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Introduction to Betfair Andrew Black, a one-time professional gambler, and Edward Wray an ex-JPMorgan derivatives trader founded Betfair in August 1999. Today Betfair is the…

Are you a five-forces disciple or a blue-ocean enthusiast? I.e. Do you try to dominate existing markets or try to create new ones? Basic economics…

So the first article in the blue ocean series introduced what a blue ocean was and the theory behind it. This one focuses on how…

Competing in over crowded industries is no way to sustain competitive advantage. The real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space that makes…

Unbeknownst to me three years ago a friend of mine started working on an idea for an online art gallery. About a year ago I…

One of my Information Management lectures looked at analysing the STARS Air Ambulance case study from HBR which looked at the recently appointed chief information officer Sharaz…

Michael Porter’s generic strategies state that strategies for broad market scope fall into two categories: Cost leadership – having the lowest cost base e.g. Ryanair Differentiation –…

So today was TOGAF exam day. In just five days I have gone from not knowing much about TOGAF to being TOGAF 9 certified. I…

Phew the final day of training and my brain has been pushed to the limit this week, we have condensed a 1,000 page manual into…

So enterprise architecture and TOGAF are started to make sense now and things are really falling into place. That being said I am very glad…

I had recovered slightly from the bombardment from yesterday and some of the TOGAF concepts were starting to make sense and fall into place in…

As I have a week off from my MBA I thought that I would push my brain to it limits by taking some professional courses…

For our strategy coursework we had to find a solution to a particular strategic challenge faced by a firm of our choice. It was by…

I know I am going to get a lot of stick for this post but I actually like exams. I don’t find them scary and…

I have just finished my finance 1 coursework which was quite open ended but very interesting. In 1,200 words or less we had to conduct…

What is Porter’s Five Forces? Well I doubt there is any need to explain one of the most famous strategic tools around but just in…

One lecture that has really stayed with me was given by our superb lecturer  Gianvito Lanzolla. He asked us a simple question, “What is strategy?”.…

Not all strategies are created equal and when you are working on your company strategy you need to remember the level you are planning at.…

For those of you, like me, who find strategy fascinating you may want to analyse the macro factors affecting your industry. While industry tools like…

In a recent Information Management lecture we went through the case of iPremier (read the full case) which is a popular case study from Harvard…

My final post on value chains is an actual example. There are lots of posts on value chains but I don’t see many examples so…

In the last post on value chains we looked at what a value chain is and what it is use for. In this post we…

The value chain, also known as value chain analysis, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in…

So my first piece of coursework for my MBA was an analysis of Nichols PLC in 1,200 words or less. You can read the full…

Some more insights following on from my last blog post from John Devine. 1. You need to know/ develop the organisation strategy and deliver it…

Our lecture keynote last week was John Devine who is the COO of Threadneedle and previously a vice president at Merrill Lynch. It was a…

I started my MBA recently at Cass Business School and already I have met some really great people and I really feel I have made…

Last week after much preparation I took the GMAT exam and I thought I would share the lessons I learned for anyone else who is…

I have been reading a lot of Steve Blank articles at the moment and I was really looking for an opportunity to experiment with his…

As an entrepreneur running a business there never seems to be enough time in the day, you start early and finish late. Sometimes it is…

Over the couple of years I have been working on a very interesting collaborative project for Nesta and Oracle. The project started off as a…

There are a lot of programmers out there these days. Since the explosion of the PC and then later the Internet there has been more…

Recently I have been studying for my APMP qualification which has taken up quite a lot of my time. It is a globally recognised qualification…

Estimating seems to be a lost art, it is one of the most important skills you can learn as it is one of the key…

I have been a PHP programmer for a long time, it was the first web scripting language I learnt, and I have built some very…