Branding and Reputation, Competitiveness and Innovation, Knowledge Strategy, Organization and Management, Security and Privacy

Knowledge governance in the age of AI

24 Oct 2023  

Governance: what is it good for? I’ve recently had the good fortune to observe a lot of the enlightening programming by Paul Washington and his team at The Conference Board’s ESG Center. It’s clear to me that, while “E” environmental and “S” social goals are ones that most of us can understand and relate to, […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Adaptive Resilience

10 Dec 2020  

At the beginning of the global pandemic, I recommended that organizations undertake value pivots.  I’m gratified to see how many industries are now doing this — with varying levels of success, but, too often, as a matter of survival. Here’s a summary of how various industries are pivoting toward new value models: COMPANY OR SECTOR PRE-PANDEMIC VALUE MODEL […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Value Pivots

30 Mar 2020  

One of the more timely parts of my upcoming book The Value of Knowledge is Section 7.7, Value Dynamics. This includes the idea of value entropy, which essentially means that once you get your value proposition finely tuned to user needs, if left unchanged it then slowly begins to leave perfect alignment with those needs. This happens […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Competitive Intelligence Rescue: A book review

6 May 2018  

I’ve been studying the differences between Information and Knowledge and the mechanisms by which the former is transformed into the latter — a core challenge of managing knowledge for value. In working with clients to develop ways to optimize this transformation, it occurs to me that this is what theories of education are concerned with. Or […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

The Competitive Runway

15 Oct 2015  

I read the following headline recently in the Wall Street Journal:  “Consumers crave [PRODUCT], but [PRODUCERS] enjoying their best profits ever are reluctant to switch.”  (The words I’ve bolded here were specified in the article, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) Headlines reminiscent of this have been written many times in business history. […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Up Close and Personal: Our $2.7 Trillion Cottage Industry

17 Feb 2014  

I recently had the experience of intensively studying an industry as a consultant — then subsequently (and unrelatedly) becoming a client of that industry. The industry, as you probably have guessed, is health care.  There are things you learn when you are a patient that you never see when you’re not. (I’ve heard doctors report […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Calibrating Your Value Model

13 Jan 2014  

The holiday break provides us an ideal time to calibrate and refocus our efforts and build for the year ahead.  Given the dynamic nature of the business environment, I recommend you consider these two simple questions:  If I were starting my enterprise today, what would I be doing different from what I am doing now?  […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

The Pharmaceutical Innovation Crisis

31 Dec 2013  

I used to read a lot of management books.  Or rather, buy a lot of them, then take a quick look — and promise myself to get around to reading them someday.  When (and if) I finally did, I’d often find the information dated and the advice stale. Not so with most of Peter Drucker’s […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Competition: the Wonder Drug for Health Care

12 Jul 2013  

One broad goal for US health care that most of us can agree on is the need to rationalize and reduce overall costs. As a society, we can meet this goal — but only if we ensure that the health care industry remains competitive in each of its component sectors. Competition update Unfortunately, in key sectors this goal […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Competitive Dynamics: Understanding the ‘Even-Newer Normal’

12 Jun 2013  

I’m a lucky guy.  Nearly every day I walk between home and office along the Hudson River, just north of where it widens out into New York Harbor.  As an amateur photographer, I have begun to pay closer attention to — and often photograph — the scene (as below). Each day the sky as the […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

The Myth of Second-Mover Advantage

14 May 2013  

Back in the 20th century, it became fashionable in business strategy circles to speak of ‘first mover advantage’.  This idea — that if you got there first and staked out a market, it would forever remain yours to dominate — was used to justify funding business plans that would have otherwise seemed, at best, sketchy. […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Market Intelligence

10 Apr 2013  

The late Ted Levitt, professor at Harvard Business School, used to tell this apocryphal story:  The CEO of a tool manufacturer gathers his executives into a meeting and says, “People, I have bad news.  I’ve discovered our customers don’t want quarter-inch drill bits — they want quarter-inch holes.” What we sell vs. what they buy […]