There is an interesting article in the Schumpeter Column of The Economist of 26th January. ‘As retailers abandon the high street why is IKEA moving in’. I have been pondering …
Can Apple sustain their competitive advantage?
The business news this morning pays a lot of attention to the fall in the Apple share price. Apple shares fell by 8% yesterday. A number of reasons are put …
What are Business Schools for?
I was struck by the first line of an article in the Sunday Times this week. Luke Johnson asks ‘What are Business Schools for?’ It is, to me at least, …
Why do we Undervalue Competent Management?
This well researched article from Harvard Business Review turns what students are taught at Business School on its head, at least to some extent. It has been accepted in Business …
Is Trump’s view of Germany right?
Roger Bootle is one of our favourite writers on Economics. We have reviewed two of his published books; The trouble with Markets in 2012 and The trouble with Europe in 2016. As well …
Strategic Decisions: When can you trust your gut?
Over the past few years there has been a growing interest from our clients for programmes which cover the tools and techniques to improve decision-making skills, particularly across Finance functions. …
Invasion of the Bottle Snatchers
As I settle down towards the end of the holiday period (at least in the UK) a colleague has pointed out an article in The Economist of July 9th. This …
Culture is not the Culprit – Am I missing something?
There was an interesting article on organisational culture in the Harvard Business Review of April 2016, by Jay W. Lorsch and Emily McTague. I had been meaning to write a …
Thriving through cultural differences
“You’re wrong” “It doesn’t work like that” “I don’t agree with you” These were just some of the challenges I received on the first morning of a three day training …
Bad romance in the chemical industry
An article in this week’s Economist considers the proposed merger of two chemicals giants, Dow Chemical and DuPont. The rationale for the merger is cost cutting through economies of scale …