competitivity

In an interesting conversation with clients this week the discussions were around the question: “should companies plan for the distant future (10 years and beyond) and what is needed to get out of a death spiral where a slow death is in the making?”

Technology-based companies typically make one common mistake: They get too caught up in technological innovation, particularly developing new technologies, or get too obsessed with the next killer technology and think the world revolves around their latest invention. Even if they find the right applications for their technologies, they often defer the serious effort needed to figure out how they create economic value – or how do they make money?

I just published a post on Triple Pundit that fleshes out the market-facing aspects of a model I’ve been working on with The FairRidge Group. Called the Sustainability Management Maturity Model (SM3), it’s a tool to help businesses assess their readiness to address business sustainability challenges and opportunities. The internal management components were outlined last month on Triple Pundit – Strategy, Organization, Process, Measurement and People – which all relate to an inside-out perspective of the business.

by: Jennifer Rice

by: John Caddell

For the past eight years, I’ve worked with helping midsized IT companies sell their products into a maturing telecom market. This is so different from the earlier times of unbounded growth that it doesn’t even feel like the same industry anymore.

In the old days (i.e., before 2000), there were so many new telecom companies sprouting up that a company did not have to be a leader to be successful. They just had to be good enough.

by: Idris Mootee

If you think business is competitive, think about cities. Every city is struggling to find innovative ways to heighten their creative energy and transform their cities to a post industrial age era. One of them is Seoul, it has an ambitious plan to transform into the “Soul of Asia, a city of design and culture”, reflecting the total change in mindset from a dour, industrial age city.

by: Sigurd Rinde

Sometimes when I hear the term "competitiveness" it hits me as ever so slightly aggressive. Fists flying, brats vying for a position in the front row, a tad macho the whole thing.

But it's not, it's about success, delivering great value, being liked, being loved, being human, using a minimum of resources to deliver a maximum of value. Basically it's all good.

It's about doing your very best, accepting that the ones not doing their best will be weeded out. That's life.

by: Guy Kawasaki

Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books. Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford.

by: Alexander Osterwalder

I just finished a draft presentation for a workshop on the topic "Competitive Advantage through Business Model Design and Innovation". I'm facilitating the workshop next June with about 100 executives in Guadalajara, Mexico. The workshop is hosted by the Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM). Your input regarding the slides is most welcome:

by: Joseph Mann

I think you can never have too many tools for keeping an eye on the competition. One benchmarking tool I developed to do this I like to call the “Competitive Threat Index” and with it you can plug in values based on certain criteria and then charting them to provide a quick visual overview of whom you need to be watching at any given time.