Nobody likes to think of themselves as a follower. A sheep. As someone who slavishly adheres to the rules and behaviours set by everyone else. A herd animal, mindlessly marching in step...
“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” This quote from William F. Buckley summarises an interesting...
Nobody is more dangerous than people who think they’re the good guys. Every great atrocity of human history was fuelled by people utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause. We...
Success and effort, we're assured, are inextricably linked. There is no success without effort, and (short of some cruel misfortune) there is no effort without success. You want something?...
Strategy is a word a lot of people have problems with due to its muddled usage over the years, particularly in business, however in essence its meaning is very simple: The path by which...
Many of us are fond of using natural allegories in business. Most of these (such as “viral” or “organic” growth) are so embedded in the vernacular that their natural origins have been...
There is a surprising driving force behind great business ideas, and successful business strategies: Refusing to compete. This is the theme of this TEDx talk I completed earlier in the year...
A few weeks ago Apple were hit by a 10% slump in their quarterly profits, thanks largely to a decline in sales for the new iPhone. Not ideal, certainly, but not wholly unanticipated either....
We’ve now had about a decade of the “big data” craze. Data, we have learned, is the answer. It’s the ultimate competitive advantage. It doesn’t lie. The business of the future will...
A couple of weeks ago I delivered a talk at TEDx Folkestone - a great event and something I feel lucky to have been part of. As you can imagine there’s much more to the process than simply...