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January 2013 | The Grass Isn’t Always Greener – So Maybe You Should Stay Put!
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener – So Maybe You Should Stay Put! Lucky enough to be part of a good, profitable business? Considering new opportunities and other growth initiatives? Maybe you’d better think again. So says Tim Calkins, a Professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and the author of Defending Your Brand. The…
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December 2012 | Big Data Analytics: Not Just for Presidential Candidates
Big Data Analytics: Not Just for Presidential Candidates The physicist Niels Bohr once famously said, “Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.” But in today’s business world, it’s getting easier and easier thanks to big data analytics. The goal of data analytics is to “measure everything” (think of Google’s infamous practice of analyzing…
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November 2012 | In with the new, out with the New(sweek)
In with the new, out with the New(sweek) We’ve all heard that “change is constant” and that “the pace of change is increasing” – so often that we usually just ignore the message. But on one single day last month, two separate announcements were made that highlighted the importance of these messages. An “old” company,…
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October 2012 | Guess which country is becoming a lowest-cost manufacturer?
Guess which country is becoming a lowest-cost manufacturer? (spoiler alert: it’s not China) The U.S. is on-track to become one of the lowest-cost manufacturers in the developed world. We know that sounds like a typo – but when Boston Consulting Group says it in Business Week, it’s probably pretty reliable. Click here to read the…
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September 2012 | What’s A Customer Really Worth To You?
What’s A Customer Really Worth To You? For several years PriSim has been teaching students to consider the “lifetime value” (LTV) of their customers. And now we’ve published an article describing the LTV process. Click here to read a copy of the article. It’s easy to fall into the trap of valuing customers based solely…
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August 2012 | Let No Good (Innovative) Deed Go Unpunished
Let No Good (Innovative) Deed Go Unpunished An innovative strategic move can pay off big – or it can bury a company quicker than quicksand. Take Navistar’s mounting troubles, one of the largest manufacturers of heavy trucks in the U.S. As part of the company’s strategy in the last decade, it utilized a ground-breaking emissions-control…
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July 2012 | Global CEOs Turn Lemons into Lemonade
Global CEOs Turn Lemons into Lemonade The CEOs surveyed in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 15th Annual Global CEO Survey 2012 seem intent on making good on the old saying, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. In the survey, CEOs were asked, “…how they see the global economy evolving this year and beyond, and how they expect to…
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June 2012 | Being Private Has its Privileges
Being Private Has its Privileges In an interesting study run by Chief Executive Magazine back in 2006, 90% of CEOs surveyed said they would prefer to run private companies. (click here to read more) But why? It turns out that being private has significant strategic benefits. A case-in-point is State Farm, a mutual insurance company…
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Crowdsource Your Strategy
Crowdsource your strategy? Are you crazy? According to Wikipedia, “crowdsourcing” is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. What if you applied this technique to the development of your strategy? What if you heavily involved the people who are actually going to be responsible for implementing the strategy? Welcome to…
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April 2012 | Red Bull Yourself to be Creative
Red Bull Yourself to be Creative Business performance is sometimes driven by being “clever” or “creative”. Unfortunately, many people think that creativity is an innate ability that a person either has or doesn’t have. Well, there’s good news. Creativity is a skill that can be learned with practice. There seem to be 2 equally valid…