January 2021

I just completed a total redesign of my website, so it seems like a good opportunity to discuss the linkage from strategy to execution. I believe that everything in your business should start with the strategy. If you have a well formulated and understood business strategy, then you have a framework to easily make the decisions necessary to develop your messaging strategy. And if you have a crisp and coherent messaging strategy, you have a framework for easily making the execution decisions in positioning your business in the marketplace.

You can read the full article here where I walk through that process from business strategy to messaging strategy to web site implementation. I hope it’s helpful to you!

Thanks to new research published by professors at USC and UTSA in the Journal of Marketing, business leaders have a new way of thinking about the adoption of new disruptive technologies and therefore making critical strategic decisions about how they choose to compete.

In the early 1960s, Everett Rogers codified decades of research into the Diffusion of Innovations curve, which tremendously helped business leaders understand market adoption of disruptive technologies. In the early 1990s, Geoffrey Moore advanced this work with his Technology Adoption Life Cycle, which helped innovative business leaders better understand what they can do to manage through these transitions. Now, another 30 years on, Chandrasekaran et al are developing a new Successive Technology Diffusion Model which, I believe, will help both incumbent and disruptive business leaders make the most important strategic decisions for the survival of their companies.

Read the full article here.

Nerds 2.0.1 is one of my favorite books of all time. Maybe that’s the geek in me, or the history fan, or one who really enjoys a good story, or probably all of the above. That’s why today I’ve written a review of a 23 year old book. That and the fact that the history of the Internet began in very scary times when the future seemed uncertain. Nerds 2.0.1 is a story of hope and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It’s a story that I think many could benefit from here at the beginning of 2021.

Nerds 2.0.1 tells the early history of the Internet. Published in 1998 to accompany a PBS television series, the Internet it describes may not be familiar to those that are constantly connected to life and work via the web today, so don’t expect it to provide useful tips for how to leverage the latest social networks for business success. What it does tell is a story of how persistence, ingenuity, and hard work can overcome the greatest challenges and prove expert skeptics wrong. 

Read the full review here.

Uncharted has shown up on a number of lists of the top books of 2020. Given how 2020 has convinced us that the future is uncharted and unpredictable, there’s a real hunger for an answer to how we can navigate the future. I picked up the book hoping it contained some new approaches and tools that I could use in my work with clients. I wanted quick and easy practical steps and instead the author delivered long and messy stories of real life. She’s a great storyteller and her chapters are full of compelling stories, but no easy answers.

Read the full review here.