20:20 Vision

 

Preamble

This page presents brief details of books planned for publication by Colin Edward Egan during 2023 and beyond. Following the information relating to British Business Manifesto: Strategies for Profitable Growth, they are presented in the order they are likely to be published.

 

Colin Edward Egan, forthcoming, September 2023
British Business Manifesto: Strategies for Profitable Growth

In the post-Brexit, post-Covid era, the opportunities for British Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to design successful and profitable competitive strategies are potentially huge. To take advantage of these, companies must adopt a structured and systematic approach to business strategy, marketing, innovation and branding, with these management processes supported by operational excellence for enhanced productivity.

Firms should be preparing now to exploit the ‘strategic windows’ that international business developments will bring as new trade deals are struck. Equally, British companies pursuing purely domestic business strategies should bolster themselves for the fierce competitive winds that those newly negotiated global trade agreements will bring to the UK market: after all, ‘international free trade’ is a two-way street…

In British Business Manifesto: Strategies for Profitable Growth, we discuss the concepts, frameworks, processes and tools which will guide smart managers running intelligent companies towards current and future global and domestic business strategy success. 

The book is written for a practitioner/functional-specialist readership and is ideal for an SME management audience. For detailed information relating to each of the book’s chapters and related SME Business Strategy Events, please navigate to britishbusinessmanifesto.com (website opens in a new tab/window). 

 


Colin Edward Egan (forthcoming)
The Gutenberg Disruptor: How Disruptive Processes Transform Buyer Behaviour & Business Models

Daily financial news media abound with items relating to ‘disruptive technologies’ and ‘novel business models’, in the process exciting investors and frightening company executives in equal measure. Whether based on hi-tech, AI, or new routes to market, a fundamental marketing ‘fact-of-life’ is universally overlooked:  customer preference, power and choice drive these economic processes.

Buyer behaviour – the ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ decisions which explain consumers’ purchasing activities and motivations –  is key to understanding emerging patterns of demand and supply. In The Gutenburg Disruptor… we explore these themes, providing many practical examples and business case scenarios from both sides of this market exchange equation.

The following blog entries from The Global Business Strategy Album provide a ‘flavour’ of the principal themes of this book (please navigate to outsidefortresseurope.com for further blog posts and essays –  this website will open in a new tab/window):

 

Disruptive business processes & ‘tipping points’: Customer preference is sovereign!
Global Strategic Management | Innovation | Marketing

(Please click/tap the ‘Disrupt!’ icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 

What would Steve say? Has Apple become a follower, not a pioneer?
Brand | Innovation | International Business | Marketing

(Please click/tap the ‘Disrupt!’ icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 

 


Colin Edward Egan (forthcoming)
The Ascent of Marketing & Innovation

In recent years the pressures for firms to innovate have grown tremendously. As markets develop over time, the combination of sophisticated demand and intense rivalry forces companies to strive ever harder just to keep pace with competitive dynamics. They do this in a broad range of ways, consistently seeking product and process breakthroughs to build or maintain a competitive advantage.

In this book, we examine the multiple marketing issues which are bringing innovation to the top of the boardroom agenda for many firms. In a competitive marketplace, the importance of innovation cannot be overstated in an environment where ‘the survival of the fittest’ is the watchword for business success. The following quote from Professor Peter Drucker, the doyen of management gurus, illustrates the vital role of marketing and innovation in the contemporary business environment:

Because its purpose is to create a customer, a business has two – and only two – functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are ‘costs’.

A crucial point to make here relates to the distinction which must be made between invention and innovation. Invention is the creation of an idea and is typically associated with technological breakthroughs. Innovation is the commercialization of ideas and embraces creativity in all elements of the marketing mix: everything provides scope for differentiation if an appropriate market-driven outlook is adopted.

While invention is often more interesting for research scientists in R&D departments, the compelling evidence is that innovation strategies tend to be more profitable!

Having noted this, it must be emphasized that a strong creative process and organizational responsiveness are essential to secure innovation success. As we demonstrate, the trick is to innovate for first-mover advantage, a process that combines speed to market with an ability to build entry barriers as the market develops and becomes more attractive to follower companies.

The following blog entries from The Global Business Strategy Album provide a ‘flavour’ of the principal themes of this book (please navigate to outsidefortresseurope.com for further blog posts and essays –  this website will open in a new tab/window):

 

Millennials are so passé. And irrelevant for global marketing strategy design
Brand | Global Strategic Management | Marketing

(Please click/tap the ‘Ascend!’ icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 

From ‘branding’ cattle to ‘digital influencers’: A brief history of global brand management
Brand | Global Strategic Management | Marketing

(Please click/tap the ‘Ascend!’ icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 


Colin Edward Egan (forthcoming)
Communomics

In the late spring of 1989, more than 300,000 student protestors marched towards Tiananmen Square, agitating for political freedoms to match the hugely successful economic reforms in China throughout that decade. The protestors’ dreams were literally crushed, and some political scientists were claiming ‘The End of History’, the subtext for the triumph of capitalism and its associated societal framework, liberal democracy. The imminent collapse of the USSR and the uber-symbolic and very real fall of the Berlin Wall amplified this belief.

The atrocities committed in Tiananmen Square and the broader discussions relating to human rights, democracy and dissent, liberal versus conservative, old versus young and related controversies are beyond the scope of this book but are central to its context. Capital had flowed to China from Western firms in anticipation of bumper rewards, which is what capital does. Billions had been invested, but asset repatriation, expropriation and nationalisation have plagued Foreign Direct Investment in the past, especially in countries rich in resources (land, labour, capital) but opaque in political governance.

After Tiananmen, there was a deep breath taken and held by companies who waited to see how the dice would roll: what had widely been seen as a safe bet now had the nasty taste of a highly speculative punt. The capitalists needn’t have worried, as the world witnessed. But what about the usurpation of wealth and power by elites so strongly associated with a social system masquerading as communism which George Orwell so presciently predicted in his thinly veiled critique of ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin’s Russia in his 1945 satire Animal Farm? The most memorable (and frequently quoted) line from this novella is: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.

The inequality alluded to in this sentence has been widely interpreted as a cause for the demise of communism, but this is fundamentally flawed for two key reasons:

    1. It assumes that communism has failed, which, as we demonstrate in this book, as a political system it continues to thrive in a nation of 1,415,000,000 souls in China; add to this 93,000,000 in Vietnam, 25,000,000 in North Korea, 12,000,000 in Cuba and more.
    2. It assumes that capitalism delivers equality in wealth which, as French economist Thomas Piketty has demonstrated in his thought-provoking and successful book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is patently not the case. Perhaps the greatest surprise is that, in contrast to what Marx had predicted, the huge inequalities in wealth that capitalism has created haven’t attracted any significant, sustained, beyond-state rebellious reaction.

From this perspective, the capitalist nation-state has survived and prospered. What has triumphed above all else is market economics in the context of globalization, and it is this which provides the content for much of what features in Communomics. Our aim is to explain, not judge. From Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Mao, Deng, Gorbachev, Thatcher, Reagan and Zi, from pin factories to rejuvenated silk roads, we explore the philosophies, dramas and perspectives on political economy which have shaped our modern world. And our conclusion…

 

Capitalism versus Communism:  The Perfect Storm?

 

The following blog entry from The Global Business Strategy Album provides a ‘flavour’ of the central theme of this book: the extraordinary rise of ‘Chinese Capitalism’ since the early 1990s (please navigate to outsidefortresseurope.com for further blog posts and essays –  this website will open in a new tab/window). The extract is taken from Ten Years That Changed the (Capitalist) World, a companion volume to Outside Fortress Europe: Strategies for the Global Market.

 

A tale of two Chinas: how did it happen and what happens next?
Global Strategic Management | International Business

(Please click/tap the ‘Communomics’ site icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 

The following essay does not feature in The Global Business Strategy Album, but it addresses a parallel series of events that also arose during the 1990s: the collapse of the USSR and the demise of its vassal states in Central and Eastern Europe. It is compiled from two extracts taken from Ten Years That Changed the (Capitalist) World, a companion volume to Outside Fortress Europe: Strategies for the Global Market.

 

Ich Bin Ein Berliner! And the fall of the wall
Global Strategic Management | International Business

(Please click/tap the ‘Communomics’ site icon to the left/above to access the blog post. Click/tap your browser ‘Back’ button to return here).

 


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All content © Colin Edward Egan, 2023