Tag Archives: business

The Future of Business

25 Jun

Future of Business softcover2SMALLWith conventional publishing timelines of 12 – 18 months, expert insights into the future and the concerns of future thinkers are likely to be  delivered far too late for decisive action.

The acclaimed futurist and regular speaker at NextGen events, Rohit Talwar, master-minded production of this impressive work in just 19 weeks. In that process from conception in January to launch this week, Rohit and his team adopted a new business model – one that they hope will lead to many further productions of high quality material.

The Future of Business is exclusively available for order via Fast Future Publishing 2015 – the venture they created in January to tackle the logistics of making their dream a reality.

In 62 chapters bringing together 60 contributing authors from across 21 countries, the Future of Business explores how the commercial world is being transformed by the complex interplay between social, economic and political shifts, disruptive ideas, bold strategies and technological & scientific breakthroughs.

At first sight readers might be daunted by these 566 pages but, edited into 10 sections with chapters averaging 9-10 pages, readers will find it easy to find topics of immediate interest – aided, no doubt, by the online references that perform so much better than printed versions ever could.

The book is aimed at the leaders of today and the pioneers of tomorrow – raising awareness of the issues that will confront us long before we are knocked sideways by the supposedly unexpected.  Our future, your future, is not pre-destined but the awareness that society, businesses and individuals can identify and exercise those choices is rarely apparent in life’s daily grind.

If the Future of Business raises your sights and stretches your imagination, then the entire collaborative production process will have been well worth the effort.

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Notes:

Rohit Talwar wbsizeRohit Talwar has been a star speaker at many NextGen Events.

The programme for NextGen 15 (November 5th) is currently under development and exhibitor and sponsorship opportunities are still available. For more information see http://www.nextgenevents.co.uk/awards or contact Marit Hendriks –  marith@nextgenevents.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By The Way: the unexpected bonuses of business travel

9 Feb

So you’re off again – hoping to sell, buy, learn or teach – flights and hotel booked, appointments scheduled, presentations prepped, agendas agreed.

So far, so rational. But does it ever turn out like that?

If it did you might just as well have done the business by email and Skype.  No, the real value of business trips lies in the unexpected, the chance encounters, the rare perspectives that only come along the way.  You can never know exactly how things will turn out for you or for the folks you’ll chance to meet.

Marit HendriksFor fine examples of unexpected bonuses read my colleague Marit’s accounts from our 2014 trip to New York or her visit to India.

As we head off today to Warsaw for the FTTH conference we may think that the script is predictable, but the memories that survive will surely be unscripted.

 

 

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Harrumph of the week: you cannot be serious?

26 Aug

Yesterday’s news that Amazon is intent on acquiring Twitch Interactive Inc. – a 3 year old venture with a million broadcasters and 55 million visitors per month – for around $970 million in cash, is yet another signal that your correspondent should perhaps wake up and take the games market seriously.

But having just been visited by two young grandchildren (with iPads) on their summer holidays, it is difficult to be serious.

The mind boggles.

Full story featuring the EvilLordPexagon here

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Indian business leaders gathering in London will get multi-ministerial support

30 Jul

The 2014 London Global Convention for the Institute of Directors (India) will bring business leaders from across the globe in October.

OfficialBaronessVermaSustainability will be high on the agenda – not least because chair of the convention’s programme committee is Baroness Verma, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Energy & Climate Change.

Sustainability is a high priority on many boardroom agendas and also represents major trade opportunities for the UK – so it’s no surprise to hear that Dr Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, and Trade and Investment Minister, Ian Livingston are also expected to attend the event.

For more information on the Convention and why Sustainability is a key business topic read the Groupe Intellex background commentary.

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A New Dynamic – effective business in a circular economy

24 Jan

A New Dynamic - coverAs the Ellen MacArthur Foundation crew headed to Davos they had at least two reasons to be cheerful; Unilever joining the foundation’s ranks of enlightened major players and the publication of their latest MBA textbook, ‘A New Dynamic’.

The Circular Economy concept has been well rehearsed  – notably in brilliantly animated productions for schools – and this new book is very much directed at graduates and business strategists.  It not only gives a thorough grounding in the concept’s gestation – how economies must move on from the wastefulness of outmoded ‘linear’ models – but also maps the scale of new sustainable opportunities.  This goes way beyond conventional recycling – it heralds both an entirely new way of designing products and the ways that these products (or the use of them) will be delivered to future consumers.

Converting the radical Circular Economy concepts into reality is a long term challenge that will increasingly be addressed by the enterprise managers of tomorrow.  Volatility in raw material and energy prices is just one of the drivers behind the shift from Ownership to Access and shifts in design to enable ‘things that are made to be made again’.

In ‘Booms and Boomerangs‘ we review ‘A new Dynamic’ in the context of Irene Ng’s ‘Value & Worth’ and John Kay’s recent RSA Journal essay ‘Circular Thinking’.

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Sustainable Development and socio-efficiency

5 Jul

GI LogoIn his introduction to the July issue of Quality Times the editor draws attention to the definition of eco-efficiency by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development – “eco- efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impact and resource intensity throughout the life-death cycle, to a level at least in line with the earth’s carrying capacity.”

The editor, Pradeep Chaturvedi,  adds that ‘similar to the concept of eco- efficiency but so far less explored in corporate sustainability is the concept of socio-efficiency, i.e., the relation between a company’s value added and its social impact.  While it can be assumed that corporate impact on environment is usually negative, this may not be true for the social impact. . . .  Both eco-efficiency and socio-efficiency promote economic sustainability of businesses in the long run’.

This neatly introduces a paper by Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas that addresses Environmental Management Challenges and Opportunities for the World Congress in Dehli on 19th/20th of July.  In the context of a world-wide digitalisation of economies, empowerment of citizens, and the disappointments of Rio+20 last year this paper aimed at corporate boardrooms could not be better timed.

The Groupe Intellex summary of Colin’s paper is available here.

 

 

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Integrity in Business: an honest opinion from the boardroom

17 Feb

At a time when dishonesty seems the dominant theme  of business news, Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas speaks up for ethical standards.

His keynote at a major conference in Bangalore deserves wider readership – so we’ve reproduced it in full.

Colin has long been a supporter of Groupe Intellex and we value his insights and occasional editorial contributions.

 

 

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‘Value & Worth’: Irene Ng’s new book

23 Dec

For Irene Ng’s new book the title of our review, ‘Make of it what you will’, captures the sense of empowerment that is so evident in the digital economy.

This is an economy where the consumer plays a huge role in how products and services are used to create value.  It is an economy where suppliers must rethink their propositions.

In our increasingly digitally-enabled economy it is no longer sufficient for businesses to see sales of a product or service as their sole objective.  The value seen by the consumer will be co-created in combination with an array of services and digital devices and further conditioned by the context in which they are being used.

The author does not hide her academic credentials (including a Professorial Chair at Warwick University) but it is her pre-academic business experience that is evident throughout.  The challenges of creating and sustaining new markets will be fought in an intensely competitive arena – and one where the platforms for value co-creation are often beyond the influence of second-order supplicants.

Many business leaders will respond to these challenges with innovative creativity and startling success.  This week’s report from the GDS shows very clearly that the government is taking a lead.  Others may not be so responsive.  The world will move on and the disruption to the established order of things will be devastating for those who do not see or fully understand the changes that are already upon us.

This an explorer’s handbook as we venture into the digital unknown.

More at the Sunday Breakfast Book Review

See also our Business Advisory note at Bdaily – the UK business news network

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The Digital Economy: there’s no going back

28 May

In our strongest editorial to date on the so-called Digital Economy  we assert that, in the same way that people say ‘the real economy’ without explaining what an un-real economy might be, there is no non-digital economy of any great substance.

Across every sector of the economy the qualifier ‘digital’ is redundant.  The digital infrastructure is as important to sustainable green policies for energy and transport as it is for Finance, Health and Manufacturing.   Fixing the ‘digital deficit’ is the first step towards economic recovery.

We suggest that to track the nation’s digital maturity we need to measure four things:  Fitness for Purpose, Balance, Hassle and Disruption.

Full story here.

See also previous editorial: Finding Nemode

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Business, Society and Public Services

23 May

It’s good to see the ‘Circular Economy’ mentioned in the RSA’s latest report but the primary concern is that policy development in public services and economic growth is not being tackled in any cohesive way.

Based on the experience of Community Study Tours in Scandinavia, Groupe Intellex has long argued that the glue that binds these things together is investment in a high quality digital infrastructure.

It may, of course, be far more obviously necessary in remote places, with extremes of weather and transport difficulties, to maximise the use of digital interaction for basic public services such as health and education but the impact has been equally beneficial for enterprise, innovation, competition, community development and the stimulation of inward investment .

The RSA report’s main title reflects the distinct labels of Business, Society and Public Services – regarded by many as being in entirely different camps –  but the subtitle – ‘a social productivity framework‘ gets a little closer to the ‘mashed up’ realities and interdependencies of the real economy.   It’s a brave step but probably far too much for ‘Sun headlined’  ideologically-driven policy developers looking for simple solutions.

Will sleepwalkers awake when digital floods rise higher than their knees?

Download the full RSA report (PDF) here

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