Category: trends
-
The Rise of Zero-Based Budgeting
Zero-based budgeting feels like one of those trends that is potentially pretty significant but which few people are talking about. I seem to be coming across it more and more. It's no doubt sprung from the increasing pressure that marketers are under to demonstrate the value of their investments, and the increasing accountability that comes from…
-
Agile Resourcing at ING
In the book I talk a lot about how agile thinking and principles (and not just Agile doing) can be applied in the service of supporting fundamental change in the organisation. To enable a far more responsive, customer-centric way of working. To enable a shift away from the entrenched processes and practices that are holding…
-
Blockchain and the Perez Technological Surge Cycle
In amongst all the Bitcoin hype there was a thought-provoking question posed in a well-shared post published just before Christmas by Kai Stinchcombe, founder of a Silicon Valley financial services startup, about whether there was actually any legitimate use at all for Blockchain technology: ‘Everyone says the blockchain, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, is going…
-
Democratising AI Capability
I don't claim to be an expert on AI but as someone who works in the 'digital industry' (whatever that means now) I think its important to keep track of notable shifts in an area that has become fast-moving and of huge potential significance. AI is surely one of the most important S-curves around, and…
-
Google Firestarters – Change and Complexity – The Event
For our recent Google Firestarters (our 26th!), we revisited a successful format that we first did two years ago. In 2015, in one of our most successful Firestarters ever, seven of the best minds in the industry gave a ten minute perspective in answer to a single question: what's the best thing that you've learned in…
-
Frozen Accidents, and Predicting The Future
I rather liked the idea of ‘frozen accidents’, expounded here by Shane Parrish. He quotes from physicist Murray Gell-Man who believed that the things we observe in the world are the result of both a set of fundamental laws, but also random accidents – the unforeseen occurrences which create the opportunity for new possibilities but…
-
Platform Economics (3) – Scaling and Growth
As part of disappearing down the rabbit hole of platform business economics, I'm writing up the second of Chris Smith's excellent summations of the key dynamics of platform models. I'm doing this mostly for my own benefit but, as always, you are welcome to tag along and it's worth reading the original. So far I've…
-
What Real Disruption Looks Like: Lemonade Insurance
Disruption is an overused word but I find the breadth as well as the depth of disruption right now to be endlessly fascinating. Logical I guess, given how horizontal the impact of digital is, and how the different ways of re-wiring markets can come from such diverse forms of innovation. Digital may change the economics of…
-
Platform Economics (2) – Network Dynamics
I thought I'd write some more about some of the basic economic fundamentals of platform business models (links to the other posts in this series are collected at the bottom of this post). It's worth delving a bit more into network dynamics and why (perhaps) the shift from more traditional market dynamics and approaches can…
-
Platform Economics
I've been writing a bit recently about the shift from linear pipeline to platform business models, in part to help me be more precise in how I define and describe it (to clients), and in part because I think the degree of shift in the dynamics of scalability, ownership, data, and interaction is under-appreciated (particularly in large,…