Shopping for change

Three simple questions

My first home was the flat above my father’s store in a  modest working class suburb. What was good about it? Everyone knew everyone; the railway station was across the road; if you wanted to buy something, it was around the corner. In short, community, connectivity and convenience.

Not much happens there now. Online shopping has eroded retail. People connect more on the net than in person. If you want to shop, the nearest mall is a better option. 

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Go ahead, disrupt yourself

Converting anxiety to action

Disruption is a big word. It impacts different people in different ways. Some see it as an opportunity; others a threat. 

Yet both responses are a source of anxiety. Big shifts in the commercial environment change whole industries, and eventually whole economies. With the internet, the shift can go global. Our business, our jobs, our lives: they are all affected.

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Choosing ideas that get traction

Why a marriage of convenience works

The test of any innovation is convenience. Does it make things easier? There are lots of inventions but few successes. Some are inspiring in their technical wizardry; others are aesthetically pleasing or inexpensive to produce. But they don’t get traction unless they make things more convenient.

For innovation to succeed, it has to mobilise either latent demand or latent supply, or both, and bring them together in a convenient package.

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The Wisdom of the Loud

Groupthink is alive and well, and often wrong

I was warned at an early age. You can’t believe everything you read. And that was well before the internet was running fast and loose with the truth.

I was later alarmed to find Mark Twain didn’t exactly say reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. And to find Captain Kirk never said ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ in a Star Trek episode. And how disappointing was it when astronauts couldn’t see the Great Wall of China from space?

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Beware: Cliches Ahead.

Sometimes there’s a reason the road less travelled is not congested.

It’s easy to come up with slogans to explain success. Management commentary is full of them yet they often describe a singular success that isn’t easily transferred to another business.

“Sticking to your knitting” might be a successful strategy for one firm but not for a competitor. You could say it works for Walmart, but it didn’t for Sony. It stuck to the Walkman way past the arrival of the MP3 player. A better cliché might have been “when the horse is dead, get off”.

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