Monday, 23 June 2014

Perspiration Not Inspiration Delivers Innovation

Innovation. It’s a word that crops up everywhere these days and plays its part in the formation of  the most toe curling of corporate slogans - BOC’s `Delivering Innovative Solutions` plastered across the side of their trucks being one of my favourite examples of pseudo-marketing nonsense. There is so much guff talked about innovation.  So often it is presumed to be the preserve of the...

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Sorting the Entrepreneurial Wheat from the Egomaniacal Chaff

Some of you may have read my recent blog about applying the fine art of emotional intelligence in business.  If you haven’t, you can find it here - http://tinyurl.com/q8nju62  Anyway, as a reference point I thought it’d be worth contrasting it as a desired approach to management and relationships directly with the behaviour of two extreme entrepreneurial and management personality types...

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Entrepreneurial Leadership Means Managing a State of Continuous Turnaround

Being an entrepreneurial business leader is a big challenge. It takes a combination of skill, personality and sheer endurance to do a tough job day-in, day- out. It’s always been the case, but in the 21st century there is unprecedented rate of change to be dealt with and that makes the job a whole lot more challenging. Markets are now continually being disrupted by combinations of regulation, consolidation,...

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Want To Be The Next Uber? What VCs Need to Know About You and Your Team

The media is currently awash with claims that if Uber's $17-billion valuation becomes reality, it will make Uber the most currently `valuable` tech startup, ahead of Airbnb, Dropbox, and Xiaomi and their mere $10bn valuations. Of course, this ranking game that reflects a media obsessed with lists and number envy doesn’t necessarily make one company more important than another - or better assure...

Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Judgement Daze? The Secret of Good Decision Making

I’ve mentioned in this blog before that I think that judgement is the most important yet often most underrated of business skills.  I suspect that’s because it’s difficult to quantify and that fits uncomfortably in a data-obsessed `if it can’t be measured it can’t be managed` world and the format of case study models force fed to MBA students. Yet it is particularly important to develop it in...