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31 articlesNovember 2026
12 articles on this page
Strategy & leadership9 min readPESTLE: six boxes are the start, not the conclusion
For owners and strategy leads who have filled in a PESTLE grid and are unsure what it concludes. The short answer: pick the one factor that decides the decision, then prove it with documents from outside the firm.
Strategy & leadership11 min readPESTEL is not a checklist: UK mobile-platform regulation
For a founder or developer planning to launch an app or payments product in the UK. Instead of filling six PESTEL boxes, the post takes one dated legal event, shows which of Porter's forces it moves and which decision on price or launch date changes with it.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
Ørsted's green shift: its own story against an outside report
For managers and owners who receive case studies and capability decks written by the company itself. This post sets Ørsted's white paper beside an IEEFA report (2021) to see which figures are checked, which disagree, and gives a table for reading such stories.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
Dunning's OLI: invest abroad or export?
For a CEO or board weighing a plant abroad against exporting. The short answer: direct investment needs all three of Dunning's advantages, not "one or more", while withdrawing needs only one of them to be missing.
- Strategy & leadership11 min read
Eight decision traps and how to keep a decision journal
For owners and managers about to commit to a big decision who suspect their own thinking is skewed. Hammond and colleagues give the eight traps clear names, but knowing the names is not enough. This post proposes a seven-line journal page that exposes them before the money moves.
Strategy & leadership9 min readCorporate diplomacy: a capability small exporters need too
For the owner of a small exporter with no government-affairs team who faces buyer-country rules, slow ports and buyer pressure. The sources I read treat corporate diplomacy as a cycle of sensing, responding and adapting; a small firm can do the first two at its own scale.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
Does diversifying M&A create value? Reading three papers
For an owner or director weighing the purchase of a company outside the core business. The straight answer: the three papers in the library cannot settle whether it pays, but they show what to doubt and what to ask before you buy.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
Scenario planning when policy can fork: the HarmonyOS example
For owners, product heads and engineering leads who must commit money while a foreign policy could ease, hold or tighten. The short answer: build one story per branch, then separate the choices that pay in every branch from the bets that pay in only one.
- Strategy & leadership11 min read
Goleman and Hersey–Blanchard: how sceptical to be
For team leaders, owners and HR staff who meet these two models in leadership training. The short answer: use them as questions to test on your own team, not as rules, because the evidence behind both is thin.
Strategy & leadership8 min readTransformational, transactional or servant: pick by the challenge
For CEOs, division heads and team leads choosing how to lead through one specific challenge. No approach wins everywhere: transformational and contingent-reward leadership overlap heavily, and whether directive or participative leadership works flips with how familiar the situation is.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
Keep the product or change it abroad: the two-pressure grid
For a small-firm owner who already has foreign customers and must decide whether to keep the product as it is or change it country by country. Short answer: do not place the whole firm in one cell; score each element of the offer by the cost of two versions and what local buyers demand.
- Strategy & leadership10 min read
When the government changes the rules after you invest
For an owner weighing a plant or project abroad with a local partner. The post reads Vernon's obsolescing bargain against a study of eight multinationals in Latin America, then sets out what a mid-size Vietnamese investor should check before committing capital.
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