John Kay » Strategy

John recently spoke to Five Books on the five books he recommends to people who are considering starting investing. Find the full interview here, and buy a copy of The Long and the Short of It, J...

https://www.johnkay.com/2018/04/27/five-books-best-books-for-the-beginner-investor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=five-books-best-books-for-the-beginner-investor

British regulators have finally published their report into HBOS, the bank formed from the merger of Halifax with Bank of Scotland, more than seven years after its collapse. The 600-odd pages con...

https://www.johnkay.com/2015/11/25/the-report-into-hbos-yields-three-important-lessons-for-all-businesses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-report-into-hbos-yields-three-important-lessons-for-all-businesses

Michael Porter warned on the danger of being “stuck in the middle”. Companies, he said, must either gain a cost advantage or emphasise product differentiation. But what really matters is enjo...

https://www.johnkay.com/2015/03/04/the-best-strategy-is-to-be-good-at-whatever-it-is-you-do/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-best-strategy-is-to-be-good-at-whatever-it-is-you-do

Whatever initial misconceptions spin doctors may promote, reality will out. The post The welfare cap replaces political judgment with spin appeared first on John Kay .

https://www.johnkay.com/2014/04/01/the-welfare-cap-replaces-political-judgment-with-spin/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-welfare-cap-replaces-political-judgment-with-spin

The test of an organisational structure is not how it handles success but how it copes when things go wrong. The post The Co-op’s mistake was to detach responsibility from power appeared fir...

https://www.johnkay.com/2014/03/19/the-co-ops-mistake-was-to-detach-responsibility-from-power/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-co-ops-mistake-was-to-detach-responsibility-from-power

Ethics are about what to do when good behaviour and profitable business are not necessarily the same thing. The post Being ethical in business is not as simple as ‘doing the right thing’ a...

https://www.johnkay.com/2013/11/06/being-ethical-in-business-is-not-as-simple-as-doing-the-right-thing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=being-ethical-in-business-is-not-as-simple-as-doing-the-right-thing

British technological failures have been compounded by a political phenomenon I have come to think of as “great leap forward syndrome”. The idea is that the best way to compensate for stumble...

https://www.johnkay.com/2013/10/30/britains-great-leap-forward-was-start-of-nuclear-power-failure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=britains-great-leap-forward-was-start-of-nuclear-power-failure

Negotiations over Scottish independence are framed by the observation that neither the rest of the UK nor the EU has anything significant to gain from such negotiation – or any wish to conduct ...

https://www.johnkay.com/2013/10/02/the-oft-forgotten-basics-of-negotiation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-oft-forgotten-basics-of-negotiation

Modern life involves complex and multidimensional products. It is perhaps inevitable that price structures appear similarly complex and multidimensional. The post Sometimes, a spot of collusion...

https://www.johnkay.com/2013/09/04/sometimes-a-spot-of-collusion-can-be-a-very-good-thing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sometimes-a-spot-of-collusion-can-be-a-very-good-thing

Humans have always found it hard to cope with the idea that every individual has a lifespan even as life itself goes on. The idea of a natural life cycle for a business, or industrial centre, is ...

https://www.johnkay.com/2013/08/21/sometimes-the-best-that-a-company-can-hope-for-is-death/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sometimes-the-best-that-a-company-can-hope-for-is-death