business strategy

For many companies, autumn is the time to review their expenditures and make annual plans. As I am writing these words, I almost hear thousands of CEOs ordering their teams to slash costs whenever possible. The crisis is coming! We need to save; profits are at stake!

Part 1. Solution Space – Uncertainty – Strategy

“We are not short of creativity in our world, and yet most organizations struggle with innovation.” — Gary Hamel.

Are you challenged in your efforts to implement organization-wide changes to improve your culture, the employee experience, and the customer experience?

I originally wrote today's post for CallidusCloudCX; it was published on their blog on July 26, 2017.

Two recent research papers suggest that companies need to address social welfare as a matter of business practice, not just good works or marketing strategy.

BCG’s Total Societal Impact details the ways companies are being pushed to take responsibility for issues that affect their stakeholders, but aren’t a direct outcome of their product or service offerings. Environment, health, gender and political freedom are some of the key areas in which buyers want to see action from sellers, in ways that go beyond philanthropy or marketing tie-ins.

This is part of my manuscript for a session with Keen Bull on how additive manufacturing will impact the world, at this years DIF-festival.

What we find is that with some superior technological advancements, and additive manufacturing being one of them, the models and practices sustaining a competitive advantage in a given era starts failing.

This is part of my manuscript for a session with Keen Bull on how additive manufacturing will impact the world, at this years DIF-festival.

We believe three things are happening with organizations at the moment..

First, advantage of scale has given far more of us increased material wealth, access to mass education, longevity of life increased social complexity and so forth.

The mass production system has enabled us to grow as human beings. But as we grow we have also come to demand more from the business organizations we depend upon for consumption and employment (1).

This hasn’t been a part of the organizations toolbox.

Organizations have had a blueprint that was tailored for mass efficiency — but not meaningfulness, identity, belonging and individualization.

These elements, which are now essential to the output and progress of an organization were deemed problematic and irrelevant in the old system.

So there is a conflict at the moment between a new generation of employee needs and what the current organizational tools can offer.

Stefan Kolle is the co-founder and managing director of Futurelab, a customer centricity and customer experience specialist consultancy working with some of the world's biggest brands to increase customer loyalty and profits. We recently spoke with Stefan about how companies everywhere can improve their customer experience.

Now that marketers in practically every sector prioritize content marketing, storytelling is heralded as a brand’s most effective approach to developing content.  It makes sense — people are emotional beings, so we respond to stories because they engage us on an emotional level.  And, as Nicholas Ind and Oriol Iglesias write in Brand Desire, “Brands and storytelling come out of the same building blocks:  meaning and emotions.”  But take a closer look