Strategy

Fog and Friction – The limitations of strategy when dealing with uncertainty

This blog post is a work-in-progress… Military history and grand strategy have long offered sources of inspiration to business leaders. In a previous blog on the subject, I touched on how the insights of historical figures such as Sun Tzu remain relevant to those navigating the fast-moving tech space. In that blog I made no mention of Carl von Clausewitz, one of the most pre-eminent and well-known military theorists. Here I try to make up for that omission. The Fog … Read more…

Artificial Intelligence Good Reads (Part 2)

This blog post continues a list of articles, sources and papers on artificial intelligence that I started in 2023 (see here). The post became a bit too long and unwieldy to maintain in a single page, so have broken it out for the start of 2024. Enjoy! Some AI Forecasts for 2024 (1) Alberto Romano, who maintains a thoughtful blog called Algorithmic Bridge, observes that the benchmark LLM at the end of 2023 was GPT-4, which was built in 2022, … Read more…

Even more Digital Transformation Must-Read Books

As I have mentioned before in the preface to a similar collection of books, I remain embarrassed by the “Digital Transformation” title of this little series of book reviews, as it really conjures images of management consultants selling snake oil. Nevertheless, having started with this moniker, I will stick with it, and hope that the title doesn’t put you off too much. Here is a collection of titles I have read over the past year or so. It is somewhat … Read more…

How Ukraine is fighting and winning the digital war

In responding to the Russian invasion, Ukraine is making full use of its advantage in the technology space, using technologies and cultures that will be very familiar to anyone working in tech. In this post I look at the importance of an open innovation culture and how this can provide a decisive advantage.

When the tech is more valuable than the product

When Amazon opened its first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Ealing last month, much was written about how it offers a ’till-less experience’ where customers can simply pick up the items that they’ll like to buy and walk out when ready. All purchases will then be charged to their Amazon accounts when they leave the store. This experience is enabled through a combination of shelf sensors and powered by a multitude of cameras and AI-based people tracking to determine ‘who … Read more…

Diversity of Thought – How to Avoid Groupthink

In 1960, shortly after being elected, John F Kennedy was approached by the CIA to approve a plan to train, equip and support an invasion of communist Cuba by Cuban exiles opposed to the government of Fidel Castro. The invasion that ensued at the Bay of Pigs became one of the major US foreign policy fiascos of the 20th century. It entrenched Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba with communism persisting in Cuba to this very day. A decade later, … Read more…

Crossing the Change Chasm – Succeeding in driving change

First of all, change is hard One of the key success factors to any successful organisation change programme is getting all members of the team on board with the proposed changes. To most people, change is at best, difficult. It often means coming out of one’s comfort zone, often ditching old skills, roles and responsibilities that have served oneself well. All this is done in the quest of a better way of working, new business models, a new product strategy … Read more…

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