Why Strategy Must Come Before Tactics

What’s the best time to send a tweet? How do you develop a content strategy? What’s the easiest way to drive traffic to your website? How do you build a great landing page? If you can ‘Google’ the question and get an answer does that give you an unfair advantage over your competitors? Do you…

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What’s The Best Way?

When I was a new mum thinking about ‘the best way’ to raise my son to do the things that babies of his age were supposed to do, occupied a fair amount of my time. I worried about the best way to settle him to sleep and the best way to wean him. I graduated…

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How Are You Creating Value?

Think about your favourite airline or a product you use every day and the supermarket you feel most comfortable shopping at. Now think about why you keep going back. What is it that this business delivers? The airline most likely sells similar seats, with average legroom, at around the same price as their competitors. The…

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Don’t Change Your Pitch, Understand Their Story

Back in the days of stay-at-home Mums and morning newspaper deliveries, a memorable tagline on the box (or a coveted toy inside), was enough of a sales pitch to sell us a ton of breakfast cereal. Frosted Flakes were Grrreat because Tony the Tiger said so. And if Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins…

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Why A Good Idea Is Not Enough

It took at least 40 years for the computer to go from being a series of ideas and advances to a commercial success. The difference between a good idea and a commercial success is context—the understanding about where that idea fits, how it will be useful in the world and who will care about it.…

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How To Disrupt The Market

Do you remember the days when printed news was so valued that there were two editions of the daily newspaper? People waited at the local shops for evening editions to arrive at 4pm and paperboys weaved between cars which were stopped at a red light during rush hour where drivers also waited with exact change…

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The Entrepreneurial Paradox

By definition entrepreneurs undertake to build whatever they are building at considerable risk to themselves. They do what humans are not naturally evolved to do, which is break free from the pack to try something different—something that might not work and may leave them exposed and on the edge, away from the apparent safety and…

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What Customers Believe Is Your Competitive Advantage

Ask any business owner about how they stand apart from the competition and they’ll probably begin with the tangible, the things they can easily explain. “We offer a more competitive interest rate.” “Our products have more features. “We have better distribution.” In 2008 Windows accounted for 84% of personal computing devices shipped. Today that number…

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Doing Work That Matters

My maternal grandfather died in his sleep, while my mother aged just four, lay breathing next to him. She was number ten of eleven children. Ten years later mum was sent to work at a biscuit factory. She hated it from day one. At the end of that first shift she told her mother that…

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