To a packed (and hot) Rosalind Franklin room in At-Bristol, Chris Anderson (Editor of Wire, Author of Long Tail & now Free) gave a really good overview of the premise of the “Free” economy, Fremium, marginal costs and the impact of Moore’s Law on abundance & scarcity. That was for around 25mins, he then did… Continue reading Free Bristol
Category: Enterprise
Business Support Simplification – an analysis
Is it possible for a Government to provide simple support to businesses? Well the UK Government thinks it is, but recognises that it hasn’t been very good at the simple part. A few years ago some wag pointed out that there were over 3,000 different grants, programmes, schemes, advice networks, etc (nobody really knew the… Continue reading Business Support Simplification – an analysis
What’s so Social about Social Enterprise?
I’m increasingly unconvinced by the “social enterprise” label as a distinct business model. Of the legal forms of incorporation only one has distinct “social features” (the CIC) but that’s not suitable for everyone. There are certainly many businesses trading for social improvement or with a strong social ethic running through them, just as there are… Continue reading What’s so Social about Social Enterprise?
OpenCoffee Bristol demo sessions
<This is a cross post from OpenCoffee Bristol, Bristol companies demo to packed room> Change of venue and format brought out the regulars and new faces for this morning’s OpenCoffee Club meeting. Mariama Njie welcomed us all with fresh coffee, tea and chocolate cookies to UWE Ventures’ new business incubation space in Bush House right… Continue reading OpenCoffee Bristol demo sessions
Of gifts and giving
Name a bizarre gift you received. Who gave it to you? What was the occasion? Did you regift it? Blogging, twittering, and the immensely low barrier to communications that these technologies provide is the bizarre gift I’d like to mention in this Plinky prompt. They’ve revolutionised the world of business development. The photo on the… Continue reading Of gifts and giving
Customer delight
In my last post I talked about business process modeling and how it could help understand the activities in a business prior to cost cutting for survival. In this post I’m going to riff on the concept of delighting your customers so they come back. The hygiene factor in delighting your customers is not pissing… Continue reading Customer delight
To finish first, first you have to finish
With the econoclapse in full effect, most companies are cutting back, trimming the fat, stopping non-essential spend. Which is good, but what if the budget you’re about to slash is the one that’s keeping you alive? The trouble with businesses is that once they get bigger than a couple guys with laptops in a Starbucks… Continue reading To finish first, first you have to finish
Models of leadership
One of the great aspects of working alongside Universities, is the breadth and depth of critical thinking that you get exposed to. Wednesday evening I was a guest at the Bristol Business School’s Distinguished Executive Address Series and the speaker was Karen Dunnell. Since her Wikipedia page was last edited the ONS has merged and… Continue reading Models of leadership
How Many? Part the Second
I just posted an example where I’d worked up an Addressable Market calculation based on fairly good data. Of course, this data isn’t usually available; or it’s really expensive. One of the services that jbsh offer is business consultancy, mainly strategic growth plans and help with the business planning activity. So what’s the addressable market… Continue reading How Many? Part the Second
How many? Part the First
Something that makes an appearance fairly early in a business plan is the addressable market size. This is usually the point where after some mumbo-jumbo you’d end up with something like “…and thus we only need 1% to secure $100m turnover.” Mark Davies has a good post on the subject from a VC perspective but… Continue reading How many? Part the First