Disruptive innovation as a core business process

22 April 2005

Companies need to innovate relentlessly to even stand still in an increasingly global and competitive economy. No longer is it sufficient to deliver incremental improvements at a leisurely pace. Instead disruptive innovations of the type that fundamentally alters markets and business processes must be sought out and delivered regularly and predictably.

Innovation in online book sales

21 April 2005

Why did Barnes & Noble lose out to upstart Amazon.com in the battle for our online book purchases? Simply put, the new company out-innovated the established bookseller. By innovating and bringing innovations to market consistently faster than their competitor, Amazon was able to dominate the market.

Actions for Enterprise Collaboration

17 April 2005

We are very excited about a new approach to managing enterprise collaboration that we have developed with Four Groups and described in some detail in our recent publication Actions for Enterprise Collaboration.

Approaches to enterprise social software

12 April 2005

An important article in the March 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review suggests that organizations are approaching enterprise social software from three distinct value propositions, though we have so far only seen two of them “in the wild”.

Happy Birthday, H.C.

2 April 2005

Happy birthday, Hans Christian! Today is the 200 anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish poet and author famous for his fairy tales.

Presenting and selling technology to corporates: The lying awake at night test

6 March 2005

Too many technology companies are trying to sell their products to the corporate enterprise on their technical merits. This very rarely succeeds. Your customers are not in the technology business and you need to demonstrate that you understand their issues and that you have a solution to them.

Understanding is only achieved in synchronous communication

18 February 2005

Understanding seems only to genuinely be achieved in synchronous communication argues John Barben in Telling but not listening.

Work-life balance

31 January 2005

We’ve been thinking a lot about what you might call work-life balance recently, when we came across this piece is a completely different context, arguing that all professions are celibate professions; in other words, there can never be a balance in a true profession but you may be able to achieve it in a job:

Business Science - an Oxymoron?

20 January 2005

A challenge with using scientific principles in a business context is that the system, i.e. the business world, is neither isolated nor in equilibrium. A soon as a new idea is formulated, some businesses will try to adopt it or defend against it, thereby changing their execution or strategy. In other words, the process of studying the system alters it, in contrast to the assumptions in the scientific method (and no, it isn’t like quantum mechanics).

Transparency and types of partnerships

12 December 2004

Based on Ronald Coase’s theory of firms, Lars Plougmann argues that transparency is the next big thing, and offers specific advice for professional services. The core of his argument is that because trasactional costs for companies are ever decreasing, the business relationships that really add value are the ones where you are sharing business processes.