BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
BIAS Blindness
Is a Tattoo art? Can a tattoo style drawing sell a product? These are two questions I really never asked myself before, but now I'm asking them a lot. Sometimes we can't see what's right in front of our faces. We all suffer from BIAS - Beliefs,...
Wait, Too Late
Because most companies never build a capability to internally Disrupt, and they don't regularly implement White Space, they develope a Re-Invention Gap between what they do and what the market wants. This leads businesses to milk a Success Formula too long, and...
Solution Space – Health Care
It's easier to recognize a problem than it is to find a solution. I'm sure you've noticed this. In practically everything we do we can see the need for improvement, but we often find that nothing happens to make things better. Even when a crisis...
Shooting the Phoenix
Readers of this blog know I am a big fan of Motorola. From a moribund company laying off tens of thousands of employees, in just 3 years Motorola has become a financially stronger, more profitable and much higher growing company. By using Disruptions and...
Disruptive Success
How can we recognize a Phoenix company? One that will sustain its success for a prolonged period? We can start by looking at the one and only company which has been on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever since it was created. The one company that...
Addressing Challenges
Walgreen's is the kind of company that can make an investor very worried. It's an "old fashioned" retailer, and the company has certainly seen dramatica changes in its markets. Over the last decade, we have changed how we purchase licensed...
Great Things from Small Beginnings
My last blog led to a reader comment "Can there be White Space without Innovation?" (click here to read full comment) Quite simply, I don't see how. Of course, innovation is a term open to wide interpretation. Some think that innovation...
Critical Permission
If you aren't tuned-in to ad agencies, and if you don't live in Chicago, you might well have missed a furor that erupted in early December regarding America's largest retailer. Wal-Mart made a switch in ad agencies last fall, moving their $500million account to...
Stick with the Innovator
Boy, Motorola's stock had a rough day today. The company announced lower than expected earnings, and the price dropped 7.8%! A recent chart (see here) shows this has been the extension of a slide that started back in October, with the latest decline...
Succeeding on Competitor’s Lock-in
Did you buy any CDs this Christmas? If you did, the odds re you didn't buy as many as you did in previous years. A freefall in sales of physical music products (CDs and music DVDs) has been going on since 2000. (For more data see Chicago Tribune...
Strategy Matters
What is strategy? To far too many people, strategy is thought of as "how can we succeed doing what we've always done." To be honest, most of what is written on strategy, going back to the seminal work by Michael Porter "Competitive...
Lock-in Limits Thinking
I'm almost 50, and if you're age is anywhere near mine, and you've lived in the U.S.A., you probably have a really bad attitude toward electricity created by nuclear power. Back in the 1970s electric utilities set about building nuclear power plants which cost...
Metric motivation
Do you ever wonder how people get so locked in to doing something that they end up doing the wrong thing? Do you think they are all bad people? My experience has shown me that rarely do people do things because they have no internal moral compass. ...
Swampy Behavior
I've talked a lot about the business lifecycle, but not recently. For newer BLOG readers, I describe the business lifecycle as being like a river. Companies start out in the Wellspring, looking for a working Success Formula. After it hits on a...
Shift into White Space
The Phoenix Principle is not just for big or old companies. Any business, even small and family owned ones, can greatly increase their success using The Phoenix principle. And a great all-American example of this is NASCAR and the phenomenal growth it has...
You gotta have a Target
So what business is Sears in? I don't think anyone knows any more. But it is certain that without a direction, Sears will burn through its cash and leave shareholders with nothing soon enough. After months of whipping Sears management in this blog for...
You gotta do it right
WalMart prides itself on great execution. For years management has bragged about the company's ability to get things done quickly and cheaply. But now the company has run into problems. Revenue growth has slowed, and the future is very unclear. ...
Like a Virgin
When asked about companies that are great examples of Phoenix Principle companies I like to discuss Virgin. For years Virgin was considered a small company, but it is a great example of a small company that has become very, very big by following The Phoenix...
Allstate White Space
I've long said that any company can innovate and grow. ANY company. This week we saw an example of a stodgy company, in one of the stodgiest industries, explain how it's possible to take the steps toward improving its long term success. That company...
Draining the Swamp at Sears
OK, I guess I'm dense. For months I've been asked what I thought of the management at Sears. And I have been pretty brutal, saying that Sears was not a viable long-term competitor against Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl's and other major retail players. ...
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