John Kay

Every business tells you that its economics is unique, and it’s rarely true. But for television in the twentieth century, it was true. But today this is no longer the case and like in any other market, people pay for what they want and show great diversity in what they do want.

Because all discovery and creative work is derivative, claims to originality usually rest on narrow technical grounds. The exact form, rather than the substantive content, of the invention, the program, the lyric or the plot matters.

Trust was a real competitive advantage for mutual businesses. But the difficulty of meeting the conflicting expectations of different users and the slow adaptation to the requirements of changing technology explains why mutuality ceased to be a viable basis for stock exchanges.
However, if mutuality is not the answer to customers’ requirements for providers they can trust, the industry badly needs to find other answers.

In Competing for the Future, CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel suggested that companies should adapt a strategy concerned with ‘creating stretch goals that challenge employees to accomplish the seemingly impossible’. But hindsight is a harsh taskmaster and most of the companies paraded by P&H for their foresight, have since underperformed.

The battle for the London Stock Exchange has all the structure of a Jane Austen novel. Miss L.S.E., – a great name and the inheritor of a great tradition. It wouldn’t be the first time though that a suitor has to pay a high price for little more than a grand title. But such purchasers often do not regret their choice.

The Crisp Wars represent a slice of British cultural history. The business lesson is that success in these markets demands genuine skills of brand and category management

The principal reason why careful, sometimes even rigorous, scrutiny of foreign takeovers is prudent rather than protectionist is that what happens at headquarters matters.

The disappearance of P & O is a milestone in business organisation – it symbolises the arrival of capitalism without capital

Britain should have a new nuclear power programme, but one which represents the clearest possible break with the past. The structure should be simple, transparent, and have clear lines of ultimate responsibility to the consumers and taxpayers who will ultimately pick up all the bills.

Peter Drucker’s The Concept of the Corporation, and Alfred Sloan’s My Years at General Motors are probably the two most influential management texts ever written. The two had nothing in common but acute intelligence and deep interest in business.