Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
The recent flurry of excitement about OpenAI in particular and AI in general is certainly reminiscent of the early days of other technologies like web, web 2, and mobile. I suppose it is therefore predictable that we will see a hype-cycle being followed. Hard to know exactly how close we are to the top now… Continue reading A-Why
A topic which I used to find myself talking about a lot more is 'rinsing'. A few people have asked about it recently so I thought it was worth digging out some reference points and going over it again. The core idea of 'rinsing' is having a relatively rapid way to assess ideas for products… Continue reading Rinsing
I wanted to introduce a project I'm working on at the moment. A lot has been written about product, and the structures of organisation that are needed to make it work. But we tend to focus less on the interplay of the key roles which inevitably appear on the top team, the SLT, inside any… Continue reading Trio
A few years back, the idea of having all your music in your pocket was revolutionary. This was the game-changing thought behind the iPod, of course. But at the time, it was not a zero sum game. You'd also have everything on CD, and possibly vinyl. Maybe tape. For a few weeks in 1995, you… Continue reading A subscriber’s life
One of the very few good things to come from Brexit is this very interesting piece by David Mitchell on the essentially self-sustaining nature of organisations. Mitchell is a marvelous pedant and a great dis-respecter of institutions. He starts with the Eton motto Floreat Etona; Esto perpetua (Latin for “May Eton flourish and may it last… Continue reading Flourish
I'm an early adopter for these sorts of things. I have mis-spent many hours tinkering and tweaking the early incarnations of this software and that hardware. I own stuff from this brand. And yet I'm still left dumbfounded when I see advertising like this: What on earth were they thinking? I've been on holiday a… Continue reading In search of a purpose
Over lunch at Dots, Antony and I were reminicising about how we first met. Back then, I was the MD of a small digital agency and Antony was something senior in PR. We both worked for the same holding company. We were asked to form a group, along with various others, to figure out what… Continue reading 10 years
Yesterday was the Dots conference, part of the Brighton Digital Festival. I was there to do a little bit on Unthinkable but mostly just to sit and enjoy the conferences with the 200 or so other attendees. In terms of content, this was the conference's difficult second album, after a blinding debut last year including Russell… Continue reading One day, at a time
We all spend a lot of time in brainstorms, imagining the future. Often the excessively audacious ideas are shelved. Sometimes they’re kept but labelled “vision”. And then, every so often, one of those weird or audacious ideas will materialize. Whether that’s because you did it yourself, or someone else did it, it’s a very strange… Continue reading Picture perfect
If I were to set up a company whose whole brand promise was 'no snack foods' and then I released a range of delicious healthy biscuits, you would think I would have some branding issues. I'd certainly have to reconsider that 'no snacks' banner on my corporate headquarters, and perhaps I would have to rethink… Continue reading Evil
Leading product 