Equity or loans: The entrepreneurs funding dilemma.
Every start-up requires funding. A business plan, no matter how good, without cash for implementation will remain a dream. Most start-ups get off the mark with investment of one sort or another by the ‘3 F’s’: Family, Friends and Fools, supplemented by savings from...
How to maximise the return from your investment in sales personnel
In almost every situation I have ever seen, 'Sales' includes all sales, and salespeople are often rewarded via commissions on the total of all those sales. In many categories of B2B sales, the only time a person does a 'Sales' job is to gain that first...
A marketers new year resolution.
January 1st is the day we verbalise our introspection. Usually it is called a resolution, but the irony is resolutions are things we do, and new year resolutions are usually things we would like to do, but in our hearts, know we won't Anyway, for a marketer, or indeed...
2022 StrategyAudit forecast scorecard
This is the last StrategyAudit post of 2022. Thanks to all my readers over the last year, it has been a priviledge to be able to share a few minutes and some ideas with you over the year. Rather than add to the tsunami of posts that are predicting what will happen in...
Will HAL (your AI wing-man) drive you to Centrelink?
It has been a busy year, the pace of change keeps accelerating, the need to run always faster just to keep up is absolute. Therefore, the pace of failure is also accelerating, the lives of businesses getting progressively shorter, from the corner store to...
Where should Australia focus its limited investment in science?
Many of us are concerned with two key questions that will impact the lives of our children and grandchildren. From where is the next wave of innovation is going to emerge? How can we put Australia in front of that wave, so we can reap the benefits? The...
Why would a balloon be a useful metaphor for strategically successful innovation?
Strategy requires difficult choices are made, and to be truly effective there must be time constraints. Achieve this…. By……. The view many have of innovation is a free for all, unconstrained by the usually corporate constraints of time, budget, and...
Digital strategy is dead, strategic thinking lives.
Too often I hear the term 'Digital Strategy' used as if it were an outcome, some discrete set of activities to be completed. To my mind, this is a misuse of the term. As it is usually used, the word 'Digital’ is all about the devices, the technology, whereas...
Labour costs should be a strategic metric
The current 'argy-bargy' around wages policy makes the mistake of assuming it is a binary equation. Pay a dollar more/hour for labour and profit is reduced by the equivalent amount. This assumes that people working for you are only doing so for the money, and...
What makes a workshop work?
There are a lot of misconceptions about workshops, and having run many, they are hard work, although participants rarely see that work. 'Blue sky' thinking is sometimes necessary, but in the absence of strategic discipline, can become completely disconnected...