• Inspired

Time for Great Espresso

Flat whites, caps, lattes… whatever your taste you are going to need good kit. Let me be clear, those automatic machines with the little capsules make something but it isn’t coffee in the way you should experience and know coffee. Having exposed folks to a good flat white the next question is… “what do I need to make that… I want that… I want that every day…”.

I’m going to skip all the explanations and reasons and cut to the chase. This is a config for a home or small office. And I’ll expand on my thinking over time.

Continue

  • Loved

Pure Black Racing

Great piece in today’s NZ Herald on Greg and the team at Pure Black racing. Really terrific to see them doing so well.

Last week on the Tour de Beauce in Quebec, the team took their first international road stage win at a UCI event – the achievement heightened by the fact that there were three Pro-Continental teams in the field.

That followed a series of top 10 finishes and stage wins all around the United States, highlighted by a sixth place in the prestigious Philadelphia Classic in June.

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  • Learned

Absolute Huffer

Great to see the Huffer boyz getting some kudos for their work with Absolut. BTW… if you live in Auckland they have opened a cool new store in their offices. Just up Queen street.

 

ABSOLUT NZ Limited Edition

  • Loved

elBulli: a creative organization Management Innovation eXchange

Really liked this case study over at the MIX. It’s this kind of stuff that makes it part of my weekly reads:

Lessons

ElBullis experience in building the creative organization brings to the fore the importance of having a model of organization aligned towards creativity.

5 determinants of the creative organization at elBulli are presented:

1-Creation and Creativity-Focus on creativity rather than customers-Exploring new path rather than leveraging activities already carried out

2-Diversity-In team composition-Broad, diverse cognitive base-Incorporation of new ideas-Greater ability to interpret reality, crafting innovative options

3-Strong Organizational Identity-Based on strong long lasting values -Generosity to share knowledge in and outside the organization-Teamwork:individual talent to enhance organizational talent-Extreme creativity

4-Low macroculture embeddedness-No comparison or benchmark with competitors-Viewed by the market as an artistic experience: elBulli=art-elBullis gastronomy spans across arts, psychology, science and technology-Breaking new ground: avant-garde cooking

5-Open business model-Knowledge is created in and outside the organization-Partnership that enable knowledge acquisition i.e.,Harvard-Sharing knowledge with others

via elBulli: a creative organization Management Innovation eXchange.

  • Loved

On the CMO Role

Liked this piece from David on collaboration routes for the CMO. My only issue is as defining these as routes for the troubled CMO when in reality they are perfect for any CMO.

Fourth identify and leverage great ideas. Too often silos are constrained and fail to create brilliant offering or marketing innovations. Or there is the ultimate silo tragedy that an all too rare home run product or marketing program is developed in one silo unit and remains hidden because there is no mechanism to leverage it or even to make it know to the rest of the organization. Three organization capabilities are needed to change this. First the silo groups need to be empowered and motivated to create offerings and marketing programs. Second, there needs to be mechanisms to identify and share the existence of winners either through cross-silo meetings or through staff facilitators. Third, there needs to be a process to test and roll out the winners. Firms with this capability have seen a big payoff. Consider that McDonald’s “I’m lovin it” came from Germany, Pantene’s “Hair So Healthy It Shines” came from Taiwan, and Nestlé’s ice cream sack Dibs came from the US. Consider also the learnings for P&G from the Pampers Baby Car web site and the VISA learnings from promoting the Olympics in the US.