I recently stumbled across this old article from Harvard Business Review written by none other than Michael Porter and some of his Harvard colleagues, containing some important lessons for CEOs that are new to the role:

First, as a new CEO you must learn to manage organizational context rather than focus [...]

Africa is one of the richest continents in terms of natural resources, yet most of it is steeped in poverty. In the third world countries there are many basic things needed as a priority over Internet infrastructure (like food, water, shelter), however in a “semi-first-world” country like South Africa, the economy would benefit immensely from [...]

If you run email campaigns, this is a good example of how to structure a good email. Why?
They have managed to articulate their value proposition very clearly with no unnecessary waffle.

It articulates what their product (social software) could do (used as a strategic resource to create a new market and product category)
It provides some evidence [...]

Here is a really good presentation from Kevin Perlmutter of Interbrand on customer experience and the factors that directly impact revenue generation.

The orginal can be viewed and downloaded from the Interbrand site

This is pretty useful and I can never remember the exact syntax, so here it is for me (and now you) to remember.
In a Google spreadsheet, you can do an online currency conversion that looks up the exchange rate in real time, making my life much easier.
For example to get EUR to GBP just type
=googlefinance((”CURRENCY:EURGBP”))
(note: [...]

Same article, 2 different ads that rotated in the ad space. It shows the massive difference that simplicity and context makes…
First the full article…

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Ad 1…

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Ad 2…

I was fortunate enough to attend the Google Atmosphere conference last week in London. My top 3 take aways were:

Cloud computing is a reality here and now, and is being used by businesses to reduce cost and redeploy expertise in a strategic manner
Even if your business is not considering how cloud computing can be used [...]

An interesting announcement from Rentokil today that they are moving 35000 users to Google apps… I think this validates that Cloud Computing is not a thing of the future, it’s here today and is delivering value to business right now. Too many people think it’s something that will be happening, sometime in the future…

Although they [...]

Luxury supercar marketing is less about making money and more about having a positive impact on the brand…

The 2010 Lamborghini Reventón will be a limited production (15 cars) recession-busting €1.1m supercar…
It looks great,  and rather amusing is the spanish translation of Reventón

If you’re early on in your career at a large corporate, or wish to join a large corporate, here are 20 points that will help you  – salient advice from James Gardner.
To give you a taster I’ve extracted point 9:
Get a mentor. Make sure they are at least one level more senior than your boss. [...]