“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” Albert Einstein said. How often are businesses asking the right questions to solve their problems? Based on my experience of helping companies solve problems, most of the time their focus is on finding the right answer more than asking the

How often do companies succeed to create value and achieve innovation in this age of 'great complexity'? The business environment today is more complex and uncertain than it was a decade ago due to a combined effects of digitisation, connectivity, social feedback, globalisation and changes in consumer behaviour. Companies have 'Big data' available and analysis coming at them all the time; and they feel the pressure to use this information in order to develop better products a

Smart, connected customers raise a new set of strategic choices related to how value is created and captured and how the overwhelming amount of new data they generate is utilized and managed. In omnichannel retailing the source of the value creation (brand building, product awareness) is decoupled from the place of value capture (sales transaction). My approach is structured around three core channels: Physical store, online and mobile. The result is a cycle where value is cr

If there’s one thing that is always constant in retail, it’s change. Although most of the change we have witnessed in the past few decades has been relatively incremental, today’s need for innovation represents a seismic shift in the industry. Let’s look at the UK - the grocery market is growing at its slowest rate since 2005 and concerns are intensifying over the fortunes of big supermarkets. In the past few weeks the news has been less than positive: Sainsbury’s suffered it

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. Logic will get you from A to B but imagination will take you everywhere”, as Albert Einstein said. I always thought each person is the result of his own imagination and we get from life what we become in the process of pursuing our goals and dreams. Dreams can come true and all it takes is imagination mixed with action and self-belief. My wife Melisa always dreamed of creatin