Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis’s first book, dramatised the crazy excesses of 1980s Wall St. It was rather like the Wolf of Wall Street but without the 18 certificate. But Michael Lewis knows how to make potentially dull stuff into a good read too, so if you feel you ought to know about the 2008 financial crisis but can’t face reading about it, The Big Short is the book for you. It’s a neat little paperback (or ebook, Read More

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it is time to pause and reflect.”

Mark Twain

Related posts: The myth of the leader

What can sporting heroes teach us about business? Read More

The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed, goes the saying. Logically, the most developed markets are ahead, so what they have now is what we’ll get soon. In Europe, we used to look at the USA and Japan for trends and innovation ideas which we could adopt or adapt to our own marketplace. In food and beverage, this held true for a long time, in part because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Corporations large and small imported or copied successful products and brands from markets they saw as being more advanced. Read More

“Time is the only unit of scarcity on the web. You only have 24 hours a day per person.”

Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, a digital analytics company. Read More

Whatever happened to disintermediation? Terrible word, big idea. The thought was that the internet would enable buyers and sellers to connect directly, cutting out middle men who were just a cost in the system. Ebay is probably the largest and most successful business built on connecting buyers and sellers directly. Uber and Hailo do the same for car travel, in different ways – Hailo leveraging the existing taxi network, Uber seeking to bypass it. Most of these started as amateur alternatives to the established trading systems, Read More

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Atributed to various writers including Mark Twain (wrongly), Agatha Christie and Sally Berger (who may be the person in this picture). Read More

Last night I found myself asking, “What is this N’duja sausage?” Both Pizza Express and Zizzi’s have adopted it big time lately. The staff member in Zizzi’s couldn’t tell me how to say it, never mind what it is, so I ordered my pizza without it. Today I got an email from Zizzi’s giving me the answer to both. Genius joined-up marketing comms? Actually, the opposite. The person in the restaurant had no real answer for a question which she was probably not hearing for the first time. Read More

“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”

Amelia Earhart, aviator Read More

Here’s a book that flies in the face of the zeitgeist. Subtitled, “Eight Unconventional CEOS and their radically rational blueprint for success”, it offers lessons from business leaders who have delivered consistently great financial returns in the long term.

Partly in response to the cult of the celebrity CEO, personified by Jack Welch, Thorndike identified all the US companies who had outperformed both their industry peers and GE under Jack Welch over a period of many years. Read More

“Speak softly and people lean towards you. Speak loudly and they lean away.”

Confucious Read More