Increasingly in relation to business models we are seeing the use of terms such as ecosystem, keystone, and networks. This is not in itself new, as we have been used to the concept of supply chains more many years and they have been used throughout history. What we are seeing increasingly, is many organisations adopting…
The Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House in Westminster was an emotive place yesterday. It was the venue for the UK parliament’s, Public Accounts Committee, to interview on the record, leaders from Starbucks, Amazon, and Google on the taxation of multinational corporations. Whilst this is obviously an emotive subject, the element of the discussion that I was surprised…
You would have to have been isolated in a bunker for the last few years to have missed the number of natural disasters that have happened. It can be debated whether they are becoming more frequent or more violent, however, what is indisputable is that the impact of these natural shocks is of greater significance and impact on global…
One of the keys to successful innovation is to find an unsatisfied or poorly satisfied need. Whilst we often think of innovation as being about step change, it can equally, and more often, be a small improvement that has disproportionate impact. A great example of a company that consistently achieves this is Dyson. Dyson amongst other products…
As Apple fans the world over waited for the release of the iPhone 5 last month the focus was really on the hardware as most of the new features of the next release of the iOS6 operating system had been publicized already. In general there have been no real issues with the new hardware this time round,…
When we think of subscriptions we usually think of magazines and health clubs. From a business model perspective they both operate a similar model where we agree to commit to pay a periodic fee for a period of time in return for access to an often perishable service or product. When we dig beneath the…
Earlier this year the IACCM published ‘The Future of Contracting’ which was the culmination of inputs from 2,000+ practitioners as to what contract management would look like in 2020. There were many themes that came out, however, two of them were: the role of automation and tools; and the area of skills, organisation, and proceses.…
I recently read a great article titled “Why good design is finally a bottom line investment” on the FastCompany website. The article focused mainly on the tech world and a product-centric view of design which is what most people think of when you mention the word ‘design’. To most people design makes them think…
It’s hard to envisage a world without mobile phones, but they have only been around for some 20 years. I remember back in the 90’s, with the proliferation of providers and competition there was a bit of an arms race between the networks to create the most attractive packages. For the consumer this often meant confusion and…
We are all used to, and comfortable with, being contactable virtually anywhere in the world on our mobile phones. How many of us give a thought to the fact that they can also be a tracking device? I was at a conference on privacy and location services a while back, I can hear you yawning…