John Harwell Authentiq Advisor

Any fool can cut expenses…, and most do!

A cost cutting strategy is a bit of an oxymoron. Jules Goddard talks about this in his July article of the same name from MLab. Think about how silly “cutting your way to growth” sounds? Some common issues with cost cutting are: it is bounded: once you have cut costs to zero – there is [...]

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Coffee business? or Capsule business?

What does coffee and capsules have to do with business strategy? Several years ago, I encountered a business owner that I believed I was in a perfect position to help. He runs a coffee company similar to Nespresso – they put coffee in capsules and distribute both the coffee machines and the capsules. He has [...]

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Intellectual Property: What is it anyway?

There is some confusion around Intellectual Property. Many believe it consists of one – maybe two things: Patent and Copyright. These are very important, but not the whole suite of Intellectual Property forms. There are at least 2 other very important forms of Intellectual Property: Trademarks and Trade Secrets.

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PME Apprendre pour Innover

On Thursday 5 Feb, the IMD Lausanne Alumni Association hosted an event for local Small and Medium businesses (PME) . I was very fortunate to be a key member of the organizing committee. I was responsible for working with the 6 principal sponsors, Bilan, Credit Suisse, EPFL, Ernst & Young, IMD, and Swiss Venture Club.

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← Previous Entries

Bring Strategy To Life
- Managing Risk in Strategy Execution – Part 1
  At first glance, it may seem strange to talk about strategy execution and risk management in the same breath. After all, isn’t strategy execution about taking risks? And isn’t risk management about minimising them? If this is your view, you are not alone. Risk management should play at part in strategy execution. After all, strategy execution implies change […]
Management 2.0
- Employee Centred Management
  What would management look like if we defined it around the needs, fears and aspirations of our employees? Julian Birkinshaw, Vyla Rollins and Stefano Turconi report on their recent study of employee-centred management. Download it here. […]
Bootzone Institute
- Augmented management: so what for skills development?
  An important question, when one realizes how important it will be for a corporation to have augmented managers, is to understand how to develop them. It is not a trivial one since it will mean much more than “just” … […]
- Témoignage: MMA en exploration chez CISCO
  Dans le cadre de MM@cadémie, université virtuelle de MMA, la communauté « Evolution du Management » sponsorisée par Pascale Leclercq, Présidente de MM@cadémie et Gérald Tourrette, DRH, les membres de cette communauté ont souhaité rencontrer Cisco France qui a initié, avec ses … […]
TODO

Innovation Blog
- Top Ten Tips for Selling Your Idea to Executives
  Besides possessing creativity and resilience, the best innovators are the ones who can effectively communicate and “sell” their ideas to upper management. Continue reading → […]
Strategy & Business
- The Right Role for Top Teams
  Analysis of informal networks offers a potent leadership model for the C-suite: Make top teams the hub of the enterprise, and watch performance improve. […]
- Seven Value Creation Lessons from Private Equity
  Although public companies do not enjoy certain liberties that highly concentrated private ownership affords, their boards and executives can learn from the best practices of private equity firms, adapting them to the realities and constraints of their own business model. Here are seven lessons from PE on how to build a value creation regimen. […]
Strategy Execution
- A Second and a Half
  These days, organizations need all the help they can muster to maintain a slim second and a half lead over the competition and navigate around or through the unprecedented number of environmental threats that loom in the business environment. In the November 2011 article, How Your Competition Affects Your Strategic Plan, we explored the threat of new entran […]