eCommerce statistics and outlook

That the UK is the most developed online market in some ways will surprise nobody, but this report nevertheless has lots of interesting statistics comparing countries. Here is the full report.


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"Infobesity" and decision making

A recent article by Bain caught my attention.

Admittedly, this was initially because of the dreadful term "Infobesity" (information overload), but the article makes a succinct case that in the age of big data most companies are missing the point and losing themselves in their data.

I think this is true to a point; though "big data" certainly holds much promise, it also has the potential to waste even more time of more and more people if not managed well.

This is especially true in the context of decision-making. More data can mean better decisions, but as often as not it just means more circles. To my mind, being clear about the decision process, being aware of the soundness of the underlying data and then making the decision and moving on is almost always better than analysis paralysis.

Good quality data, rather than massive volumes of data seems preferable to me ;-).

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Book review: Strategy maps (Kaplan & Norton)

Always on the look out for good ideas on structured strategy development, I have just finished "Strategy Maps" by Kaplan & Norton.
It is OK.
It is not great.
Although the book is full of examples and case-studies that feel genuine and are certainly informative, ultimately the core of the book seemed like a rehashing of well-known ground around the balanced scorecard:
Use the four facets of the balanced scorecard to build up an understanding of what is required from an organisation to deliver a strategy.
As far as it goes this is fine and certainly a useful tool. The book contains dozens of specific examples of one page strategy maps that do describe the complex interaction of the four facets and how the organisation should be measured to develop the capabilities required of a strategy. But in the end, they remained descriptive.
Do not get me wrong - I am a big fan of the balanced scorecard, but I was hoping that the book might do more to guide through the different flavours of strategies available and how to understand and evaluate the tradeoffs implicit to them (to ensure the balance in the card, so to speak).
I recommend the book if you are not already familiar with the balanced scorecard. Otherwise just google the summary!
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Lean startup in HBR

You know when a business idea has become mainstream, when you read about it in the Harvard Business Review!

In the latest issue, there is a solid article on various parts of what has become the lean startup movement.

By now, the "playbook " is familiar:
- Business model, not business plan driven
- Interdiscplinary product creation teams, not strictly split business and IT project organisations
- Minimum viable product, developed and launched incrementally (and not just iteratively) and updated regularly, not multi-year product development with too many moving parts
- Customer co-creation focused around customer journeys, not market research alone...

All the parts have been knocking around for a couple of decades and more.

So why is it that, despite everyone's best efforts, such joined up approaches are so infrequent in practice outside the startup space?

It is not as if startups have the monopoly on great people, or great ideas - in my experience there are no shortage of either in corporations the world over.

No doubt, corporate inertia is part of the problem and, of course, the shear complexity of the businesses they are in that have evolved over long periods of time.

Equally, the natural conservativism of well established organisations will play its part. But people in the largest corporations see what is happening around them and understand these well-trodden ideas as well as the next person (in his lean-startup) - so much so that the willingness to apply the methods is often there (and indeed at all levels), in even the largest organisations.

Honestly, I think the answer lies more in the ability to select the 1,2,3 really important improvements/ customer journeys/ products/ services/ processes/ whatever within the organisation and then keep up the focus on them for long enough to really improve them before moving on to the next challenge.

Sounds like a job for commercially driven business architecture combined with a genuinely empowered cross functional SWAT team, seeding the organisation.

But then I would say that, wouldn't I?


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Excel rules

There is simply no getting around the fact that Excel is a spectacularly useful and powerful tool.

News of some simple miscalculations in the analysis of a couple of economists heavily referenced by politicians to justify austerity measures just serves to reinforce this: read the full article here and then remember to check those formulas properly before you publish!

Book review: "Civilisation: the 6 killer apps of western power"

So, the pilot has just announced a 15 minute delay before takeoff (let's not talk about the previous two hour delay this adds on to!); just enough time to get down a thought or two on the book I just finished reading, "Civilisation - the six killer apps of western power", by Niall Fergusson. 

To be up front, unlike most of my posts, this review does not have any particular business context.

I am a fan of the work of Niall Ferguson (see here and here for a couple of absolutely cracking books), so was definitely looking forward to this one, irritatingly populist subtitle notwithstanding.

Ferguson poses the question why "The West" has been more "successful" for the last 400 years than eastern civilisations. The answer to this question is not as banal as one might expect (luck and a few great renaissance innovations that positioned the west for Empire, followed up by ruthless exploitation, would have been my ill-informed answer).

The author suggests that the reasons are manifold (undisputed, I would say!) and that they stem from the complex interaction of the following "killer apps":

• Competition; European mercantile capitalism and competition in context of many small countries
• Property rights and the rule of law (particularly in US)
• Medicine and impact of health improvements across world from colonialism
• The consumer society and the demand driven innovation during the Industrial Revolution
• The work ethic - Western religions and impact on conscience et al.

This collection does seem to provide a robust collection of valid ideas, and the author has dozens of great examples juxtaposing the West with the East in each of the categories. However, I remained slidely disappointed with the overall book. 

I may be getting a bit simple with progressing middle-age, but Ferguson's argument would have benefitted greatly from a good cause and effect diagram, showing the interactions of these apps - without it, I have remained unable to properly understand whether his answer is complete, or indeed whether it stacks up.

This niggle notwithstanding, Ferguson provides a huge amount of food for thought, with literally hundreds of interesting references backing up his claims. And the topic is, obviously, very relevant at a point in which the tide seems to have turned irrevecorably against the West.

For those who do not want to read all 350 pages, Ferguson held a lecture at the Cambridge Union, in which he outlines the key points in an hour or so (posted on YouTube here). Enjoy!

How many things can you focus on?

I had hoped to be at the Exceed Expectations 2013 conference in Berlin earlier this week, but due to work commitments have sadly had to make do with catching up on the presentations vicariously through a colleague and via the blog buzz around the conference:

In this context, I stumbled across the "bare-bones" of Alexander Graf's presentation on his highly readable blog, kassenzone.de. The presentation itself is interesting - an appeal for us to try to see the business model opportunities left and right around us and the danger of focusing on one thing - but I like the embedded YouTube video even more. Try it out here (I won't comment on it, because that ruins the impact, but go ahead and try it before you read on!).




It has become a cliche that focus on one thing and doing it well is everything and yet at the same time we observe the necessity to be constantly aware of what is going on all around us.

How to handle this?

....I don't honestly know, so suggestions are most welcome ;-).

....My amateur answer for myself thus far, however, is to try to compartmentalise my time, to focus during the week on the job in hand (whatever it might be) and then to very deliberately block time in my month (typically one Sunday afternoon, as this blog entry attests ;-)) to try to look around and reflect on what else is going on. I am finding that this time is enough to get a few impulses and the thoughts/ideas then gestate in the background during the rest of the month, without me really thinking about them.

How many things can you focus on?