My last thoughts:
20 January 2012
To get value from Davos, you have to make it "your" Davos- pick carefully the content that interests you, reach out to those who inspire you, enjoy the serendipity encounter. If you come in with your pre-conceptions, the only thing you'll fall in love with in Davos are your own assumptions and biases.
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5 December 2011
There is one profession who has studied carefully decision making, trained thousands of decision makers to allow them to make decisions in minutes, in very uncertain conditions: the airline and airplane industry. Managers and executives could learn from them.
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18 October 2011
Women flooded the “Women on Boards Bootcamp” sessions at the Women's Forum which took place in Deauville this week, reflecting that the pool of women candidates willing to sit on boards was indeed rich, diverse, and experienced. "Because I dare” could best summarize the discussions – and the general mood: women need to take a much more aggressive approach if they want to set foot in the boardroom. They need to gain self confidence to seek out those board positions, leverage their relevant experiences in governance, and stop to be simply waiting for the opportunities to be presented to them.
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3 October 2011
As industries become increasingly complex, it is more difficult than ever to govern companies. As an executive or a board member, you are often responsible for identifying where the company might have underestimated a strategic risk, or where you are failing to see a strategic opportunity. Competia has developed over the past few years a systematic approach to enable management teams to examine your company's strategy and lead discussions around potential "blindspots" - untapped opportunities and overlooked risks. We are now introducing the "Strategic Blindspots Index"©, a systematic method to assess the risk of a strategic blindspot developing, and a way to compare a company's risk profile with industry peers.
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8 September 2011
As the use of social media is rapidly spreading and challenging every single company business model and strategy, it is time for directors to understand the implications for corporate governance.
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31 May 2011
As many Mckinsey alumni and members of the global business community, I have been following with much interest and awe the developments of the Mckinsey saga, and its shocking revelations. What bothered me was the complete disconnect between what I was reading, and the McKinsey I know, the people I worked with. I started wondering why I was taking this issue so personally. After all, why should I care so much about a company who employed me almost 20 years ago? I think it basically comes down to this: I am thankful
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24 May 2011
As digital convergence, peer to peer, and global word of mouth is shaking industry from media to telecommunications or even banking, there is little evidence that Executive Management Education is evolving at the same rate. There seems to be a the discontinuity between trends going on in adjacent industries, and the way executive education is taught.
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19 January 2011
The World Economic Forum Meeting 2001 in Davos will start on January 25th, and for the many who did not get an invitation, there is hope: the discussions, insights, questions will be discussed in many forum, many places, many platforms… here is a short guide to be able to get the most at Davos (even if you are AT Davos, this is a good way to multiply the intensity of the experience…
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12 January 2011
I have listed the corporate governance experts on Twitter and used Klout to analyze and score the influence of those experts.
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15 November 2010
In the next few days, I will be fortunate to attend the World Economic Forum's Summit in India. I will bring back to you some of the learnings and insights gained from interactions and discussions with Indian leaders and CEOs.
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9 November 2010
Did you know that over 70% of the Web cannot be accessed by search engines ? As the world is now almost exclusively using Google to access content on the Web, few research professionals realize that this tool - among other search engines- will not give them access to the data they need.
Source:
The Invisible Web, however, included a wealth of structured, validated data that is crucial for Competitive Intelligence Professionals. This short note will outline some of the principle underlining the Invisible Web, as well as tools that will help you access it.
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21 October 2010
Twitter is turning out to be a fantastic tool for Competitive Intelligence professionals: it allows them not only to screen competitors actions, but also to build an effective - and "crowdsourced" scanning of news and trends. Here are the TOP 10 uses of Twitter for anyone who is involved with marketing, market research, business development, and strategic analysis.
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20 September 2010
Last winter, I was approached by one of the major investors in Skype, who thought that the research I have done on strategic blindspots would be very valuable for the new team leading Skype's strategy. I got very excited by the opportunity- I believe the company has succeeded in touching its customers in a rare and intimate way...Yet, the investors showed little interest in exploring potential blindspots... A few month later, as Google and Facebook challenge the company, Skype could very well be gone with the wind...
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22 June 2010
I have now been playing for a few months with my ipad, and have been researching to answer the following question: "Does this new tool offer new opportunities for Competitive Intelligence and Strategy professionals?". Although this is just the beginning - I expect many new applications to come in as more users adopt the ipad- here is my best-of list of applications that I am now regularly using when scanning news, facilitating strategic discussions, and trying to simplify my life altogether.
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10 June 2010
I rarely read business books, especially in my field, so I was very happy to receive a copy of the book "Competitive Intelligence Advantage"by Seena Sharp. In many respects, the book is a good introduction to Competitive Intelligence. It covers the aspects of the sources of information, the need to check the validity of the information, the stages of CI, and the differences- and linkages with market research. I selfishly enjoyed the first part of the book more (when she is grasping the challenge of describing the mindset of Competitive Intelligence ) than the second half (geared towards to less experienced Competitive Intelligence professionals).
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12 May 2010
I am pleased to introduce you to Abhijit Bhaduri, who has the challenging mandate of helping WIPRO's 105,000 employees to learn... Abhijit is Abhijit Bhaduri is the Chief Learning Officer of Wipro Ltd and is based out of Bangalore,India. He is a man of multiple facets and will talk about how HE learns, his sources of inspiration, and what is changing on the way the most successful India IT company trains its people...
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29 April 2010
When clients and executives ask me how to gain top management attention, I usually make a simple comparison: CEOs or top managers are kind of like kids, to attract their attention you have to wave a shiny toy in front of them, and if you ask them if they prefer A or B, they'll say "both." This example illustrates how difficult it can be to please your senior management. However, some competitive intelligence analysts seem to get it: the door of the CEO's office is always open for them, he or she returns their phone calls, reads the e-mails they send, acts upon their recommendations, and these analysts do not seem to have any difficulty in getting budgets approved. What's the recipe? The following article highlights 9 steps to gain senior management buy-in.
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26 April 2010
I am fascinated by this presentation by Microsoft about Pivot... could it finally be the solution or direction of search engines? "We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web..."- Gary Flake, Microsoft
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11 April 2010
Why do smart executives, with lots of experience in their role and their industry, make the wrong decisions? Is it only because they do not have the correct information and analysis? Or, perhaps, that other biases creep into their decision making process?
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5 April 2010
When you download this page, you will get a file that contains my best sources of information and the tools I use when researching on the Web. The tools are categorized based on what you need to research: competitors or companies, people profiles, financial information, trends, etc...
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