Business consulting giant Deloitte has claimed top spot in the thought leadership rankings. The rank reflects the number and quality of respective subject matter experts who provide service on behalf of Deloitte. IBM, Capgemini, PwC and BCG complete the illustrious list. It was mentioned that subject matter experts relates to both the content writers as well as the marketers and executives who implement the projects. A paper titled The Regulator of Tomorrow particularly won plaudits for the in-depth business research.

The CIO is someone who is in charge of ideating and subsequently implementing business innovation.However, some points clearly show how the CIO must be hired on part time basis. Firstly, an organization may not be able to afford the services of a full time professional dedicated to something which may not yield tangible results immediately. Also major innovations require lot of risk. At first stage, firms crawl on innovation, thus a part timer is better suited to the needs. Certain aspects of a CIO’s profile may be better handled by other employees, thus further rendering full time service as redundant. In certain cultures, outside professionals may get greater freedom to implement changes than internal hires. It may also be easier to convince a risk-averse top manager regarding recruitments for part time external resource. An ideal model could involve an internal full time employee working in tandem with a freelance external resource.  

Due to the growth in the usefulness of business analytics, firms using big data to forecast their business plans has increased by more than double. Market research conducted by IDG clearly reflects this trend and provides us with ways in which benefit can be extracted out of talent analytics. Data may be extracted to create the prototype of the ideal employee type integrating elements from various top performers. Promotion strategies may be devised accordingly. Analytics will help us with talent management as firms will be aware of what exactly motivates which employee persona.

Business innovation is something hard to replicate, yet several companies across the globe are grappling to succeed at it. Business research has identified certain traits that are common to innovators. They bring value that is unique. Their innovations are long lasting and their successors can further build on them. They are also quick to embrace new ideas and disrupt themselves before testing on others. Eventually they monetize the innovations they create. Also, such innovators bring a sense of passion to the drawing board.

Japanese tourists make up a significant amount of foreign visitors to Germany, yet the reverse is not true. Germans are not travelling as much to Japan as British or French are. Their numbers in turn pale in comparison to those from USA or China which stood at million plus. Germans are otherwise among the greatest travelers globally in terms of numbers which is why increase in their numbers for outbound tourism to Japan is a crucial cog in increasing tourism jobs in the archipelago.

Pierre Chandon suggests that size of the product is one of the important yet probably the most ignored marketing tool thereby offering a great opportunity to increase sales, profits and customer satisfaction. Marketing managers do not question the sizes that they inherit while tweaking all other marketing variables. Another issue with respect to size is that they are seldom reduced. Usually, marketers want to increase the size as they believe the bigger size will generate more revenue and profits as they would absorb a higher percentage of the fixed cost.Pierre disagrees. He feels that going small is also a smart strategy as it assists in capturing ever increasing single household consumers and those with perishability,  storage, consumption control and budget concerns. The key concern should not be how much paper we sell but rather optimize the size of toilet paper for different market segments which would increase sales as well as improve margins. Its time we review our corporate strategy in terms of different combination of size and price to make more money by selling less. It certainly is something to think about.

The way in which the Internet of Things (IoT) is taking shape, a number of businesses are trying to find ways in which they can use the same to their benefits. The manufacturing industry is expecting reduced energy consumption, improved efficiencies and fewer disruptions at work. The government is expecting environmental and cost benefits. For the logistics industry this is a business innovation to improve planning increase safety and provide better overall service. Wearable technologies are getting a boost due to the use of applications that are powered using the IoT.