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Creativity May Start with Knowing What You Don't Know

Success Through Cross Functional Teams Throughout my career I was responsible for creating new revenue streams and solving operational problems. In almost every instance I used a cross functional team that had members from each division of the company (finance, sales, accounting, IT, production, logistics, etc.). These teams had remarkable success in creating new revenue streams and solving operational problems.  These teams were successful because each individual brought a different point of view and bias. It was not unusual to have a sales problem solved by someone from the accounting or finance division or an IT problem solved by someone form production. In my last blog I described a cash control system that I designed that was successful after the finance executives failed to design a successful system. The system proposed by the financial team relied on centralized cash control while my system put cash control responsibility at the operating unit level and was decentralized....
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Artificial Intelligence Still Needs Human Creativity for Guidance

 In my book, Winning Marketing Strategies Using Generative AI . and in my blog posts, I caution that AI is a tool and must be reviewed by business strategists and leaders to insure the right objectives are met. AI is dependent on information that is available and may be biased by the prompts that is directing its actions. To validate this, I presented AI with a problem that was faced by a grocery company for which I designed a cash control system. The company had retail stores throughout a region and wanted to build a milk plant. Unfortunately, interest rates were above 7% and would have made the project too expensive. The CEO thought there was cash in the system that could be freed from operations to fund the milk plant project without needing to borrow from financial institutions. He had his CFO and team work on a process to free the cash from operations to fund growth projects. That team worked on a solution for quite a while but was unsuccessful in developing an acceptable solu...
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Creating Value for B2B Customers

Creating value for customers, the company and its collaborators has been a centerpiece of my approach to building marketing strategies. In my mind, trying to create a strategy without creating value is akin to a fraud. Working with business customers is different from working with individual customers. Business customers usually have what we refer to as "rational buyers". The people spending money for a company are buying products that will make their business successful. There is a lot of attention to cost vs benefit of each purchase and those purchases should contribute to the success of their business. In other words, people making buying decisions are paid to make optimal purchase decision and their career depends on making the best purchase. In many cases there are several individuals involved in the purchase. There is the person or group that will use the product or service being purchased, there is the individual that must approve the purchase and there is the person w...
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How Do You Create Value for Your Company, Your Customers and Your Collaborators?

Things to Consider When developing a Plan for Creating Value  I have long talked about the need to create value for a company, its customers and collaborators and I have given supporting theories. but are there ways to turn those recommendations and theories into actions that can be taken. I think we can start with looking at how one of the great thinkers of our age, Abraham Maslow,  thought about society. He created a pyramid of needs that individuals have that must be met. The lower level of needs need to be met at some level before the next level on the pyramid can be reached. Those levels are: Physiological Needs  – basic survival (food, shelter, etc.) Safety Needs  – security, health, stability Belongingness and Love  – relationships, group identity Esteem Needs  – status, recognition, achievement Self-Actualization  – personal growth, creativity, fulfillment Understanding these levels of Maslow's hierarchy can get us started toward how we can cre...
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