Are you Marketing to the Informal Economy?

In his 2012 book Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Robert Neuwirth challenges conventional thinking by examining the world’s informal economy close up. To do so, he spent four years living and working with street vendors and gray marketers, to capture its scope, its vigor–and its lessons. He calls it “System Read More …

Applying Lean in the Lean 3P Design Process

Allan R Coletta is a chemical engineer with an extensive background in manufacturing operations, supply chain and engineering, gained while working in the chemical process and healthcare diagnostics industries. He recently authored a book, The Lean 3P Advantage: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Production Preparation Process. Allan is my guest on the Business901 podcast next Read More …

Are you changing how you deliver a workshop?

Have we reached the transformation stage in the customer experience hierarchy? If so, the role as an expert may have diminished substantially, and we are now seeking facilitators to guide us through our journey. Some of you may not know what I mean by the customer experience hierarchy and how it relates to the transformation Read More …

The Lean Conference Season is Upon Us

This is the season; summer vacations are over and the Lean conference season has started. Have you signed up for one? Have you signed up for my next workshop, Lean Service Design Open Workshop on Sept. 27th at the Maryland World Class Consortia quarterly meeting? In a past blog post I discussed, Turning your Conference Read More …

We are all in Services… more or less!

This book contains a simple but powerful definition of services based upon a separation between back-stage and front-stage activities. Services deal with front interactions, production and manufacturing with back-stage operations. The book uses this distinction systematically to explore all the important issues of the field within a coherent set of concepts and maps, including the Read More …

Lean Design and Development

Ron Mascitelli, president of Technology Perspectives was my guest on the Business901 podcast, Lean Design interview with Ron Mascitelli. Ron is the author of five books, his most-recent publication, Mastering Lean Product Development: A Practical, Event-Driven Process for Maximizing Speed, Profits, and Quality. This is a transcription of the podcast. Ron is a Project Management Read More …