Consensio

My recent visit to a doctor ended in an interesting conversation with him about his concerns on how to grow his practice. He asked me if there was something wrong with is business attitude, because he wanted to give quality care and therefore spend more time on patients instead of chasing the dollars to see more patients in shorter time. Continue Reading…

In an article recently published in the Professional Journal of the Australian Marketing Institute, Rachel Olding describes in depth the divide between Marketing and Finance and how

“Intangible assets are the the reason marketers get out of bed in the morning”.

According to Olding, assets that make up brands, reputation and customer value are only slowly coming to the attention of other senior executives particularly in Australia.

Quantifying brand performance has senior marketers and finance executives fighting to grasp each other’s language and context.

“Quite simply, successful brands require effective marketing and financial management”

Major contributing factors to the communication gap are:

• A culture of departmental silos
• mistrust in the marketer’s measurement skills
• underestimation of the importance of brand from the senior management
• limited and fragmented relationships between departments

Olding goes on to cite two Australian business case studies illustrating her point that only a joint collaboration and coordination between Marketing and Finance achieves deeper brand equity.

She goes on to quote Prof. Don Schultz, who is summarizing the standard of Australian brand management as too little up-front investment in resource allocation and too much time spent on measuring past performance.

This is a very poignant article which is very appropriate to all firm sizes and industries across Australia. How often does your CFO/Accountant partner with the Managing Director, and the CMO/Marketing Manager/Coordinator in your business to discuss the next year in a brand panel?

Intangible cultural heritage (see Wiki page for definition) is summarised as the ‘living heritage’ of national culture; the oral tradition. The treasured way of preserving one’s national culture is in stark contrast to the difficulty of passing on healthy organisational cultures, which have so much influence on the success and survival of companies in the market.

Much has been written about the influence of national culture and cross-cultural influence on globalized companies (see for example key culture writers like Hofstede, Tropenaars and Friedman). The link of one’s heritage and underlying assumptions to organsiational performance per se has held bread and butter money for generations of business consultants, HR professionals and psychologists. Continue Reading…

What is innovation?

>>…is the process of converting knowledge and ideas into better ways of doing business or into new or improved products and services that are valued by the community. The innovation process incorporates research and development, commercialisation and technology diffusion. www.smartstate.qld.gov.au/strategy/strategy05_15/glossary.shtm

…a newly introduced practice or method intended to improve the current practice
www.mywhatever.com/cifwriter/library/66/4620.html

…introducing an object as if it were new.
oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth370/gloss.html

…Innovation is the process that translates knowledge into economic growth and social well-being. It encompasses a series of scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial activities. Research is only one of these activities and may be carried out at different phases of the innovative process.
www.arc.gov.au/general/glossary.htm

…All innovation begins with creative ideas . . . We define innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization. …<<
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

…Innovation in Organisations - assisting our Clients in identifying and managing innovation opportunities within their organisation.<<http://www.business.curtin.edu.au

Ambler & Neely (2007) pointed out that Marketing already has a robust platform as market connector and that therefore, cashflow forecasting and brand equity are indeed viable ‘measurable intangibles’ for ‘narrative accounting’ practices.

I think you agree, that the ‘innovation’ buzzword is another example of the ‘intangible asset’ murkiness which is lurking underneath the accounting and business process surface. What’s your ‘innovation’?

…last part to this…and the most important!

Very often, people are skirmish about naming because it involves thinking out of their comfort zone and maybe saying something in front of people that gets culled down with cynicism. In recent years it has become very difficult to name a company and trademark it without a due diligence process.

The ‘obvious’ names are taken or unavailable as domains. Simply going through the dictionary is not enough. Resorting to fantasy names is not often a clever idea if it is too impossible to pronounce the names. I know there are people who seriously use name generators on the net, but they are the equivalent to buying instant coffee..or trusting Babelfish for business translations…
Continue Reading…