Business Books

The Innovators Dilemma

– Clayton M. Christensen What do the Honda Supercub, Intel’s 8088 processor, and hydraulic excavators have in common? In The Innovator’s Dilemma they are all examples of disruptive technologies that helped to redefine the competitive landscape of their respective markets. These products did not come about as the result of successful companies carrying out sound business practices in established markets. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, author Clayton M. Christensen shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies. At the heart of The Innovator’s Dilemma is how a successful company with established products keeps from being pushed aside by newer, cheaper products that will, over time, get better and become a serious threat. Christensen writes that even the best-managed companies, in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure no matter what the industry, be it hard drives or consumer retailing. Succinct and clearly written. The Innovator’s Dilemma is an important book that belongs on every manager’s bookshelf.

Connexionz wins contract to connect multiple transit agencies across three States

Integrated rural transit solution enhances community mobility, improves traveler experiences, increases driver and passenger safety, improves operational processes and access to important vehicle diagnostics. Connexionz, a leading provider of smart transit innovations, has been awarded a unique contract to deliver a multi-agency regional passenger information system. The new “iTransitNW” portal and smartphone app will connect several transport networks across three US States to enable passengers convenient access to real-time information on all rural and intercity transit and transfer connections. Connexionz will initially manage and support seven partner agency fleets, with potential to scale and link up to 18 separate transport operators across Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Valley Transit based in Walla Walla County, Washington is the lead agency in the contract. General Manager Dick Fondahn says, “We have an excellent interconnected public transportation network that provides a lifeline for people to important services, such as medical appointments, human services, and government offices. “But, despite brochures and websites, transit providers kept receiving feedback from medical providers and social service offices that their patients and clients did not have transportation for appointments, even though a transit service was available.” Valley Transit and its partner agencies wanted a solution that would provide a single point of entry for current riders and prospective customers to access relevant information for where they live and want to go. Accurate bus arrival prediction times would also enable riders to confidently minimize their time spent waiting at bus stops. With several parties involved in the project and more joining over time, the iTransitNW contract is one of the most thorough proposals ever presented and won by Connexionz. Connexionz CEO Rhod Pickavance explains, “The solution is based on the TransitManager ITS suite. However, instead of managing just one agency network, the iTransitNW system will manage multiple networks across a […]

Export vital for New Zealand’s prosperity

Support for TPP11 and the wider trade agenda by the incoming government is crucial for New Zealand now and in the future, says the EMA. The need to speed up the growth of exporting was one of the key recommendations in the EMA 2017 Election Manifesto. “As a nation we rely heaving on trade for jobs and growth. With a population the size of ours, we need a vibrant exporting sector for New Zealand’s prosperity, says Kim Campbell, CEO, EMA. “Which is why it’s vital whoever is in government in the next term ensures our trade agenda progresses and remains on track. “We, along with our sister organisation Export New Zealand, support the current push to have 90 per cent of exports covered by free trade agreements, along push with all efforts to bring TPP11 over the line. “It’s important our exporters have clarity on market access, tariffs and intellectual property with our trading partners. “For instance, we need to have a trade agreement with Japan – which TPP11 delivers. If we don’t we will be left behind,” says Mr Campbell. The EMA also encourages the rapid resolution of a free trade deal with the European Union, the pursuit of a similar agreement with the United Kingdom as it exits Brexit.

Books: Talk Like Ted

-Carmine Gallo I am a fan of books on presenting, especially good ones, and this new book by Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED – The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, is a good one. The approach Gallo has taken is to analyse over 500 Ted talks, looking at the videos, interviewing the speakers, and working with the people involved in making it happen. The book highlights great Ted Talks, such as those by Hans Rosling, Amy Cuddy, and Amanda Palmer, and uses these to describe the lessons we can all learn from them. Gallo divides these lessons into three groups of three, and includes many of the well-known points about passion and storytelling. However, because TED talks are available via the web, we can read his descriptions and check out the videos – increasing our understanding of the points he is making, seeing them in action. No book is going to be a complete solution, and I could quibble with some of the advice. For example, I would like the book to focus a bit more on identify the needs of a specific audience, and in my professional world I often have to deal with speakers and/or audiences who don’t share a common language, which can produce a different balance of words and images. Most of the advice in the book is very sound and following that advice, watching the videos, and being more self-analytical would help any reader be a better presenter.

What will really happen in the next decade

Earlier this year, the Chinese People’s Congress was told the growth target would be 7% but that “deep-seated problems in the country’s economy are becoming more obvious.” Since then, predicted growth rates have dropped considerably. McKinsey Institute authors Luis Enriquez, Sven Smit and Jonathan Ablett have produced four economic scenarios for the next 10 years, ranging from high to stalled growth, in a paper, Shifting Tides. They explain the three main sets of forces at work and how policy responses will dictate various outcomes. The first set is today’s economic stimulus policies and the shifting energy markets. The next set of forces are more underlying and less immediate – the demographic effects of urbanisation and ageing. Finally, there are technological innovation and global connectivity, both of which are uncertain and variable in their effects. The first set of forces are most obvious in the lack of economic demand despite the stimulation of low interest rates from loose monetary and fiscal policies, as well as low oil prices. The next forces produce longer-term issues, such as rising debt loads, ageing populations, reduced workforces and inadequate or outmoded infrastructure. The third forces of technological innovation and globalisation have resulted in a divergence rather than a convergence of the world’s major economies. Overcoming weak demand The International Monetary Fund estimates that production in the 10 largest advanced economies was 2% below potential in 2014. Many governments and central banks responded with fiscal and monetary stimulus programmes that fostered the low real-interest-rate environments that have endured for over five years. As a result, all increased rather than reduced their overall debt levels – in some cases, by more than 50%. Persistently low interest rates encourage investors to search for yield and safety, creating the preconditions for asset bubbles and further volatility in international financial […]

Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations

By Nora McKeon This book fills a gap in the literature by setting food security in the context of evolving global food governance. Today’s food system generates hunger alongside of food waste, burgeoning health problems, massive greenhouse gas emissions. Applying food system analysis to review how the international community has addressed food issues since WWII, this book proceeds to explain how actors link up in corporate global food chains and in the local food systems that feed most of the world’s population. It unpacks relevant paradigms – from productivism to food sovereignty – and highlights the significance of adopting a rights-based approach to solving food problems. The author describes how communities around the world are protecting their access to resources and building better ways of producing and accessing food, and discusses the reformed Committee on World Food Security, a uniquely inclusive global policy forum, and how it could be supportive of efforts from the base. The book concludes by identifying terrains on which work is needed to adapt the practice of the democratic public sphere and accountable governance to a global dimension and extend its authority to the world of markets and corporations. This book will be of interest to students of food security, global governance, development studies and critical security studies in general.

Let’s not follow the others

By Doug Green If Peter Thiel, co- founder of PayPal and Palantir has it right the future needs to change. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do keeps on adding more of something familiar. And it is easier to do. Peter Thiel has a book out with Blake Masters, Zero to One. How about we just don’t keep on being a computer manufacturer amongst lots of other computer manufacturers and make something new? Because if we keep on being moderate and doing what we know amongst other similar companies – our competition – then sooner or later we, the competition, may not be around much longer because competition amongst equals brings with it company takeovers. Three computer manufacturers become two. Why not make something brand new instead of copying what others are doing? Can we think of something that hasn’t been made before and not have to bother having competition. Get it? In golf, we talk about our own authentic swing. That may be a swing not based on our golfing buddies, not copying anyone else to drive the ball down the fairway. Because 2014 is rapidly coming to an end I think this is a good subject for all of us to look at for 2015. A great opportunity to dream and plan what might be next for our company that no one else is doing. Imagine that! Get your company geniuses together and ask the question “How can our company make something new and not take the easy way by continuing to do just what we know?” One upon a time someone invented the paper clip. Then someone else made another model, round, not silver, but in colours. It was still called a paper lip. You […]

The Second Machine Age

Driverless cars and 3D printers are harbingers of a new era, argue MIT colleagues Brynjolfsson (Director/Center for Digital Business; co-author, Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping the Economy, 2013, etc.) and McAfee (Principal Research Scientist/Center for Digital Business; Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organisation’s Toughest Challenges, 2009, etc.). Some 200 years ago, the invention of the steam engine sparked massive amounts of mechanical power to drive factories and mass production in the first machine age. Now, computers and other digital advances are providing such “a vast and unprecedented boost to mental power” that technologies once found only in science fiction are becoming everyday realities. Drawing on research, including interviews with inventors, investors, entrepreneurs, engineers and others, the authors describe the forces driving the emerging age, notably the digitisation of nearly everything, which increases understanding and fosters innovation, and an amazing exponential growth in improvements. We’re now seeing “the emergence of real, useful artificial intelligence (AI) and the connection of most of the people on the planet via a common digital network. As machines complete cognitive tasks—as opposed to physical ones—engaging in pattern recognition and complex communication, AI will do more and more, for example, giving key aspects of sight to the visually impaired and restoring hearing to the deaf. Along with benefits, including greater amounts of individual choice, technological progress will bring economic disruption, leaving some people behind and workers without jobs. The authors describe the large differences that are already apparent among people in both income and wealth and explain how individuals can improve their skills to maintain healthy wage and job prospects. “Our generation has inherited more opportunities to transform the world than any other,” they write. “That’s a cause for optimism, but only if we’re mindful of our choices.”

Light Alloys Manufacturing NZ – An Association at the Crossroads

Executive Members of Light Alloys Manufacturing New Zealand Inc. (LAM-NZ) met last month to decide on the fate of an industry association whose main purpose was to promote the development of the light alloys manufacturing industry in New Zealand. LAM-NZ was formed in 2003 as part of a successful bid for government research funding. It was aimed at providing export-oriented companies in the sector with a network to disseminate information, discuss business strategy and advice, as well as direct R&D support and technology leverage into the market. During the active Government-funded research phase the LAM-NZ vehicle served its purpose well. The organisation was an active member amongst the Metals NZ sector groups and had a technology dissemination programme, e.g. prominent at the biennial Metals Industry conferences. In recent years, industry leadership and representation of the largely aluminium- and magnesium alloy-focused group waned, and as a result the regular LAM-NZ Executive meetings became infrequent and ended in the discussion of the options left for the continuation of the organisation. The group believed the main options available are to find commercial opportunities for the members if industry champions can be found which are willing to drive and promote sector interests. The other alternative would be to disestablish LAM-NZ and merge it into another industry association e.g. TIDA, Materials Accelerator, Metals NZ, etc. With some money in the association account, LAM-NZ is in a good position to restart its operation financially. HERA as the Metals NZ Secretariat has offered to give a helping hand and research sector interest. Also, most of the current academic and industry supporters on the Executive are willing to contribute should significant industry interest emerge.

Generating wealth rather than trading money

Did you know that if you invest $6M in a dairy farm on average you will generate $1M of revenue, you will give employment to 2.6 people and your business will have another job or so associated with it, whereas if you invest only $3M in manufacturing you will on average generate $10M of revenue, employ 80 people and will have another 232 jobs associated with that activity? Let’s consider the difference between money in the economy and a wealthy economy. In my opinion the difference between these things is something we should be debating. You can make money speculating on foreign exchange or you can do it shuffling assets around like Brierley did in the nineties, but from society’s point of view real wealth is an abundance of things like available health care for its most vulnerable members, high levels of education among even the poorest members, average income levels that match the best of the developed world and interesting and varied work opportunities for our young people. We know that New Zealand is largely blessed with steady rainfall and a temperate climate that can grow stuff the world wants. We should celebrate that and do all we can to keep farming efficient but the industry is pretty grown up now and doesn’t need much help from the rest of society. If the whole economy is tilted towards supporting conditions that favour that one activity, then it quickly becomes welfare for that industry – that distorts asset values and creates a fear of upsetting vested interests that benefit from the way our economy and exchange rate are managed. It’s somewhat worrying that the Prime Minister seems to be following his predecessors from the past four or five decades but it’s understandable, after all he’s involved in a popularity contest […]

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