Strategy | The Portfolio Partnership

23 Business Questions Worth Answering

by Ian Smith | May 3, 2012 | Business Questions & Answers

The beauty of blogging every week for many years is that you build quite a nice body of work. In the past 12 months I’ve asked myself the following 23 questions and tried to answer them in 400 to 500 words. I hope they help you and your management team build a...

Positioning – Can we learn from Barnes & Noble?

by Ian Smith | Sep 2, 2011 | Positioning drives growth

In March this year Time published a smart article called – E-Books: Why Barnes & Noble Avoided Borders’ Fate by Josh Sanburn. With the announcement of Barnes & Nobles’ (B&N) latest results for Q1 ending July showing the Nook business soaring 140%...

How To Reposition Your Company To Make Money

by Ian Smith | Jun 17, 2011 | Building Business Value, Compelling Stories, Marketing

“Know-how is what separates leaders who perform – who deliver results – from those who don’t” Ram Charan. Downtimes are a great opportunity to reposition your business….To ask yourself – what business am I in? When trading is...

The Magic Years – Revisited

by Ian Smith | Jun 10, 2011 | Building Business Value, Compelling Stories, Strategy

Back in January, I introduced you to the concept of The Magic Years. A period of time when you can really build value in your company. A period of time when your objective is to define and dominate your space. The timing of the Magic Years is decided by you and your...

The Surprising Value of Being the Best in the World

by Ian Smith | Apr 15, 2011 | Being the Best, Compelling Stories, Exiting your business, Management Help, Repositioning

“Our culture celebrates superstars. We reward the product or the song or the organization or the employee that is number one. The rewards are heavily skewed , so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the...