employees, or get a promotion. Here's how to make yours sing.
Updated Wed Jan 25, 2012
Training Yourself To See New Strategic Options Your ability to see new strategic options is a function of the number and variety of stories you recognize. We face a challenge and we don’t ask, “What does Porter’s Five Forces tell me to think about?” or “What does Clayton Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation model tell me to do?” Instead, we ask ourselves, “What does this remind me of?” Here's how to get out of that rut.
Updated Wed Jan 18, 2012
Don't Be The Spanish Armada: How Fast Is Your Fleet? Just as there is a way to measure the wind and water resistance a boat creates as it speeds toward its goal, it is possible to measure the resistance of your strategy. Great companies begin with a strategy that removes resistance, that disrupts the market, so that competitors just step aside.
Updated Thu Jan 12, 2012
Hack Your Productivity: A Time-Management Geek's 10-Minute Solution All super-successful people have one thing in common: They achieve more in less time than the rest of us. They each follow their own system, and I’ve tried some version of every one. But two weeks ago I tried something new. And with the early results in, it’s the clear winner. If you want to rip out of the gates in 2012 on fire, give this method a shot. It will take just 10 minutes a day.
Updated Thu Dec 22, 2011
4 Steps To Flustering Your Competition As Sun Tzu wrote, you should set multiple traps so that if your adversary doesn’t step into one, they back up into another. If you want to fluster your competition, you need to launch a flurry of disruptive strategies at them. Here are four steps to follow.
Updated Wed Dec 14, 2011
Amazon Kindle Will Win Thanks To Hype, Not Performance Amazon is projected to sell 5 million of its new $200 tablets--that's one for every three iPads sold, making it the first real iPad contender despite the fact that many technology wonks argue the Kindle Fire lacks what it takes to challenge the iPad. So is the Kindle Fire living on hype and false expectations? Yes...and that is precisely why it may win.
Updated Thu Dec 8, 2011
How To Prepare When You Only Get One Shot At Persuasion Much of what is written about persuasion addresses the challenge of building influence over time. But when you have only one shot, you need to prepare differently.
Updated Wed Nov 30, 2011
To Move Your Business To A Higher Plane, Learn To Play 3-D Chess Great innovators think on multiple planes--think of the process as 3-D chess, the game Spock played to exercise his mind. 3-D chess requires you to not only protect against attack from pieces on your plane, but also from pieces above and below. A similar process of "strategic imagination" is the first step for anyone who wants to bring about significant change.
Updated Tue Nov 22, 2011
The Rapid Video-Gamification Of Business By buying the right call and put options, a derivatives trader can simulate the payoff of owning a diamond mine within a few minutes, then dismantle this virtual business just as fast when the tide turns. Why can’t we do the same with products that are not traded on commodity markets?
Updated Sat Nov 19, 2011
8 Strategies To Fight Ordinary It used to take generations for your core business to devolve from the high-margin cutting edge to a low-price commodity. Now it can take just a few years. How can you fight commoditization and remain or become extraordinary and profitable in a fast-moving world?
Updated Mon Nov 14, 2011
How The Founder Of GoDaddy Brought It Back From The Brink The samurai used to say goodbye to their families before battle. Having accepted death, they fought with focus, not distracted by thoughts of going home. Great innovators often undergo a similar ritual before their final battle--which is what GoDaddy's founder learned from his company's near-death experience.
Updated Wed Nov 2, 2011
Owning The Onramp: What Netflix Gave Up When It Ditched The DVD The onramp is the point at which customers enter the game, the position of power. If you can own the onramp, you can extract the value. But by moving to a model that others can copy relatively easily, the company invited competitors to start diverting its traffic.
Updated Wed Oct 26, 2011
Survive Or Thrive--The Choice Is Yours Despite the recent stock-market rally and the continued long-term bullishness I am seeing in most corporations, a huge portion of companies are worried about how they will survive. Here are four critical steps you can take to trigger a transformation, to move from just surviving to thriving.
Updated Thu Oct 20, 2011
Learning To Thrive While Your Competitors Flounder To be one of the few who thrive, to sail ahead of your competition over the next five to 10 years, you want to remember "VBCA"--vision, belief, capital, advantage.
Updated Wed Oct 12, 2011
What Amazon's Fire Reveals About Its Innovative Strategy If you look at Amazon's business model as a service instead of disconnected parts composed of books and devices and shipping, you start to see the strategic vision. The longer it takes competitors to "get" this picture, the longer Amazon will have their competitors guessing. What is the unique frame you are taking on your business?
Updated Thu Oct 6, 2011
Using Customer Mind-Reading And Customized Content To Transform Your Brand Two pieces of the digital advertising puzzle that will shape the future of commerce are the ability to step into our customers’ minds and give them a customized brand experience.
Updated Thu Sep 29, 2011
Why Your People Don’t Trust You, And How To Fix It The pace of organizational change is accelerating and old methods of building team cohesiveness haven't caught up. No matter your length of tenure or your level of expertise, though, there is one key way in which you can win the trust and support of your employees.
Updated Thu Sep 29, 2011
The 5-Step Plan To Winning Your Campaign Regardless of how you try to change the world, you must first launch a campaign: an energetic effort to win support for your idea. Whether it's a book launch, introducing a new product, or getting elected or promoted, these five steps will help you map out your path to success.
Updated Wed Sep 21, 2011
