Investors, rejoice: BT is back where it started
From four consecutive failures of strategy in British Telecom we learn that policy making in business requires more than slogans and visions.
Department of Trade and Industry/Forum for the Future
Lessons from ICI’s transformation; a lecture at the Department of Trade and Industry/Forum for the Future.
Weaving the fine fabric of success
From the eighteenth century history of John Kay of Bury and John Kay of Warrington, we learn that creative skills and management skills are very different.
Failure by consensus
Before ITV Digital, there was Taurus, EFTPoS and BSB. Each of these schemes failed because the problems of decision making and responsibility in industry-wide schemes was not tackled successfully.
Of ants and omelettes
David Beckham would find it hard to explain the physics behind his free-kicks. It can be equally difficult to analyse the reasons why some firms are more successful than others
A vital item is missing
John Mayo's account of his troubled tenure at Marconi should serve as a warning to managers. Success in business is achieved by supplying goods and services effectively; not by seeking to boost share prices.
The great paradox
Large companies often incur the wrath of anti-globalisation protesters. But these firms suffer most from the increased competition globalisation itself bring.
On John Kay’s Bookshelf – Archive page
Books that John has reviewed in the past...
Shock of the new
Not all business strategy problems have answers, including those of BT, as Sir Christopher Bland will find when he takes over.
High street homilies
As Marks and Spencer goes "back to basics", its story is a paradigm of what happened to British business in the last decade. Was the company's problem that it changed too little - or that it changed too much?