One of the key contributions of Harvard Professor Michael Porter is popularly known as the Five Forces. Simply put, it defines the five major forces that affect profitability in an industry. These five forces are bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, competitive intensity, threat of new entrants as well as threat of substitutes. One of the many features […]

A dream come true! When I was asked by the marketer of German-brand Hugo Boss if I would be open to be styled by them, I was intimidated at first because I have never been a fashion-conscious person. But my feelings turned to excitement when I learned that the stylist will be no other than my daughter, life+style+travel blogger Tricia […]

The Philippine Franchise Association (PFA) is the Philippines’ pioneer and largest franchise association. It’s officers list includes the who’s who of business with Samie Lim of BLIMS Furniture as chairman emeritus, Yvette Orbeta of Wendy’s as chairperson, Bing Limjoco of Francorp and Robert Trota of Max’s Group as vice chairmen and Franklin Go of Goldilocks as president . Its membership […]

Execution involves having the capabilities to get the job done.  In Mansmith’s implementation workshop, we call this the 3Cs of capabilities – coordination, competency and commitment.   This helps in solving company’s execution obstacles by replacing traps with tools. A most fundamental problem in execution is when people create assumptions that someone else in the company will do certain tasks and […]

A few years ago, I was one of the plenary speakers of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship’s Go Negosyo Youth Summit.  Let me share the five highlights of my talk on “Grow from Failures” where I talked about many business failures from my early days, some of which I also wrote in my book “The WE Entrepreneur”. 1.     I was 23 years […]

Q1: You are an industrial engineer and you started as a methods officer in the finance function in 1977 for Unilever (then PRC). How did this influence your thinking process in your long career in Customer Development? A: Industrial engineering, in my view, is the application of science in business.  The professional advance of Customer Development (previously called Sales) from […]

Josiah Go features the movers and shakers of the business world and writes about marketing, strategy, innovation, execution and entrepreneurship

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