Chief Strategy Officers III - Types of Strategy Executives

I've updated my analysis of the career path of Executive Strategy professionals with an additional piece of information - their specific role on the ExCo. As you can see, strategy is more often than not combined with other roles, in particular Corporate Development... because M&A is strategic, of course...

...or is M&A just a mechanism to enact strategy and does wrapping the two roles together make large businesses more focused on acquisition rather than organic growth? Answers on a postcard!

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Impacts of a handset leasing model on mobile telcos

Following yesterday's post, here's some related thinking on the impacts on operators of handset leasing. Handset sales represent around 25% of operator revenues in a typical European market, but generate only around 5% of margin. It may therefore be the case that the scenario described would lead operators to a more profitable structural model than exists today. Oil companies are consistently and acceptably profitable, despite being (literally in some cases) the ‘dumb pipe’ that operators are so desperate to avoid becoming. One of the reasons for the oil majors sustained profitability is clear focus on their role in the value chain – to supply the fuel that enables transportation, relying primarily on location, then brand and finally product innovation to compete. BP or Shell do not need to subsidise the purchase of a car in order to drive consumption of fuel because consumers are ‘hooked’ on it (it gets them from place to place) and there are many credible car manufacturers an...

Differences between Industrial and Digital businesses

Since I'm stuck on a Eurostar crawling through western France I thought I'd use the downtime to share this table I've made on the differences between Industrial and Digital companies across the main business functions. A strange insight into how my mind works... but hopeful a useful summary!

What I've been reading this week

I think that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week: Nintendo, RIM under siege, cyber crimes cost Huawei, Amazon gains ground online and in India and why we should be more like Han Solo. New business models A brilliant blog on the continuing travails of Nintendo. Wii took them on a different path to Microsoft and Sony, but have only temporarily halted long term inability to compete in hardware. http://www.asymco.com/2012/03/26/staying-satiated-and-smart/ And as if things weren’t bad enough, Sony’s next generation PS3, codenamed “Orbis” is rumoured to be coming next year. http://kotaku.com/5896996/the-next-playstation-is-called-orbis-sources-say-here-are-the-details Housing prices in tech hotspots are rising fast. We see the same thing in the trendier areas of London, where tech companies are landing , buying office...

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