Yule Heibel's Library tagged competitiveness → View Popular

Filter:
All
Annotated

19 Nov 09

Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - HarvardBusiness.org

When I read this pithy article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, I found useful parallels between an evolutionary take on economics and innovation, and what she describes as the 15-minute advantage. That is, if you're too far ahead of the curve, you may make an evolutionary (or innovative) leap, but it won't "take" - it will be like a leap from one peak to another, without successful landing. Instead, you need those increments that allow successful leaps.

The Woody Allen backdrop story is such a great lead-in - makes her underlying idea very graspable, too. Moss Kanter lists 8 characteristics of innovation, some of which are straight out of our understanding of successful evolution:
1. Tria-able; 2. Divisible; 3. Reversible; 4. Tangible; 5. Fits prior investments; 6. Familiar; 7. Congruent with future direction; 8. Positive publicity value.

blogs.harvardbusiness.org/...-the-15minute-competitive.html - Preview

economics innovation competitiveness harvard_business rosabeth_moss_kanter evolution

16 Oct 09

Seth's Blog: Creating sustainable competitive advantage

One of the better definitions of "brand" that I've read in a while:
QUOTE
"You can build a brand (shorthand for relationships, beliefs, trust, permission and word of mouth)."
UNQUOTE

Love the last sentence, too:
QUOTE
The reason the internet is such a home to wow business models is that it's easier to create a network here than any other time in history.
UNQUOTE
So true.

sethgodin.typepad.com/...ble-competitive-advantage.html - Preview

seth_godin branding competitiveness marketing

13 May 08

Do tourists miss 'Toronto the Good'? - Posted Toronto

While some people say that "gritty" = "edgy" (and therefore "cool"), there's an undeniable line that gets crossed at some point, and then gritty isn't edgy anymore, it's just shabby & run-down & dirty. It seems that far too many North American cities are on their way to that. I'm reminded of my oldest sister's visit to Victoria a couple of years ago. She lives in the heart of Tokyo, and her observations of Victoria were that it's dirty. Not the air (compared to Tokyo), but in terms of the litter on the streets, the obvious signs of infrastructural decay, and the obvious signs of social decay (panhandlers, drug users). Maybe things have gone downhill in Tokyo since her remarks, but they have also certainly gone further downhill here.

This article in the National Post (by Barry Hertz) should be read in conjunction with some of the other commentaries appearing on infrastructure, whether on Richard Florida's blog, or on the CEOs for Cities blog, or even on Doc Searls's blog (see Handbasket weaving, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/05/13/handbasket-weaving/). The basic message is that this is not a question of "style" or edginess or cool or whatever, but a question of underfunded infrastructure, which is crumbling around our ears. And this has long term deleterious economic impacts.

network.nationalpost.com/...sts-miss-toronto-the-good.aspx - Preview

toronto infrastructure infrastructure_funding economy competitiveness

the Royal Ontario Museum’s chief executive officer said yesterday that all the litter, dead trees, graffiti, cracked pavement and posters plastered across the cityscape detract from major attractions and leave visitors with an impression that Toronto is a metropolis in decline.
“The devil is in the details,” William Thorsell said. “Public spaces in Toronto are inferior to those in other comparable cities in the world. Just go to New York City or Chicago and walk around downtown. You would see much higher standards for public space than you do in Toronto. I’m just back from Seoul, Korea, which makes Toronto look extremely shabby.”
3 more annotations...
- suggests Toronto needs to polish its tired image if it wants to maintain its status as a top-tier tourist destination, starting with such basic steps as better signs, cleaner streets, fewer panhandlers and an increase in overall friendliness.
  - Yeah, but it's not just a question of "polishing." It's a question of INVESTING: funding, supporting, repairing, improving. If my house's windows are cracked, single-pane, and leaking heat -- as well as dirty -- then polishing them won't do the trick. I need to caulk them, I need to replace cracked panes, and I need to invest in storm windows. - on 2008-05-13
  Add Sticky Note
- “It’s going to take an approach where we look at sprucing up, for example, things like our washrooms in this city,” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s one of the things I got from a lot of people, that ‘Ya, your washrooms really need to be cleaned up.’ ”
- One complaint among downtown and entertainment district business owners especially, has been the number of aggressive panhandlers accosting tourists. Tim Finlayson, who operates ShopDineTour Toronto, said he has gotten negative feedback from tourists about the number of homeless and seen his clients avoid streets with a high number of panhandlers.