OEMBA StrategyBlog

Updated Session 8 slides

Jim Goes — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:33:18 +0000

I made quite a few changes in these.

http://oembastrategy.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/strategy-formulation-session-8-2009.ppt

Chartjunk and Powerpoint is Evil

Jim Goes — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:23:01 +0000

On Saturday I will share some brief, general comments about the minicase presentations and how to improve the quality of visual presentation. One of the most common problems I see is poor use of PowerPoint in presentations, although that was not a major problem in this class. Ed Tufte is the guy who wrote the book (literally) on visual graphics as a way of portraying data in presentations. His first book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a classic source, and has been followed by several other excellent books. Here is a decent summary of his rules of graphical excellence. He also rails about the use and misuse of PowerPoint, and his critique of PPT some years ago in Wired is well worth reading.

FeedFORWARD instead of feedBACK

Jim Goes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:58:36 +0000

Several times in class I’ve mentioned the feedforward approach, which has been popularized by Marshall Goldsmith. I’ve been loosely using this approach in addition to the usual evaluation feedback in responding to your weekly papers, as well as in other classes and consulting work. I find the forward looking approach to be more productive than our natural tendency to just look back on what has already happened. This piece by Goldsmith is worth reading, and goes into greater depth on the concept. Incorporating this into your managerial style if you are not already using it should generate some good outcomes.

Managing in an upturn

Jim Goes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:52:18 +0000

Judging from the stock market (an imperfect indicator to be sure), lots of people think a recovery is on the way. In your readings for this week there is a short piece by Porter and managing in downturns. Now that things are kind of looking up, it’s a good question as to how strategies in upturns should differ from those in downturns. Grist for discussion is provided by a recent piece from the Wharton business school (Harvard has competition!)

Climate change: winners and losers

Jim Goes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:48:34 +0000

On Saturday we will be discussing the implications of climate change for strategy in a variety of different sectors and industries. Here are two good sources that update the assigned HBR article. Also see the Lash and Wellington article in the supplemental list, which translates the question into familiar ground: competitive advantage.

Gregg Easterbrook in Atlantic Monthly on winners and losers from at the macro level

Good 2008 piece from Harvard that includes some interesting commentary from readers

Updated Week 7 slides

Jim Goes — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:09:25 +0000

Hot off the presses

http://oembastrategy.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/strategy-formulation-session-7.ppt

Disruption Redux – yes, more Google

Jim Goes — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:34:42 +0000

Two interesting pieces of news this week about Google’s latest.

First, Google Voice has been offered for some time as a way to consolidate multiple phone numbers (office, cell, home) into one point of contact. But the downsize has always been the need to create a new phone number. This week they announced they will provide a limited feature set with no new number required. Watch this one closely for further improvements, looks like a possible disruptive path.

Second, Google unveiled free phone GPS this week for phones using the Android OS. Now, who is this going to disrupt?

Well discuss it at the beginning of class on Friday.

Reinventing print media

Jim Goes — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:40:40 +0000

Ran across this excellent article from Strategy+Business about some ideas for transforming traditional print media, a subject spot on for our discussion about the revolutionary change underway in the newspaper industry. Worth a read.

Updated Week 6 slides

Jim Goes — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:55:21 +0000

http://oembastrategy.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/strategy-formulation-session-6-2009.ppt

Google everywhere

Jim Goes — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:37:31 +0000

These days it’s hard not to see Google everywhere, a theme of a good piece from Knowledge@Wharton earlier this year. On Saturday we’ll discuss multi-sided platforms and Google’s somewhat unique position in the web food chain – both how defensible it is, and how competitors are going to respond.

On the subject of disruption, one wonders if Google’s open source Android OS for cell phones has disruptive potential. So far the hype has outpaced the reality, but several major phone manufacturers are bringing out Android phones later this year. Should Apple be paying attention?