Why the Atkins approach is bad for business
Doing an Atkins diet is now as fashionable in business as it is in personal life. But in business – as on the female body – there are places where you want fat as well as those where you do not. Bottom line – rather than tinker with sustainability, it is still best to soak up resources and use the energy productively.
Bonuses are a problem diet for financiers
Heads, we win; tails, they lose! Managers, traders and advisers who take more of gains than of losses have incentives to support risky courses of action that are not in the best interests of the principals they represent. John explains why this scheme can never really align the rewards of the individual with the objectives of the organisation.
Obliquity
Strange as it may seem, overcoming geographic obstacles, winning decisive battles or meeting global business targets are the type of goals often best achieved when pursued indirectly. This is the idea of Obliquity. Oblique approaches are most effective in difficult terrain, or where outcomes depend on interactions with other people.
Give state funding to students not their colleges
Europe once took 75 per cent of Nobel prizes; today the US does. It is less widely appreciated that this is the triumph of autonomous institutions over government-controlled ones.
Boeing and a dramatic change of direction
John used to teach students that Europe could never regain supremacy in civil aircraft manufacture. He was mistaken. What went wrong with Boeing’s strategy?
A touch posting for any captain of industry
Sometimes there are stranded businesses - once successful companies whose competitive advantage has disappeared. Does Barclays new chief executive find himself in this position?
Big media can never be truly creative media
Is it inevitable that media industries will be dominated by conglomerates? This is the industry where scale creates more problem than its advantages
You can’t cut costs without cutting service
Successive cost cutting rounds may just be a way of funding the present at the expense of the future.
Vodafone triumphs, Britain picks up the bill
So farewell, Sir Chris. The imminent departure of Sir Christopher Gent calls for an examination of the rise of Vodafone.
Why fat cats are bad for business
Greed perceived as a quality rather than as a defect has had serious consequences to the business world.