BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
In Good Company – Innosight and IBM
Seizing the White Space is a new book being launched by HBS Press (and being pre-sold on Amazon.com.) I'm very glad to read about others who are taking up the message of Create Marketplace Disruption - which first published the critical role of White Space...
If at first you don’t fail, try, try again – General Motors (GM)
"Henderson Never Fit In At GM Helm" is the Detroit Free Press headline. Imagine that - the CEO of GM has been asked to leave. Industry sales are down about 24%, and GM is down 32%. Meanwhile, Mr. Henderson had proposed selling 4...
Organize to Disrupt – and Grow – Cisco
Cisco is an admirable company. In the high tech world, few survive half as long as Cisco. Even fewer maintain growth and profitability. Cisco's willingness to obsolete its own products has been a stated objective which has helped the company...
Scenarios are so important – Dubai World debt crisis
So while most Americans are taking the traditional 4 day Thanksgiving holiday another debt crisis has emerged. Easy enough for most Americans to miss the news, if only because they are vacationing or shopping. But this debt crisis involves a company in a...
Hiring What You Need – Not What You’re Used To
There's no doubt that many more people are looking for jobs than there are those hiring. As a result, organizations offering jobs can find themselves flooded with applicants. Several are complaining about how hard it is to find "the right...
Management illusions – Brand management and MIT
"The Illusion of Brand Control" is a great article at Harvard Business Publishing. Andrew McAfee, who is a research scientist at the MIT Sloan school Center for Digital Business, offers the insight that in today's market it's not possible for a...
White Space for Electric Cars – Nissan, Chevrolet, Ford, Tesla
According to Marketing Daily "Electric Cars Set to Tiptoe Into Showrooms." Nissan is supposed to introduce the Leaf. Chevrolet, Toyota and Ford are all supposed to begin offering a plug-in hybrid. None have announced prices, but...
Scenario Planning – the U.S. Dollar implications
Most Americans pay no attention at all to the value of the U.S. dollar. As an island nation, and largely an importer of goods, all most Americans care about is how much something costs at the store. Since the vast majority of Americans never set foot on foreign soil...
Biting off your nose – News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch
"Rupert Murdoch to remove News Corp's content from Google in months" is the London Telegraph headline. Claiming that Google gets a "free ride" on the newspaper content, the News Corp. Chairman claims he can block Google from referring...
The Myth of Market Share – Motorola vs. Apple
The Myth of Market Share by Richard Minitar is one of those little books, published in 2002 by Crown Business, that you probably never read - or even heard of (available on Amazon though). And that's too bad, because without spending too many words the...
Why the Pursuit of Innovation Usually Fails – best practices kill innovation
Leadership Why The Pursuit Of Innovation Usually Fails Adam Hartung, 11.09.09, 04:11 PM EST It's not what we're trained for as leaders or how our businesses are set up to work.Forbes published today "Why the Pursuit of Innovation Usually...
Value creating CEO – Steve Jobs, Innovation and Apple
$150billion. That's a lot of money. And that's how much shareholder value has increased at Apple since Steve Jobs returned as CEO. Can you think of any other CEO that has aided shareholder wealth so much? Do any of the cost cutting...
Disruptions vs. Disturbances – Walgreens
Walgreens is apparently going through a dramatic change in leadership. Drug Store News reported that the top 2 folks, including the top merchandiser, have left Walgreens in "." The article discusses the "old guard" departure and...
What are you supposed to do about shifting markets – Tribune and P&G
"TribCo Papers Will Try Ditching AP to Cut Costs" is the Crain's Chicago Business headline. Tribune is in bankruptcy because it is losing so much money trying to sell newspaper ads. Subscribers are disappearing as more people get...
Innovation killers – Collins in the lead
Jim Collins has decided to start telling people how to manage innovation. In "How Might We Emphasize Cost Effective Evaluation Tools" at the Good.is Blog Collins lays out his prescription for managing innovation. And it's pure Collins,...
Skating to where the puck will be – Apple and advertising
I was intrigued to read about Apple proposing to rebuild a mass transit stop in Chicago in exchange for naming rights to the stop, as well as permission to advertise in the stop (Crain's Chicago Business - "Doors will open on the right at Apple...
Who “gets it”? – Employment, investing and IBM
"IBM authorizes another $5Billion for share buybacks" is the Marketwatch.com headline. This brings the amount available for buying the stock to $9.2billion - or enough to buy about 73.6million shares. But it begs the question, what value will...
Defend & Extend – book publishing, movie distribution,
If you try standing in the way of a market shift you are going to get treated like the poor cowboy who stands in front of a cattle stampede. The outcome isn't pretty. Yet, we still have lots of leaders trying to Defend & Extend their business...
Avoiding a crash – Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier
Boeing is the world's largest aircraft manufacturer. But the Crain's headline "Boeing Loses $1.6B, slashes 2009 profit estimate" should get your attention. Revenues in 2008 dropped some 10% - which the company blamed on a strike. ...
Keep an eye on Dell – good things happening!
Can you believe a BusinessWeek headline like "Dell's Extreme Makeover"? We read about turnarounds and makeovers all the time. Only most of the time they don't turn, and they don't get made over. Most companies cut a lot of...
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