Be Happy. Be Audacious

Two days ago, I was in the train from Cologne to Hannover and I read the following words in the HBR magazine:

Now is the time for audacity, not austerity.

It's curious to read these words from a HBR editor, but Scott Berinato pointed out the key point for those who watch these days the news: Should Europe focus more on promoting innovation and employment or keep on with deficit's corrective measures?

I know it's a difficult question but making the wrong decision could change the future of the European Union as a whole, and therefore, the future of those who live under the 12 golden stars' flag.
What's going to happen? What are Europe's goals for the next few months? And for the next 5 years?

Looks like we cannot link our professional future to those decisions related to european and national policies, so what can we do?
"Be Happy. Be Audacious" are the words from Adi Ignatious, HBR's Editor in Chief. (HBR, Jan-Feb 2012), and probably reflects perfectly the philosophy of this Blog.
I'm not sure if "audacious" is the right word but under the economical perspectives of these times we're living, we should look back and read the Eneida, from Virgilius (70 b.C - 19 a.C), and its wonderful statement:

Audentes fortuna iuvat. (Fortune favours the bold) 

Good luck!

Innova vel mortuus est

"Renew or died" is a maxim for all companies these days, no matter what's your business.

As part of my lecture about Competitive Innovation, I carried out a research through the Oxford English Dictionay about the real meaning of Competitive Innovation. 

" Innova vel mortuus est "

 

Competitive Innovation:  to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products in order to become as good as or better than others of a comparable nature (our competitors).

Innovation from Latin innovatio(n-), from the verb innovare

noun

[mass noun] the action or process of innovating:

innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any organization

Innovate (in¦nov|ate)

verb  

make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products:

the company’s failure to diversify and innovate competitively

competitive (com|peti¦tive)

adjective

As good as or better than others of a comparable nature:

a car industry competitive with any in the world



Happy new year

During last month I ate, walked, travelled, enjoyed and slept hours and hours - truly holiday time with the family -. But after these weeks of inactivity. I come back with more opinions and articles, comments and interesting facts of daily life.

As a small sum up, that is what happened in the world:

USA |  Mitt Romney has beaten his Republican rivals and looks to be the new candidate to be President of United States. He's charming and a political animal with more than 25 years of experience in management consultancy companies, making them more efficient and making a lot of money.

Europe | 2011 Germany data: 3% of growth and around 6% of unemployment. For sure the best place to find a job in Europe. We'll post about this topic in the following days!

Innovation | Next Thursday 19th January will take place in Göttingen (Lower Saxony, Germany) the Innovation Day. Highly recommendable!

Everything flows - Innovation as a continuous process in company's life

About 2500 years ago the greek philosopher Heraclitus stated the Panta rhei concept.

"Everything changes and nothing remains still... and... you cannot step twice into the same stream"

To ilustrate my presentation about Competitive Innovation on the Innovation Day in Göttingen, I developed a matrix to show the students the importance of a continuous process of innovation inside the company.

Although some of the managers and business people think we are in an unfixed market, probably they don't realise how fast the changes are taking place. Everything changes and nowadays these changes are coming at a high speed like never before.
As Heraclitus said, nothing remains still and it's really hard for a company to be competitive for more than 10 years with the same product (in some markets, you're out in two or three years...)

Peter Drucker expressed it with the following words:

"An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovate, is doomed to decline and extinction."

Remember that Innovation is not a gag. The use of innovation in your daily business life would make the difference in the mid and long term between successful and unsuccessful companies.

Where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years?

Be safe in the knowledge that out there in a garage somewhere is an entrepreneur forging a bullet with your company’s name on it.You've got one option: you have to shoot first.

Innovative Collaboration Programmes - How to Avoid the Vanishing of Educational Middle Market

I don't know how, but this afternoon, during a talk I had with the Head of International Office at PFH headquarters in Göttingen, Germany, we started to design a new strategy for small and middle size universities to improve the quality and quantity of lecturers and  the International exposition of the centre at a low cost.

According to my last post about the vanishing of educational middle market, we are suffering a process of polarization in educational field and I postulate that a change on the strategic market position (changing to the high-end market or to the low-end market) would be the best solution to avoid this incoming crisis in educational private sector.

These changes in the strategic market position take time and require a special effort for those managers in the University used to the old strategy. This mindset change must be supported not only for the teachers and managers of one university, but for all partner universities.

Without incurring in high costs there is the posibility to develop a collaboration programme between partner universities in order to create or co-create a platform to develop e-teaching.
By the way, this platform could open a new world with countless innovation opportunities for those small and middle size universities in the field of e-learning.

Imagine you're studying in Germany so you have some home-teachers that teach you the mayority of the subjects. Furthermore you can also have access by using the university intranet to see, watch and attend lessons taught by other professors in other universities in other parts of the world.

The actual model with a professor teaching what someone else has discovered and written in a book, is not an efficient model anymore. Why should I (as a student) pay to be in a private university if the text books is the same as in other universities?

Why should I spend my money studying abroad if I can get all this information from the web at home?

Can we all together develop a new tool to make studying easy? Can we offer as a Private University lectures from our partner universities and viceversa?

Yes we can.

Small Private Universities’ limbo - The vanishing of Educational Middle Market.

According to the document of Mc Kinsey Quarterly, there’s a trend for middle markets and companies to disappear in the next years, increasing the world polarization where the high-end and low-end are the only sectors with sustainable growth.

If we apply the results of that study to the Education field and more precisely to Private Universities with a strong focus on business and (of course) Business Schools, we’ll see there’s a growth in the market for business education but according to the polarization process mentioned before.

With reference to the course prize (Master’s prize), we can distribute the business education companies in three big groups:

Low-end market: Public Universities (around 3.000 €)

Middle market: Small and medium private universities and business schools

(Master studies: around 15.000 €)

High-end market: Big universities or Business Schools (around 50.000 €)

According to McKinsey study, there will be a decrease in next years in the number of students of middle market universities like PFH or other small & medium Business Schools. However, since last years there was an increasing number of students attending to these private universities which is probably due to the world crisis, which has increase the number of people that prefer to keep on studying in order to apply for a better job in the future.

We have to consider this situation as an anomalous situation caused by the crisis, but with a middle term view really scaring for middle universities stakeholders.

¿Is there a solution? Of course it is. Companies and managers think that the strategies and services provided that were successful in the past will be successful in the future.

The maintenance of a high level competing system/company is complex and much more in a field like business schools, where students are the product and the client at the same time.

Being aware of future trends and changes in the educational sector is necessary for the survival of these companies.

The following graph shows the life cycle of a company, doesn’t matter in what field.

The graph shows the trend of:

Comfortable Position - Relax - Decadence

According to the graph, only a deep change on company’s strategy would avoid the disaster. Innovation and market strategic positioning in a high-end or low-end market are the solutions for these almost-dying companies trapped in the middle market.



Disruptive Innovation vs IT Innovation

What makes the end of 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century different from other periods of history is not the Arab Spring, the International Debt Crisis or the end of the Cold War. What makes different this period of time from others is the speed of the changes take place.

We see everyday in the news many new advances on IT, specially on the internet field and there are so many companies that are focusing their innovation processes and strategies on a change of the IT model: social media, cloud computing, or any other high tech device.

We have to face that although social media seems to be here to stay, it's still a baby and it can and probably do change in the future. Sometimes we trust on foreign adn new technology more than in our own team and their ideas. Sometimes, these ideas, simple and in one way disruptive, would probably set a competitive advantage for your company in comparison to others.

I post here this video to teach you that although important, IT is not the only kind of innovation or developement we can achieve. Sometimes the success comes with something more simple.

The decadence of successful companies

It's hard to succeed in today's world, compiting with high level companies and with continuous changes in technology. This is so true that the 80% of new business go bankrupt in the first two years.
The other 20% survives and the lucky ones may also achieve a leader position of their market or product.

But sometimes, companies and managers think that the decisions, strategies and products that were successful in the past will be successful in the future. So the leader feels confortable and stops thinking about improving.

The main problem is that the leadership of a market or a product is hard to maintain due to high competence so if you feel confortable with your market possition is possible that you're becoming lazy and someone else would be the new leader in a short time.

Success - Confortable Position - Relax - Decadence

Hurry up! Innovation saves company's lifes!

Quality of Leadership - Spain vs Germany

Few weeks ago, @vientodevenus posted "No encontrar tu universidad en las listas internacionales no tiene precio, la matricula si".

Not finding your University in International rankings is priceless, the tuition if.

According to Financial Times' ranking, Spain has two of the Top 10 World Business Schools in Global MBA Rankings. Germany has none.
However, "Germany's recovery from the global recession has been among the fastest of major economies, surging at a 6.1% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2011 alone. Its budget deficit is a small fraction of those in the U.S., Britain and Japan. Whereas the U.S. faces chronic unemployment, Germany's jobless rate is at a 20-year low". (Wall Street Journal, June 27-2011)

How is it possible that Germany, with no Top level institutions, has been developing better than the other European countries for the last 20 years? What happen to Spain and its managers? Maybe the quality of the leadership doesn't make the difference.

In Germany, "small and midsize companies make up nearly 80% of private-sector employment in Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy, and 98% of its 350,000 exporters. Mittelstand companies ship products to, on average, 16 different foreign markets". (Wall Street Journal, June 27-2011)
In Spain is almost the same.

According to these data, there's no reason to think that spanish growth should be less than german growth. So some people suggest that the problem a cultural matter.

Are Spanish employees more inefficient than german ones?

How is it possible? Chairmen and stakeholders trust in our well educated managers to make our employees do their best. Álvaro González-Alorda, writer and professor at ISEM Fashion Business School says that "The quality of your leadership depends on the quality of your conversations". He doesn't mention the notoriety or popularity of the Business School.

So I asked myself:

Are our managers educated in conversation?

Are our managers leading people in the right way?

How are we supposed to change our employees way of behaviour in order to avoid or reduce inefficiencies if we don't comunicate properly?

Environmental Innovation - 5 Tips to lead the Green Market

Few minutes ago I was seeing an Earth overview thanks to some images courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. These pictures were taken at about 350 km from Earth during the past summer.

http://vimeo.com/32001208

If you look the video, you'll see the fantasctic work of our NASA fellows, but you're also going to see the human footstep in the world. About half a year ago I presented my Industial Engineering's final project and I decided to start with a picture of the world at night so you can see a world full of light as in the video. Then I put the same picture but taken 200 years ago: you can't see anything.

Are we changing the world too fast? Are we applying our knowledge to implement and develop new products and services under the prisma of green eficiency? How can we take advantage of the new tendences in the world market? 5 easy Tips to succeed in this area!

1.- Demand in your business green energy. It's a little bit more expensive but some energy companies provide this kind of energy that cames from solar fields, windmills, etc.
You can also get a certificate that you're using only green energy.

2.- Start a non environmental policy. Get some Environment certificates such as ISO 14000 or symilars. It takes time and money but in the long term you'll see that it worths the effort.

3.- Decrese your carbon footprint! Use local materials and providers to avoid long transport distances. The nearest is your provider, the green it is!

4.- Ask your provider to do the same: Environmental certifications and green energy. And ask them to do the same ith their providers also!

5.- Finally, Sell your product as a green product. According to McKinseys  publication "The vanishing middle market" (Nov'05):
Executives recognize that premium and no-frills offerings are squeezing middle-of-the-road products and services in many industries. Our study of 25 industries and product categories in Europe, North America, and on the global level shows the extent of this phenomenon, known as market polarization.¹ We found that, from 1999 to 2004, the growth rate of revenues for midtier products and services trailed the market average by nearly 6 percent a year (Exhibit 1).

My advise: Make a Green brand a High End brand