Knowledge Strategy

Information Overload: An Urban Myth?

12 Jul 2011  

I just listened to a fascinating webinar in which five authors recounted their experiences, both personal and professional, with information overload.  One of the speakers, Jonathan Spira, reports that he has measured this phenomenon, and that it costs the US economy over $1 trillion per year! Shifting the blame But in naming the phenomenon ‘information […]

Knowledge Strategy

Rebalance Your Knowledge Portfolio

13 Jun 2011  

If you have any experience with investing, you know about rebalancing your portfolio.  Every so often—at the end of every year, say—you need to reassess your investments.  Some may have grown, such that you’re too heavily invested in a particular stock or sector in the economy.  In other areas, you may find that you have […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Willful Ignorance

16 Feb 2011  

Stop me if you’d heard this one. “[COMPANY] is in the final stages of preparing a bankruptcy filing, clinching a long fall for a company with humble beginnings that helped change the way Americans buy [PRODUCT], but failed to keep pace with the [CHANGE] rocking every corner of the [INDUSTRY] landscape.” Today (February 12, Wall […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Competitive dynamics: a basic typology

6 Feb 2011  

“I love you, you’re perfect…now CHANGE.”  That’s what the market in effect continually tells high-achieving companies—because the world always changes around them. Companies tend to do best today what they did best yesterday…not what they’ll need to do best tomorrow. In working with companies of various sizes, in various industries, I’ve noticed that the most […]

Competitiveness and Innovation

Competitive myopia

8 Jan 2011  

I recently had a conversation with the publisher of a start-up niche business-to-business magazine.  We had pointed out several things that we felt were opportunities for him.  For one, our view—confirmed with some informal research—that the “look and feel” of his product was not what it could be, and that with a small investment, he […]