Category: Innovation/tech

Podcast: doing more with less, the Chinese way

February 12, 2009 11:42 am by Adam Jones

How can western companies thrive when they are having to cut spending and their customers are doing the same? They should look east to China, says Professor Peter Williamson of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.

In a new FT Management podcast, he argues that the best Chinese companies are models of “cost innovation”. This doesn’t mean expertise in cheap manufacturing alone. Rather, their skill is in entirely rethinking product and market definitions by doing more with less.

This might involve making high-end technology available in low-end products, or exploding an elitist niche market into a mass market, he says.

You can listen to our conversation — and my concerns about whether this is something western companies truly can emulate — on the FT’s podcast player or download the interview (and also subscribe to future episodes) via iTunes.

Posted in Hard times, Innovation/tech, Podcasts | Permalink

Pick of the week

January 2, 2009 12:23 pm by Adam Jones

How a surfeit of growth strategies can hurt a business;
Going from zero to one: the art of launching new products (such as the first electronic calculator) explained by one of Casio’s founders;
Eight reasons why General Motors failed as a marketer (no.6: “no global brand”);
The ideal farewell speech - a time to settle old scores?

Posted in Career/skills, Innovation/tech, Marketing/sales, Strategy/ops | Permalink

Best business books 2008 – stop press

December 1, 2008 5:04 pm by Stefan Stern

I should add that a late-breaking publication -

Grown Up Digital – how the net generation is changing your world

by Don Tapscott, McGraw-Hill, US$27.95, £15.99, 368 pages

is a terrific new book by the author of Wikinomics.

Tapscott explains in great detail why members of Generation Y (he calls them the “net generation”) act and respond in the way they do. They think differently. They are “bathed in bits”, he says. They are “digital natives”, not “digital immigrants”. Thought-provoking. (Full review to be published in the FT on 11.11.08.)

Posted in Innovation/tech | Permalink

Best business books of 2008

December 1, 2008 1:42 pm by Stefan Stern

When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change
By Mohamed El-Erian
McGraw-Hill Professional £15.99, 304 pages
Winner of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2008. El-Erian’s serious analysis of the new economic world order has won admirers in every major financial market. As we struggle to work out what the “new normal” will look like, El-Erian provides readers with market-tested insights.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness
By Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Yale University Press £18, 293 pages
The policy wonks’ favourite, this treatise by two Chicago economists has proved highly influential. Top-down government diktat is proving less and less effective, they argue. People cannot be told what to do. For better outcomes, “nudge” them: make suggestions, use peer pressure. Less convincing on what happens when nudging isn’t enough.

The Logic of Life: Uncovering the New Economics of Everything
By Tim Harford
Little, Brown £18.99, 288 pages
The FT’s undercover economist comes out into the open with an entertaining look at behavioural economics, and the rational motivation behind our apparently quirky and unexpected actions. Does going Dutch at a restaurant make economic sense? When is it right to bluff at cards?

A Sense of Urgency
By John Kotter
Harvard Business Press £11.99, 208 pages
One of the world’s leading gurus of change, Kotter revisits his eight steps of change theory and focuses on its most important element: a sense of urgency. Managing change successfully really does come down to that. An elegantly written book that proves you don’t have to drone on endlessly to make a point.

Continue reading: “Best business books of 2008″

Posted in Career/skills, Innovation/tech, Leadership, Managing others, Strategy/ops | Permalink

If you are paranoid now, wait until you join Rypple

November 27, 2008 2:05 pm by Adam Jones

A new web-based service called Rypple is offering workers private, anonymous feedback from colleagues and bosses.

Members use the site to ask their peers how they performed in a specific task, or how they are doing in general. The peers write down what they think and these opinions are returned to the feedback-seeker without their names attached.

This ~~nameless character assassination~~ dispassionate evaluation enables members to work on their weaknesses on a rolling basis, instead of having to wait for their annual career appraisal, the company says.

Continue reading: “If you are paranoid now, wait until you join Rypple”

Posted in Career/skills, Innovation/tech, Managing others | Permalink

Pick of the week

November 21, 2008 1:45 pm by Adam Jones

Glib politicians and CEOs rejoice: research suggests that sidestepping questions can be a good policy if you do it artfully enough.

Todd Rogers, executive director of the Analyst Institute, and Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School professor, looked at public speakers who, when faced with a difficult question, provide a slick answer to a different question that they would rather have been asked.

Their conclusion? Listeners mind this less than a straight answer delivered badly.

Elsewhere:

McKinsey on why those who try to imitate Toyota’s lean manufacturing often fall short;
Mastering the art of confrontation (and arguing with Rudy Giuliani);
The credit crunch can be an opportunity for entrepreneurs as it forces bigger companies to be conservative and possibly shed assets.

Posted in B-schools, Career/skills, Innovation/tech, Managing others, Strategy/ops | Permalink

Pooglers and Groctoids

November 19, 2008 1:53 pm by Adam Jones

At first glance, the news that Procter & Gamble and Google have been temporarily swapping staff sounds like the premise for a sitcom. P&G’s workers are stereotyped as robotic Proctoids. Googlers are supposed to be geeky-but-funky.

But as the Wall Street Journal account reveals, both companies share an underlying obsession with detail that runs deeper than any superficial differences in jargon or style. Any sitcom based on this odd couple would be running out of culture clash gags after the second episode.

The P&G/Google tie-up sounds clever and worthy of emulation by other companies. It offers a chance for P&G to learn from Google’s disruptive online innovation while giving Google a lesson in what it takes to thrive over the long term.

But while it is hardly material for TV comedy, Pooglers and Groctoids would be a great title for a children’s book.

Posted in Corporate culture, Innovation/tech | Permalink

Deborah, the magic dragon

November 18, 2008 2:40 pm by Stefan Stern

There’s the truth, and then there’s what appears in the media. The two are not always the same.

Perhaps you knew that already. But I had a revelatory experience the other morning, while chairing the first day of the FT’s innovation conference, which brought the point home to me.

We were lucky enough to have Deborah Meaden, from the BBC’s popular Dragons’ Den programme, as one of our speakers. (If you don’t know the show, it involves entrepreneurs presenting business ideas to a gang of investors – the dragons. It is must-watch and occasionally hide-behind-the-sofa telly.) We had an entirely natural, spontaneous and intimate little chat on stage: just her, me, and an audience of delegates looking on.

I had been a bit apprehensive about this. On the TV show Ms Meaden is brisk to the point of brusque, terse, and challenging. The comedian Harry Enfield has created a grotesque new parody of her in his latest TV series. The caricature is known as The Grumpy Woman.

But, although her train had been delayed by over an hour, Ms Meaden was the opposite of grumpy. She was charming, intelligent, warm and generous. And – unlike Mr Enfield’s impersonation – slim.

It’s all in the editing, you see. Filming Dragons Den takes all day. Some entrepreneurs are grilled for a couple of hours, or more. The questioning is mainly measured, and calm.

Then comes the magic of television. Longueurs are removed. The aggro is accentuated. And the polite, reasonable Ms Meaden becomes A Dragon.

I should have known. I’m not above the odd bit of selective quoting myself. But still – the contrast between image and reality was remarkable. Worth thinking about.

P.S. On her website, www.deborahmeaden.com, the text refers to her “sharp suits and sharp tongue”. I think Ms Meaden is pretty relaxed about her public image.

Posted in Innovation/tech | Permalink

Pick of the week

November 14, 2008 1:01 pm by Adam Jones

The difference between managers and entrepreneurs was highlighted this week by University of Cambridge research on the latter’s mental tolerance for risk – and how that might be simulated through the use of drugs.

The findings are discussed in a podcast by Shai Vyakarnam, director of the Judge Business School’s entrepreneurial learning centre.

On a similar theme, you might also like to check out the FT’s video lectures on managerial psychology, our podcast interview with Stanford’s Baba Shiv on how to master emotions when making decisions and our MBA Gym entrepreneurship workout.

Elsewhere:

The role of a CFO in a downturn;
NYU Stern prof suspects multi-headed mythical dog not motivated by altruism;
Tips on how to look busy by a notorious French slacker.

Posted in Career/skills, Finance, Hard times, Innovation/tech | Permalink

Pick of the week

October 31, 2008 12:12 pm by Adam Jones

I was delighted to see Ivor Tiefenbrun featured in a text-and-video package in the FT. Mr Tiefenbrun is the founder of Linn Products, a Scottish maker of expensive hi-fi gear.

In the video, he shares his management philosophy and his passion for making things in a United Kingdom that at last seems to be realising that financial engineering cannot replace real engineering.

What the FT coverage didn’t mention was that back in the early 1980s, Linn was so fed up with the quality of the LPs it used to test its fancy turntable that it started making its own albums.

One of the first it released was A Walk Across the Rooftops by the Blue Nile. It’s a Marmite record: one either swoons over its urban melancholia or dismisses it as laboured melodrama. I’m still swooning.

Anyway, the record label lives on, proving that diversification can be sustained by passion as well as cold calculation.

Elsewhere:

McKinsey’s deliberately-provocative list of seven ways in which China might surprise us in 2009 (might it really lease part of Mexico to build factories to serve the North American market?);
Workplace bullies: a guide to handling them;
Employees need room to experiment but innovation also requires top-down strategic controls.