COMPANY RADAR ROOM – Rodenberg Tillman & Associates

Defense and offense data, and crucial other dimensions

August 15, 2017

The IT-world would like us to believe that Big Data is a success, with the emergence of all kind of data-management functions, data scientists, chief data officers and others. You might ask yourself how effective all of this is in the absence of a coherent strategy for organizing, governing, analyzing and deploying an organization’s information needs. The quote by the renowned author of the famous book “The Black Swan” is also clear in this regard. In the 2017 May/June issue of Harvard Business Review, Thomas Davenport draws a distinction between data defense and offense, and other crucial dimensions.

Company mortality rates are rising

April 1, 2017

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

It is interesting to analyze the research of Professor Vijay Govindarajan published in Harvard Business Review in 12/2016, which deals with some 29,700 companies listed on US stock markets. Companies listed before 1970 had a 92% chance of surviving for the next five years. However, those companies listed from 2000 to 2010 had only a 63% chance, despite the dotcom bust and the Great Recession.

Geopolitical tensions and strategic intelligence

February 1, 2017

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

The world did not face many geopolitical tensions during the period from 1998 to 2008. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we saw Pax Americana at its peak together with the Great Moderation: we experienced low inflation, low interest rates, stable economic growth, low rates of unemployment and the rise of the BRIC-countries.

Unilever’s CMI and Clayton Christensen’s “jobs-to-be-done”

November 1, 2016

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

It was interesting to read first about Unilever’s Consumer and Market Insights Group (CMI), and then Christensen’s comments that most companies spend too much time and money compiling data-rich models that make them masters of description but failures at prediction. Let us explain. Organizations now know more about their customers than ever before. Big-data analytics can provide an enormous variety and volume of customer information at unprecedented speed. Almost all companies have established structured, disciplined innovation processes and have brought in highly-skilled talent to run them. Structure is created to show correlations.

Establishing special intelligence teams to make things happen fast

October 15, 2016

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

Citigroup established a SWAT team to take the lead from the new fintech start-ups, which are threatening the global multi-trillion-dollar banking industry. Citigroup wants to ‘fintegrate’ fast because they want to be ahead of the revolution, according to Fortune Magazine in July 2016.

Big Boys Big Ego’s and Strategic Intelligence (2)

March 1, 2016

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

Narcissism is widespread at the top in both private and public companies as well as in non-profit organizations and the public sector. Narcissism is a necessary element for effective leadership, but it can, however, also become a negative trait. So we may therefore speak about positive and destructive narcissism. Examples to be emulated are Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Eisner (Walt Disney), Jack Welch (GE), Ingvard Kamprad (IKEA), Henri Ford (Ford Motor Company), Freddie Heineken (Heineken) and Richard Branson (Virgin).

Big Boys Big Ego’s and Strategic Intelligence

February 1, 2016

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

In the fall of 2015, we published our book “Big Boys Big Egos and Strategic Intelligence”, the fifth book in a row on business-, competitive- and strategic intelligence since 2000. Scientific research on narcissism lies at the basis of this book, which is based on a sample of 950 CEOs of the S&P top-500 companies during the period 1992-2009.

Intelligence is externally driven

November 1, 2015

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

In our book “Strategic Intelligence in Future Perspectives 2.0” we discussed a wide variety of some twenty-five companies that lost momentum because they failed to react in a timely fashion to discontinuous changes in their external business development. We described why this happens to so many companies and what can be done to overcome this. Here we explain how to do this.

How do we manage disruption?

July 15, 2014

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

How do we manage disruption? Or more importantly, how do we recognize its dynamics, anticipate its likely effects, develop and manage responses and sustain the necessary changes? Disruption can come in any number of forms. These include shifts in the dynamics of competitive advantage, technological breakthroughs, shifts in cost structure, new rivals entering markets from converging sectors, regulatory upheavals, economic downturns, idiosyncratic geopolitical and natural events, unforeseen internal company events, deregulation, re-regulation, and political turbulence.

Black Swans and Grey Swans

May 15, 2014

Joseph Rodenberg

A World View, Intelligence Briefings

“The more threatening externalities become for a company, the more there is a need to have strategic intelligence in place. Every company faces a continuous flow of threatening externalities”This statement is clear to everybody. But to foresee those threatening externalities, companies need to be able to monitor them in a timely fashion. A couple of years ago, I gave presentations about the “Management of Insights” and the “Management of Foresight” at the Dutch National Marketing Insights Event.