Management Blog

PWC predicts strong growth in franchising

The BRW reports that PricewaterhouseCoopers’ recently published Retail and Consumer Outlook predicts Australian franchising sector, "will double in size over the next 15 years, to about 24% of GDP by 2020".

Hot growth sectors include aged care, medical practices, and pharmacies.

Source: "Franchising - Health for sale", BRW, 23 June 2005

Record Australian participation at global biotech conference

A record 63 Australian organisations participated in the global BIO 2005 conference in Philadelphia last week. 

Dr Anna Lavelle, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of AusBiotech, said, "Australia has the IP and innovation and now needs to fast track commercialisation."

She notes that there is no better place to target than the US which has led the world in commercialising innovation for decades.

Read more at pharmalive.com.

Smart money enters aged care market

The Weekend Australian investigated the impact of the retiring ageing baby boomer cohorts on the Australian aged care market.

Early signals of a shift in investment sentiment includes the recent arrival of deep-pocketed investors including Macquarie Bank, Babcock & Brown and ING to the aged care market.

Commenting on this trend opportunity, KPMG’s Bernard Salt said, "People born before 1939 are happy living off the smell of olives even though they could not afford to eat them. Baby boomers are different: they are rapacious consumers, they are a wealthy generation and there are 4.1 million of them.

"They will not be content to be in cardigans, shuffling along in their slippers, making cups of tea. Baby boomers loathe the 'r' word: retire. They want to flirt with Byron Bay living and will demand five-star, alternative lifestyle housing."

PC component prices dropping at half a percent per week

And the prices go down, down, down... Now entry level, fully configured desktops have dropped below US$300. This represents a price drop of 40% over the last year.

Under one set of industry classifications, PCs have now officially entered the category of "consumer electronics". Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes article quotes a Dell spokesperson as saying that that "the cost of the components that make up a PC drop an average of half a percent per week."

So what was once a laughable improbability, the trends are now looking towards the reality of buying a US$200 or $150 PC.

"The Gathering Wave of Wirelessness" – MIT Technology Review

The need to involve consumers in branding

Professor Venkat Ramaswamy of the University of Michigan Business School, and co-author of the book The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, says that companies must begin to involve consumers in the creation of brands.

“There has been a 'mind-boggling' rise in consumer-to-consumer communication even as corporates' own understanding of value creation has blurred,” said Prof. Ramaswamy.

“The Internet, along with other communication channels such as SMS and blogs, has meant that customer experiences are shared more rapidly and widely, in a "word-of-mouth" overdrive. Companies can engage consumers in a two-way interaction and deliver the experience that they want.”

He uses Apple and its iTunes music portal to illustrate the point. “With the iPod, consumers can ‘carry’ their favourite songs with them. In addition, Apple has opened retail stores. So, the focus is on individual value and experience, with the choice of doing business entirely with the consumer,” he said. 

Google and Yahoo! - Best of both worlds

Old habits die hard - if you are a dedicated user of Google but remember the 'old' days (of say, 5 years ago) when Yahoo! was the search tool to use, Twingine is the site for you.

In a clever tool for web searchers and developers alike, Twingine allows you to search both Google and Yahoo!Search simultaneously, displaying results side by side. This is a time saver not only for those searching the web for information, but web folk can compare their site's popularity in results from the two leading search tools.

www.twingine.com

Self-heating coffee - what's next?

After a seven year, US$24 million investment, Californian company OnTech has developed a lifestyle innovation ideal for the mobile society of the 21st Century… self-heating cans of coffee.

The cans are activated by the push of a plastic button. Within six to eight minutes a chemical reaction heats the coffee to a drinkable 63 degrees Celsius - about the same time it takes to order and receive a cappuccino at Starbucks.

Coastal cities to experience strong population growth over 30 years

The Property Council of Australia has just released a study carried out by Berbard Salt of KPMG called ‘Australia on the Move’, which assesses housing demand in 41 cities through to 2031. Of particular significance to Queensland, coastal cities will continue to experience strong population growth and a new dwelling surge in demand.

“In particular, the seachange cities of Mandurah, Hervey Bay, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Cairns will more than double their housing stock over the 30 years to 2031,” Mr Salt said.

He also predicts: “Brisbane will head a super region. Brisbane sits at the centre of a broad region of extraordinary demand for new dwellings over the 30 years to 2031. Over this period Brisbane will build 528,000 dwellings, the Gold Coast will add a further 227,000 (more than Adelaide with just 150,000) and the Sunshine Coast will add 138,000. This combines to 893,000 new dwellings over 30 years or a flat average of 30,000 per year. This aggregate market is bigger than the Sydney market.”

Knowledge work at light speed

Jim McGee of the McGee's Musings blog says apprenticeship is the best model when it comes to learning how to do knowledge, innovation and creativity work.

The challenge with apprenticeship, says Jim, is that in terms of knowledge work, there really aren't many masters and the process is very slow. It's also self-directed and far from comfortable. It's as far as you can possibly get from the standard "impart expert knowledge, then test" model of learning.

Some companies seem to believe that there's a tangible set of knowledge and skills called "innovation" that can be captured and set free within an organisation, quickly transforming everyone within it. The reality is much more complicated than that. But is there a way to speed up the process without "looking for answers to copy?" he asks.

Strategy and design thinking

So often business strategy, which is all about identifying and driving actions to reach a desired result, achieves the reverse – confusion and limbo.

As reported in Fast Company, this outcome has much to do with the words and tools executives use to communicate strategy within their organisations. PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets and storytelling presenters are often inadequate to the task, and the words used are always open to interpretation.

People need to gain a shared view or image of the chosen strategy and what the target outcome is. Design is ideally suited to the communication of strategy because it is visual and not often open to interpretation.

Strategy designers who use video, visual scenarios, or physical prototypes to communicate can greatly assist people emotionally and visually experience intended strategy and achieve a shared agreement on direction.