by Bruce | May 7, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Back in New York from a solid week of meetings in London (17 in five days) and a few observations, reflections, musings, and speculations come to the fore. And no, these will pointedly not include whether the US or the UK’s version of being seized by political...
by Bruce | February 24, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
We now come to our fifth and final installment: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. “Irrelevance” is a subtle touch. It’s a fair bet that not too many readers of Adam Smith, Esq. see themselves as, or would be content to be, spending their working...
by Bruce | February 22, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
We now come to Stage 4, Grasping for Salvation. Illustrative is the contrast between how HP and IBM responded in terms of choosing new CEOs when each company’s growth slowed dramatically in the 1990’s. HP first: It faced a choice as it sought to replace...
by Bruce | February 5, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Jim Collins has authored or co-authored six books that have sold over 10-million copies altogether. Good to Great may be the most famous (published in 2001, still the #1 best seller on Amazon in “Strategic Business Planning”), but Built to Last is also...
by Bruce | January 23, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Strategy
Late this past week my partner Janet and I had the opportunity to participate in a panel at the 23rd annual Thomson Reuters Marketing Partner Forum (held this year in Orlando) on the “rise of the Big 4″—and, we took it to mean, all other species of non-law...
by Bruce | December 16, 2015 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
It has become a commonplace—I have bowed to convention and endorsed the notion myself—to observe that law firms are labor-, not capital-, intensive, and that (here’s the dangerous and subtle segue) therefore there would be no benefit to them in taking on outside...