Category: Innovation

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery CEO should remember the proverb that “every silver lining has a cloud.”  The business translation of this adage was best put by Vistage Speaker Pat Murray who has warned thousands of Vistage members that the “second worst thing that can happened to a company is success.” In that spirit,

Reading Time: < 1 minuteBeing a C-Level Executive means having a point of view about the future.  Many executives limit their thinking about the future to the initial impact of a particular change but don’t think about what happens after that. Business (and life) is often like a row of dominoes:  we push one

Reading Time: < 1 minuteQuality isn’t everything.  Case in point: Domino’s Pizza.  Founder Tom Monaghan discovered that the key to success in the pizza business wasn’t great pizza, but free delivery.    But no competitive advantage lasts forever and the company’s subpar pizza began to deliver subpar results, no matter how fast it’s delivered, especially

Reading Time: < 1 minuteGreat advice can come from unexpected quarters if we are ready for it.  To wit:  check out this short story about how a father’s advice created a great salesman and how we often make our jobs harder than they need to be.  Consider some surfer dude sales advice before you

Reading Time: < 1 minuteIf you’re reading this  and have not availed yourself of membership in Vistage or other C-Level Peer Group,  take a few minutes for an overview of peer power by a man who literally wrote the book on the subject.   Leo Bottary, author of  “The Power of Peers” was recently interviewed

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThose who are concerned that China’s economy will surpass ours should consider the following “required reading.” China just announced to great fanfare that after years of effort and millions in investment, it has managed to produce… a ballpoint pen! (This was accomplished in the US about 80 years ago).  Before

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe year 2016 will mark the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney’s passing (that makes a boomer feel old!).   After his death, several CEOs tried various departures from Disney’s original vision.   In recent years, the company has returned to its roots of focusing on great content in general, and superb storytelling in

Reading Time: < 1 minuteFAO Schwarz, the legendary toy story in New York that was immortalized by Tom Hanks playing the “ floor piano” with his feet in the movie “Big,”  closed this week after operating since 1870 and boasting 40 stores at its peak.  Its demise is attributed to some of the same

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe late, great Peter Drucker once remarked that “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”  Great advice….and how do you do go about knowing and understanding the customer? Marketing guru Seth Godin says you start

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMichael Milken (of Wall Street Fame) holds the Milken Conference each year featuring dozens of the world’s best known entrepreneurs, scientists, financiers, researchers and other notables in hour long seminars on topics such as financial markets, the economy, medicine, Millennials, health care and much more.  Most of us can not