I am delighted to introduce a guest post by Sean Farrington, MD of QlikTech. More details on Sean and QlikTech can be found after the post.
As the UK economy shrinks – time to look for growth
Sean Farrington, UK MD& RVP Northern Europe, QlikTech
Though the economic outlook remains far from positive as yesterday’s report on the [...]
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50 Ways to Foster a Culture of Innovation (Part 2)
Last week’s post looked at the first 25 ways to foster a culture of innovation. This post lists the concluding 25.
26. Don’t focus on growth. Growth is a product of successful innovation. Focus on the process of becoming adept at taking ideas from the generation stage [...]
Continue Reading → 50 Ways to Foster a Culture of Innovation (Part 1)
As your organization continues rebounding from the financial meltdown, here are 50 ways to ensure that it becomes increasingly conducive to ongoing innovation. Commit to a few of these today and make some magic. Your next step?
1. Remember that innovation requires no fixed rules or templates [...]
Continue Reading → Strategic Vision
Vision can be defined as ‘a mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organisation.’ In developing the purpose of the organisation, there are two views on the value of developing a strategic vision for the future of an organisation:
that it is irrelevant;
that it has value.
Looking at the former, it may [...]
Continue Reading → Environment-Based Strategic Options – The Expansion Method Matrix
This post briefly outlines the principal methods of expansion and reviews the advantages and disadvantages of the main ones. The expansion method matrix explores in a structured way the methods by which the market opportunities associated with strategy options might be achieved. To do this, it is necessary [...]
Continue Reading → What is the concept of economic rent?
To help understand the role of resources in competitive advantage, it is necessary to consider the concept of economic rent. This was first developed by the English economist, David Ricardo (1772-1823). Economic rent is defined as any excess that a factor earns over the minimum amount needed to keep [...]
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Stakeholders – Expectations and mapping
People play a complex role in the evolution of strategy. So it is important to consider what people expect an organisation to achieve and, therefore, what influence people can have over an organisation’s purposes. There are four main types of expectations – each of which influences an organisation’s purposes to some [...]
Continue Reading → What are resources and competences?
Strategists and strategy consultants often talk and write about resources and competencies when discussing strategy, strategic management and strategic capability. But what do these two words actually mean? This post should provide some illumination on the matter. Strategic capability is the adequacy and suitability of the resources and competences of an [...]
Continue Reading → Gadget Show Live, 2012
This post is a departure from my usual business-orientated, technical posts. Apologies if this disappoints, but I thought that as I attended the Gadget Show Live last week at the NEC with my son, that I would look at the results of innovation rather than purely the theoretical aspects.
2 years ago when [...]
Continue Reading → Strategy and the Business Environment
Understanding the business environment is an important concept for managers. It encapsulates many different influences and the difficulty is making sense of this complexity, which arises because many of the separate issues are interconnected. For example, think of a technological development such as IT, which changes the nature of work. This [...]
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