Categories
Strategy

Winning Isn’t Everything: The Art of Playing Well

Imagine going the Olympics and crossing the 100 metre finish line in first place. Arms raised in triumph, and revelling in the glory of your success, you are a hero! However, the very next week you make your way back to the starting line and ready yourself for the starter’s gun. *Bang* You run the race over […]

Categories
Skills, Tips, and Tactics

Selling Your Competitive Advantages in Consulting

Looking back to consulting recruiting in graduate school, I always think about how interesting it was that so much of the conversation among candidates was about getting an offer from a top consulting firm. Yet, I don’t remember many conversations about succeeding within a consulting firm after joining. I want to shed some light on […]

Categories
Frameworks

Porter’s Generic Strategies

Three strategies to achieve above-average performance: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus In order to understand Porter’s Generic Strategies, it is helpful to take a step back and examine the two things which determine a firm’s profitability in the long run. The first is industry attractiveness, which is determined in any industry by the five competitive forces: […]

Categories
Strategy

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

12.50pm AUGUST 1st and I was trying to make plans for lunch (priority #1).  No problem, I’ll just check my gmail account and use Google Maps to find the address. Gmail, Google Maps, Google.com, Google.com.au and Google.com.hk failed to respond (for at least 20 minutes). There is some chance that there is just a problem […]

Categories
Interviews

Understanding the Competition

“Know your [competition], know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” ~ Sun Tzu YOU are running a company, advising companies or would one day like to be.  A company needs to understand its competition, and here are 11 points to help you do that. 1. Identify the competition Who are the […]

Categories
Excellence

Finding Yourself

THIS post was initially going to be called “finding your competitive advantage”, but I think it goes further than that. Here are 8 factors to get you thinking, and to help find what you’re looking for: Why do you do what you do every day? What makes you tick? What do you believe in? These […]

Categories
Frameworks Strategy

Porter’s Six Steps of Strategic Positioning

There are six strategic principles which are relevant to any company that wants to be profitable online                 IN AN article entitled “Strategy and the Internet” published in the March 2001 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Michael Porter outlined six principles that he believes companies need to […]

Categories
Frameworks

GE-McKinsey 9-Box Matrix

The GE-McKinsey 9-Box Matrix offers any decentralised corporation with multiple business units a systematic approach to help it decide where to invest its cash IN SEPTEMBER 2008, the McKinsey Quarterly published an interactive audio presentation on the GE-McKinsey 9-Box Matrix. An outline of this framework is provided below. 1. Background The 9-Box Matrix follows in […]

Categories
Investing

Warren Buffett on long term value investing

BACK IN 1998, Warren Buffett gave an inspirational talk to a group of MBA students at the University of Florida, College of Business. In the speech, Buffett gives his perspective on investing, in which he outlines the need to understand the underlying economics of the businesses that you invest in, and the need to stick […]