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Are you — literally or figuratively — leaving money on the table because of perceived inconvenience (as distinct from unacceptably high cost of sales)? Who will carve out a niche in your market if you don't?

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Thomas Friedman speaks to a network associated with Claremont McKenna College on the thesis of a flat world. Dan Wooldridge records his impressions of the speech as well as some implications for professional and personal development.
Al Lunsford is not a disinterested observer of Silicon Valley; he has long term investments and relationships there. So he quite taken by Marc Andreessen's vision of the near future of technology businesses on the Charlie Rose program.
Category by category, the question is not, "Are we vulnerable to disruption?" but "What will disrupt our business plan and who will be behind it?"
In 1981, San Francisco television station KRON ran a two minute, 17 second feature on the coming age of online newspapers: "Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the days newspaper; well it's not as far-fetched as it may seem..." Jim Hancock invites us to take a look at what went right and what went wrong with that vision.
Sam Nguyen remarks on the announcement of FoxFaith, Fox Filmed Entertainment's new operation directed toward evangelical Christians.
Dan Wooldridge notes that rigid thinking about your business model may make you susceptible to competitors that you didn't see coming. Current examples show how fierce competitors can come from surprising directions.

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In a time of business instability, serious thinking about why we work, where we work and with whom we work takes on pressing significance. Richard Florida's research and writing helps us do that in titles like The Rise of the Creative Class, The Flight of the Creative Class and Who's You City? At a time when you may want or even need to relocate, we think you'll find this essay thought-provoking and useful.
The Tom Peters! Company posed four questions to a gathering of senior executives. They all had the same answer: disruption.
Thomas Friedman reports a fascinating conversation with Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg in The New York Times. Carville and Greenberg claim to have identified American voters' emerging gut issue: Energy Independence.
Business leaders must increasingly hone their ability to anticipate how the future is unfolding. This interview with Joseph Ellis, formerly of Goldman Sachs, provides insight into how to train your mind to see

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Aviation investigators have a euphemism: "controlled flight into terrain." What they mean is that a pilot took a perfectly functioning plane, in good conditions, and flew it into the ground, [...]
Executives sometimes do this, too. They, like the pilots, have warning signs that they're about to crash, but they do it anyway. Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui
Executives sometimes do this, too. They, like the pilots, have warning signs that they're about to crash, but they do it anyway. Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui

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Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, as the medium in which he offers himself to God.
Dorothy Sayers

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Complex strategies such as complex battle plans are usually doomed to failure. There are too many things that can go wrong. The holy grail is simplicity. But here's the rub: most people admire complexity and don't trust something that's simple.
Jack Trout
Using data from a Gallup Survey authored by strategy guru, Gary Hamel, Dan Wooldridge discusses how newcomers to an industry can disrupt and destroy the incumbents. Ignore at your own peril.

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Small companies ... already have two strikes against them. Of the seven hundred thousand new businesses started this year, only thirty-five thousand (or one in twenty) will be around five years from now. And the primary reason for a small company's failure is trying to do too many things at once. [...]
Al Ries
Suzanne Berger: How We Compete
What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today's Global Economy

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Based on a 5 year study of over 500 international companies to discover how they compete, how they plan to grow, which practices are succeeding, which are failing.
Edward E. Lawler, Chris Worley: Built to Change
How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness

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Most organizations are optimized to perform, but this often works against the ability to change. This can be fatal in a time of seismic change. How do you design an organization for effectiveness and change?

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"Our fixation should not be on our clients. It should be on the people our clients want to engage, sell, and interact with. We should be the champions of those people. That is where we are missing the boat."
Rishad Tobaccowala quoted by author, Jeff Jarvis
Here are some hard-headed thoughts on design-thinking from Steelcase CEO, James P Hackett.
Dan Wooldridge reflects on Blockbuster's looming bankruptcy and observes that it was the beliefs and assumptions of its leaders that made them unable to see the danger that they faced from Netflix.














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