Well over a year ago I had several people who talked to me about Best Value Procurement (BVP for short). For different reasons they were all very positive about this approach and its potential benefits. Fragmented stories and various recommendations were a reason for me to go to the source: the Performance Based Studies Research […]
As a huge fan of the TED talks, I quite regularly listen to the diverse range of speakers telling about their expertise and providing new insights. A recent example of a very interesting presentation was from Dan Gilbert who talked about The psychology of your future self. He makes the point, and supports it with […]
Recently I concluded an on-line course ‘On Strategy : What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers‘. The course was given by Luc de Brabandere, a professor at Ecole Central Paris and a fellow at the Boston Consultancy Group. During the course De Brabandere focused on change by distinguishing between changes in reality and changes in […]
Career development systems in a consultancy firm have some nasty streaks in it. First I’ll explain how it works and then why I think we should abolish it in this form asap. The career development in many partnership firms is a variation on a children’s game called musical chairs: every level in the organization has […]
Outsourcing has been around for some time now. After the mega deals in the late nineties, the industry developed quite a bit. Deals became smaller, engagement are now mostly multi-vendor, in some cases with a prime vendor responsible for service integration. Over the last couple of years
In a series of experiments at the Department of Psychology of Cornell University published in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger tested a phenomenon now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Their experiments showed that unskilled individuals mistakenly rate their ability much higher than is accurate. At the same time skilled persons can show a lack […]
Richard Susskind is a British author, speaker, and independent adviser to international professional firms and national governments and he holds professorships at the University of Oxford, Gresham College and Strathclyde University. Wikipedia lists a lot more credentials but in short: this is a guy with a story to tell about the Legal profession in the […]
Last weekend I completed a course about Sustainable Development on Coursera. The past fourteen weeks professor Jeffrey D. Sachs from the Earth Institute and Columbia University shared his insights in a series of video lectures and suggested reading material. As a special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (and to his predecessor Kofi Annan) professor […]
The company I work for is making headlines in the national newspapers over the past couple of months and not all for the right reasons. A settlement to avoid legal procedures in a case about bribing Middle East government officials, signing off the annual report of companies that proved to have serious financial issues later […]
Lately I have worked on a project where most of the work is done more than 30 floors above ground level. For the Netherlands that is quite exceptional. This country is flat and many cities seem to be reluctant in allowing high rise buildings. This project is therefore a unique opportunity to study an interesting […]
In various languages there are different sayings for the attempt to compare incomparable items. English and French refer to the comparison of apples and oranges where Dutch and German refer to the more similar apples and pears. Spanish is still in the fruit and vegetable department comparing potatoes and sweet potatoes, Serbian compares grandmothers and […]
The Netherlands are an open economy in which trade is an important factor. This goes back for centuries. You could argue that back in the 17th century the Dutch East India Company was the first multinational corporation. And for a fact it was the first company to issue stock. In hindsight we are not proud […]
