I lately wrote a blogpost in German on the poor chaps in advertising. I argued that advertisers are always coming too late with their creative ideas. If the business model they are going to advertise is bad they can’t do much anymore. They are just too late to fix the problems in the business model.
Thinking in business models helps you in change projects, particularly in the unlearning of unwanted tacit assumptions and knowledge of the past. Forgetting what made you successful in the past is the key challenge in any change project, learning new things actually the easy part. I am currently involved in a large change project. The company involved was living in…
The German retail and travel conglomerate Arcandor AG formerly known as KarstadtQuelle AG filed on June 9th 2009 for insolvency. It claims that the financial crisis is the reason. It had asked the German government in May for state aid but the government refused. But is the financial crisis the real reason for the dire situation? I do not think…
The typical answer from managers to the question “What is the purpose of your business?” is: “to make money”. Well, that is to some point right but the money comes from customers and therefore the purpose of a business is to find profitable customers. And financing your sales to your customers is only sustainable when you see the cash in…
In workshops participants ask me what business model innovation would be best for their industry. I am always surprised about these kinds of questions. I am not the expert for all industries. You are! You are the expert for what you are doing. The participants are the expert in their field. They know the idiosyncrasies of their industry, the hidden…
“We have to pay so high salaries otherwise we don’t get the right people” is often heard from firms even in the crisis. Particularly the failed banking industry was very good in this salary death spiral. Salary was seen in this market as the only differentiators with great results. I always wondered why the so highly paid managers could not…
