Umbrex is pleased to welcome Carlos M. Entrena Utrilla. Carlos is a physicist-turned-consultant with deep expertise in the commercial new space industry. He started his consulting career as an independent consultant for space startups, providing services for market studies, creation of business cases and definition go-to-market strategies. He worked for a year at McKinsey’s Madrid office, where […]
“In an effort to make the ongoing effects of climate change more visible, needleworkers around the globe are creating temperature blankets and scarves that track local weather patterns.” – From thisiscolossal.com
Dan Markovitz identifies the difference between facts and data and why you need both to make a fully informed assessment. Taiichi Ohno said, “Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts.” You can leave out the word “manufacturing,” and apply the concept to anything in your company […]
In the first 20 seconds of this 35-second video, the man in the bench is singing alone. Then one person – hard to tell who – joins him around 0:22, and within 8 seconds the whole crowd has joined in. To be a leader, you don’t always have to go first. It takes courage and leadership […]
James Black provides a comprehensive list of questions designed to help you build a marketing strategy that can help your business move forward in 2020. Entering the New Year provides a great opportunity to take a quick audit of your brand or business to identify opportunity areas in your 1) customer understanding, 2) go […]
Natalie Ceeney provides a grim view, but a much needed voice, calling on business to take on the challenge of climate change. Whether prompted by the flurry of recent announcements from government and Bank of England or by the rise in protests, it’s hard to avoid the climate change debate. Whatever our personal beliefs, […]
1. Umbrex member Paul Millerd’s piece, The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped the Workforce and Left Everyone Behind, was blogged about by Tyler Cowen. That’s like being picked as the Oprah Book-of-the-Month in my universe. Congrats to Paul. 2. How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class, according to Yale Law School Professor Daniel Markovits, in The Atlantic. My post […]
Robbie Kellman Baxter makes the case for subscription-based businesses and provides a few expert tips on how to take your business in that direction. If you’ve been tasked with launching a subscription-based business at your organization, or are thinking about starting your own XXX-as-a-service or XXX-of-the-month-club, before diving in, take a step back. To […]
This in-depth article from Boris Galonske explains how digitization helps improve resilience in commodity trading. Commodity trading suffers from shrinking margins and in some commodity classes also from low price volatility. At the same time operating environments struggle with manual routines, legacy processes and systems resulting in high cost income ratios (CIR). How can […]
Finally finished listening to all four books of Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson. Better than anything I’ve ever read on showing how power actually works in the U.S. government, and what happens behind the scenes. (Big investment – took me a year, but worth it.) Highly recommended: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of […]
C.V. Ramachandran discusses what it takes to institute digital transformation successfully by engaging a holistic approach that provides support for every part of a company’s value chain. Big data, machine learning, connected vehicles, industry 4.0, robotic process automation, blockchain … No matter what industry you are in, you have surely come across these popular […]
Umbrex is pleased to welcome Katarina Podlesnaya. Katarina spent 8+ years across management consulting at BCG, venturing and blockchain product development at ConsenSys, advising multiple start-ups, and serving as an owner of a retail business. Katarina’s expertise focuses on growth strategy, procurement and negotiation, technology, operational improvement, and organizational design. She currently resides in New York […]
