Business ecosystems tend to evolve into a dynamic equilibrium where all of the parties divide a growing pie — think Windows/Intel for much of the past few decades. However, when the core business model of one of the players is threatened, look for all of the players in the ecosystem to look for ways to reposition themselves for survival. As an interesting case study, check out this story about the Associated Press, the cooperative-owned news organization.
Over the past several years, the music industry has undergone tremendous transformation with a shifting balance of power between artist, labels, consumers, and new players like Apple. The latest move by U2 to collect money from Live Nation highlights the business model shifts occurring in the music industry.
Welcome to the Aligned Action blog. My commitment to you is to provide resources, ideas, and tools to help you create the aligned action in your organization that is required for sustained success. I welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions along the way. I'm thrilled that my first post as a blogger coincides with the…
I frequently hear people say “This product/service/business isn’t making any money, but it’s ‘strategic’.” When used in that sense, ‘strategic’ is frequently a code word for something else, such as: This thing is losing money –and we don’t know how to make it make money. We know it isn’t making money and it never will…
I’m speaking today to a very high pressure audience. 5th graders. My daughter’s class is now doing a unit on physics and she’s very excited about it. Since I majored in physics, she asked if I would come talk to her class. To kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, I decided to…
Beware the myth of benchmarks. Lots of time, energy, and money is spent running around trying to measure and conform to industry benchmarks. But strategy is about moving you away from the middle – towards a differentiated position.
Both UPS and FedEx are launching finance businesses to "boost customer demand by loaning money to small businessess." This financing would provide working capital, often secured by the underlying inventory. See story here.
