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“COLLISION COURSE – Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire” By Hans Greimel and William Sposato, a HBR Book Essentials

Corporate development happens rarely without conflicts. Nissan’s ascension under Carlos Ghosn goes even beyond that: Ghosn led the Renault-Nissan alliance from a rapid rise to a dramatic fall. “Collision Course” is therefore a tale of money, business and greed – and about the spectacular fall from grace of one of the most different businessmen that ever was out there.

As a veteran automotive reporter, Hans Greimel had a decades-long chance to see how Renault and Nissan evolved during time. He worked in and with Japan for a 15 years, making him almost not only an knowledgeable car connoisseur, but also close to the local rumor mills.  William Sposato wrote almost two decades about the Japanese economy (for Japan Inc.).

“Collision Course” goes beyond the thriller narrative of the rise and fall of Carlos Ghosn. The authors take a much broader view – including the main actors and stakeholders within the story. For example, some important players are the Japanese government representatives, who can barely stand seeing their national car brands being integrated away in a foreign conglomerate.Read More »“COLLISION COURSE – Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire” By Hans Greimel and William Sposato, a HBR Book Essentials

„The Imagination Machine – How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company‘s Future“ (by Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller) – a HBR Book Essentials

„The Imagination Machine – How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company‘s Future“

As a long-standing science fiction fan, I can only testify – best ideas come from people‘s minds. „The Imagination Machine – How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company‘s Future“ take the ideas further – from the realm of the possibilities to the reality field. Boston Consulting‘s Group Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller are embarking on building a prototype – for finding and bringing great ideas to help.

Humans have many things that other species miss – but there is nothing like imagination. It is the only capacity known to transition from one realm to ours – and back. *The Imagination Machine“ apply a wealth of consulting techniques and cases to build the above mentioned prototype. From the ancient caves to the realm of science fiction, humans are able to use various combinations of artifacts and abilities to create new products. Or new ways of seeing the same things – in a new light. Imagination has given us the greatest inventions, those who make our lives richer than those of a Roman Emperor. Yet, many companies fail to invent anything substantial for decades, even fail to innovate. Others do and manage to change the world in the process. Read More »„The Imagination Machine – How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company‘s Future“ (by Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller) – a HBR Book Essentials

“Better, Simpler Strategy – A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance” by Felix Oberholzer-Gee – a HBR Book Essentials Review

Better, Simpler Strategy – Book Essentials by Doitinvest.com

Stuck with quite a few strategic dilemmas? Not sure what your business should do next? Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board – or even back to school. “Better, Simpler Strategy – A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance” by Felix Oberholzer-Gee goes beyond the theory books, into the realms of the organizational practice.

One could theoretically argue that not one, but 10 books can be written on the strategy implementation topic. Strategy deployments seems to be ever-elusive – and the more experience a Board of Director’s has, the more the doubts on the potential pitfalls. Kaplan and Norton (2005) estimate that fewer than 15% of the organizations around the world are successful in their strategy implementation. Think about it, one in 6 companies is happy with the strategic outcome of their own-decided actions!

Felix Oberholzer-Gee takes this topic at the next level. First of all, he is no-nonsense scholar. He starts with 2 strong statements:

“Strategy is simple” and

“I am not sure if this is the right sentence to begin this book”.Read More »“Better, Simpler Strategy – A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance” by Felix Oberholzer-Gee – a HBR Book Essentials Review

Are We All “Natural Born Leaders”?

Leadership Photo

Leadership illustration by Freepik

Nowadays the LinkedIn & Co are filled with leadership posts. If you keep scrolling, you’ll get the impression I get: everybody is a tiger/tigress, even if they don’t have claws. Even if they look like innocent kitties or Easter bunnies. Everybody is a potential marathon runner, even if they don’t even pace 200 meter a day. Everybody can run the Government, Apple or any type of a machine that has a crew. Anybody can wake up one day and leave the family, the faithful dog or the unfaithful cat behind – and simply go on a world-round tour in a shabby boat, purchased on Amazon. Anybody can build an online shop like Amazon, start by selling cryptocurrencies and end by selling boats for the a.m. mentioned use.

(Here I should probably take a break and quote Virgin Branson by saying that “anybody can be a millionaire if they start as a billionaire and launch an airline company”).Read More »Are We All “Natural Born Leaders”?

Advanced Analytics (1) – Mind the Date… Format (in Power BI)

You load the data in Power BI, visualize it and… it looks wrong. Instead of the European Day-Month-Year format, you get the funny-looking US Month-Day-Year one. Or the other way around.

Even worse, when you try to summarize the January sales, you get 12 months instead.

Intelifly.com took the challenge and looked at this issue. They prepared a demo on how to import and present the dates, no matter what the source format looks like. Our Intelifly partners specialize in finding advanced solutions to your data challenges, mostly by using Microsoft’s Power BI analytics software. If you are curious about what can be achieved, have a look at the free demos available on intelifly.com – the COVID pandemic evolution (tracked daily) and the Wiener Boerse status (Vienna Stock Exchange).

To better explain what is going on, we have prepared several steps:

 

1. Input tables

There are 3 tables available in Microsoft Excel, showing 3 dates formats:

  • an US-formatted dates table (i.e. MM-DD-YYYY style),
  • an European-formatted dates table (i.e. DD-MM-YYYY style) and
  • an unformatted dates table – where I specifically formatted the dates as Text and forced them to the dubious General format (which is a way of MS Excel saying “I don’t know what you want from me”).

Read More »Advanced Analytics (1) – Mind the Date… Format (in Power BI)

“Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos”, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson – a HBR Book Essentials Review

The latest Harvard Business Press title represents a compilation of public statements, articles and written thoughts – all belonging to Jeff Bezos. “Invent and Wander” has thus two main important functions:

1. It sheds a light on the principles and processes under which Jeff Bezos built Amazon from an online book 📚 retailer to the largest e-commerce retailer in the world.

2. It offers a historical perspective on the development (or if you want – becoming) of a top business creator, who always dared to be different.

Add to the above Bezos’s idiosyncrasies on:

– building the most possible customer-centric company and

– surrounding himself with trusted persons and leaving them to do the job whilst he sits back 

and you will have on your ✋ s som thing of a an advanced business cookbook.which would be the envy of the 19th century oil barons.

“Invent and Wander” starts big and ends… literally flying in space. The beginning theme focuses on the long term perspective. Amazon never did anything for the the next 3 months – it always looked at the next 10 years. This is the main reason why the company went public only 3 years after its start, despite its exponential growth in a hot 🔥 sector (founded in 1994, IPO in 1997). This is also why Bezos insisted that they never pay any dividends, but rather to reinvest the money in new projects. In a sense, Jeff Bezos is a brilliant financial architect – as one of the most coon-held view among the hedge funds is that companies are sums of projects with a finite lifetime, rather than production machines. Read More »“Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos”, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson – a HBR Book Essentials Review

“What is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter” by Joan Magretta, A Harvard Business Review Press Title – Book Essentials

What is Strategy?

A HBR Press Title Book Essentials

Strategy is notoriously difficult to explain.the most famous business thinkers are still struggling to convey to the Boardrooms what they think the strategy should be. Yet, as the countless courses, consultants and breakdowns demonstrate, the strategy is often properly understood.

This is why this HBR illustrated book is actually a keeper. “What is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter”, written by Joan Magretta, does a great job of bringing strategy down to Earth. “What is Strategy?” decomposes all of the elements envisioned by Michael Porter since 1980s and re-assembles them in visual style. Think of it as one of the best business graphical novels ever put on paper. Or as the most worked-on strategy power point presentation brought to you. Add to it a light-hearted, interactive visual style – and voila, you have a reference, easy to use guide to strategy.

This does not mean that the illustrated guide to Michael Porter’s idea is for children. It is not even beginners’ exclusive. The guide looks detailed enough to be used by any experienced person as a quick reference guide or, why not, as a strategy concepts refresher. For example, it starts with a depiction of the the executive team that goes into the boardroom. This description serves two purposes:

– to introduce the characters that play different roles in the business world and

– to describe the most common roles in the C-suite – what does each do and what are their responsibilities.Read More »“What is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter” by Joan Magretta, A Harvard Business Review Press Title – Book Essentials