Where does public responsibility hide?
The execution of Philip Lowe on Friday displays what is to me a worrying dismissal of the responsibilities the government holds over the fate of the economy. This is despite the polite words of mutual admiration and respect, that is what it was, an...
When does a forecast become a prediction?
Our corporate culture demands that we forecast outcomes in the early stages of almost any project. Accountants feed on the IRR numbers, and these outcomes find themselves incorporated into all sorts of budgets for which people are held accountable. They...
The good and bad of AI impact on SME’s
Anyone who reads my stuff on any sort of regular basis will know I have been deeply engaged with the potential impact of AI on all of us, since I stumbled across ChatGPT in early December last year. Of particular interest is the apparent potential...
The classic disruption timeline
As a kid in the sixties, some of my friends had extensive record collections, mostly albums, but also singles of the 'hits' from albums. The Beatles dominated, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band selling millions of copies when released in 1967, and was...
The great marketing opportunity delivered by tough times.
A hundred years of practical experience and academic research proves that cutting marketing budgets during tough times is the worst thing you can do. Most do it, simply because it is easy, seems sensible to the uninitiated, and often prevents yelling from the...
The case for doing something boring. Wool.
All the recent focus of industry development, Control of IP, and sovereign manufacturing, has been on High tech. Should we, or perhaps why don't we, look to areas where we have dropped the ball in the past, but still have the opportunity to shape world...
The simple choice marketers must make.
When building a marketing plan, one of the key choices that must be made early is a deceptively simple one that most fail to recognise. Are you setting out to serve existing demand? Are you setting out to generate new demand? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,...
The reliable way to forecast manufacturing costs.
Several years ago I became aware of 'Wrights law'. In the 1930’s, Theordore Wright an aero engineer proposed that: 'For every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs will fall by a constant percentage'. This insight came from observing the...
The SME marketers 3 card marketing budget optimisation trick
No business I have ever seen has enough in their marketing budgets to do all they would like to do. Therefore, they often start cutting bits off ‘willy nilly’ to reach a budget that can be managed. There is a better way: Basic marketing 101, which most SME's...
How to grab attention in an AI world
On first glance, the only purpose of a blog post, or indeed any sort of content that comes into your inbox, is to provide some impetus to encourage you towards a transaction. That remains the case, but if that is the only reason, we have arrived at the...