October Editorial: Surviving the Global Financial Crisis
October Opinion: Personalisation to Personification: Are Open Social Networks the New Path to Content Customisation?

Imagine a world without IBM. Impossible you say?

As we watched the financial world implode through the early part of October, sending generational institutions to the wall, it would be easy to forget that were it not for major restructures and downsizing, IBM also nearly collapsed in the early 1990’s. Thankfully the light at the end of the tunnel for them was only a near-death experience and not an oncoming train.

At their annual Insights event in Shanghai in October IBM reminded the audience that they teetered on collapse because they took their eye off their customers. They’ll even tell you about it with an unfamiliar look of quiet contemplation. They say that was the IBM who did not provide high-value business propositions and had lost relevance.

Closer to home we have been asked several times over the last few weeks about our perspective on the global credit crunch and what it will mean for Australia, the technology industry, and organisational budgets in general. While my flippant response has been that as long as customers keep buying our services then we’ll be ok, that isn’t actually far from the truth. But there-in also lays the problem. How can you safe guard against losing customer relevance and budget cuts? Well for most companies it means doing the same things differently. So this month we’re trying something a little different…

This month we have provided a mini portfolio management exercise to help get you thinking about how much of what you do at work is about to be slotted away into operational spending versus growth and innovation. As a good deal of the world begins to grasp for their Magic 8 balls we hope this exercise will prove more practical.

See you in the market or next month in Longview. Read more...