David Jacobson's External Insights

New online business ideas

Any new business has to satisfy a need (or convince customers there is a need to be filled). It can answer that question: Why doesn't somebody do something about that?

Paul Graham has written about Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund.

And here are 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich.

Effective execution of strategies

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution from Harvard Business Review points out that implementation depends largely on 2 factors:

• Clarifying decision rights— for instance, specifying who “owns” each decision and who must provide input
• Ensuring information flows where it’s needed— such as promoting managers laterally so they build networks needed for the cross-unit collaboration critical to a new strategy

Booz has also published an interesting Organization Effectiveness Simulator.