Kate Raworth has a popular book on sustainability and economics. In it, she argues that economics needs an overhaul. It is an admirably ambitious book with some flaws but with excellent parts to more than makeup for them. What does Raworth say about working in the doughnut? How To Understand Working In the Doughnut Raworth…
Category: Market Evolution
Adaptive Market Hypothesis: Evolution And Financial Markets
Andrew Lo has a number of interesting works attempting to link evolutionary thinking and financial markets. See here for his 2006 piece in the Harvard Business Review, entitled Survival of the Richest. Lo shows how evolutionary thinking can be applied to financial markets and explains the idea of the Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Irrationality And Financial…
Frequency Dependence And Strategy
Here I’ll highlight an idea from evolutionary biology that has profond implications for strategy. This is the idea of frequency dependence. I think people overlook thais concept, a lot. Whenever you see, “10 tips for success”, or even stronger claims like “the five things you must do” remember whoever is saying this is either a)…
Stereotyping And Market Entry Strategy
I have a paper just published in Customer Needs and Solutions on stereotyping and market entry strategy. This paper has quite a history, with early versions arising from my dissertation (13 years ago). It was quite a journey. The final paper looks nothing like where it started. (For example, it contains a minor nod to…
Evolutionary Thinking in Business
Evolutionary thinking in business can be a fascinating topic. A key thing to bear in mind is that business evolution is a little different from biological evolution. Market competition is not the same as competition in nature. This is, not least, because business has much more rapid timeframes. Business changes regularly. On the other hand,…
The Impact Of Conformity And The Need For Uniqueness
Analytical models are fascinating ways to look at what happens in markets. They can look a bit odd from the outside. These models tend to have a ton of strong assumptions which might lead to questions about their value. They can, however, help us think through some commonly observed phenomenon in markets. What then can…
Transformative Innovations, An Important Part of the Puzzle
I value grand intellectual sweeps. if you are a tenured professor it seems wrong not to try and give the world your grand vision. So what can we say about transformative innovations? Transformative Innovations Tellis and Rosenzweig take a grand sweep in examining the role of transformative innovations in world history. The book moves from…
Is Sustainable Competitive Advantage A Useful Goal
I must confess to being a bit dubious about the idea of sustainable competitive advantage. It seems designed to allow people to pontificate with a pronouncement that sounds meaningful. Yet, speaking about sustainable competitive advantage often requires little actual evidence given the underlying idea is a bit vague. Sustainable Competitive Advantage A competitive advantage isn’t…
Not Very Thoughtful Thought Leadership
I love terrible visuals, especially when they are used by consultants. Alex Usher (@http://higheredstrategy.com/) is brutal in criticizing a recent Deloitte report doing “big thinking” about the future of the workforce. (Post written in 2017). The report seems to be a great example of not very thoughtful thought leadership. Not Very Thoughtful Thought Leadership Usher…
The Failure Of Markets
I very much enjoyed John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail. It is an ambitious piece in which he tries to describe how economic thought has impacted real-world markets. He has a special focus on the collapse of the financial markets in 2007/8 and the economic thought behind the failure to regulate the markets properly. What does he say about the failure…
