Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

  From HBR, By William A. Sahlman  When I receive a business plan, I always read the résumé section first. Not because the people part of the new venture is the most important, but because without the right team, none of the other parts really matters.   Fourteen “Personal” Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer  Where are the founders from? Where have they been educated?  Where have they worked—and for whom?  What have they accomplished—professionally and personally—in the past?  What is their reputation within the business community?  What experience do they have that is directly relevant to the opportunity they are pursuing?  What skills, abilities, and knowledge do they have?  How realistic are they about the venture’s chances for success and the tribulations it will face?  Who else needs to be on the team?  Are they prepared to recruit high-quality people?  How will they respond to adversity?  Do they have the mettle to make the inevitable hard choices that have to be made

 5G Evolution and Positioning to Sell   

Real Options Valuation (ROV): A complex technique than TCO, ROI and EVA. It is based on the financial estimation techniques used in stock options theory. ROV is used to modify the ROI calculation by considering the value that the current project could contribute to future projects. This approach typically enhances the ROI of projects such as IT infrastructure. The cost of implementing a whole new infrastructure for just one project for one business unit’s needs is so burdensome that no one business unit could ever justify starting the new infrastructure. However, the overall value of the new infrastructure to all the business units in the organization could be huge. ROV provides a technique for justifying that first project based on the future derived value. Return on Assets (ROA): A popular measure for the performance of companies, ROA can also be applied specifically to IT assets.ROA for IT assets can be calculated by isolating the IT-specific assets from the organisational ass

Credit: Gartner My popular post on Digital Transformation  

Thoughts For Nike Strategy - 2010

Cloud Computing  

Rumours are hot again about Google/Microsoft planning to buy Digg. When I wrote about Top5 probable Digg buyers in 2006 it was a rumor, but this time reports coming out suggest that this time Kevin Rose might sell it, esp when the stock market is going down and the US is technically in recession. The only difference between now and then is, that one of the suggested 5 players, Yahoo itself is in trouble. So only 4 players remain in the race and these are : 1. News Corp 2. Time Warner 3. Microsoft 4. Google I'm quoting from my previous post here with some modifications on why these 4 players are after Digg: News Corporation - Newscorp would love to have this esp; after their acquisition myspace has lost traffic/users and momentum to Facebook. And as a media company it makes sense to have the most popular portal for news/technology/current affairs to be in their armour. Microsoft - Microsoft will be the obvious choice because Microsoft is lagging in this Web 2.0 phenomenon. Ther

Microsoft has announced its partnership with Novell to put Suse Linux (2nd no Linux distro) on a Windows desktop. As part of the deal, Microsoft will offer sales support for Suse Linux and also co-develop technologies with Novell to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft Windows on their computers. Microsoft plans to distribute 70,000 coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support to customers that want to run both Windows and Linux in their environments. In addition to this, Novell and Microsoft will work together to improve interoperability between Windows and Novell's SuSE Linux. Some insights from infoworld why this partnership has come along: Scenario one: Looking to the future and seeing the proverbial handwriting on the wall, stops the bleeding of Windows to Linux desktops. Scenario two: Did the desktop OEMs push Microsoft toward this deal? More of their customers want Linux and so the PC manufacturers want this technology