About

Welcome on Core Edges. This is where I organize some of my thoughts about business strategy, technology, and the shifts currently under way that are reshaping dramatically the global landscape. You can read more below about the framework I’m using and see my LinkedIn or Facebook profile for more about me. After Houston and London, I’m currently based in Paris where I am the IT Innovation manager for Schlumberger.

I am reachable by email at jln /at/ coreedges.com, on twitter: @jnestour or through IM: Chat with Julien Le Nestour. You can also see where I am on Dopplr.

If you’re in Paris or see we’ll be in the same place at the same time, get in touch and we’ll meet :) Hope you’ll enjoy those pages.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this site are mine and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or any company I advise or may be associated with.

What will you find here? Macro Principles and Schumpeterian Edges

Macro-Trends

A growing number of global trends is shaping the environment individuals and organizations have to live and operate in. I will call these trends Macro-Trends, for they influence the Macro context without any possibility for an individual or even an organization to counterinfluence them. Think of Global Warming and you will have a pretty good idea of my view of a Macro-Trend. MTs range from natural trends (e.g. the exponential rate of depletion for most natural resources), Geopolitical (e.g. growing stability and open trading environment until recently, rising protectionism of late), Macroeconomic (e.g. restriction of credit for the years to come, impact of state deficits for the next 15 years at least), or Technologic (e.g. exponential growth in computing, storage, bandwidth and networking technologies).

These Macro-Trends define the evolution of the environment where we all have to operate. Though we are not be able to influence it, it isn’t less crucial to understand how this context is shaped.

Macro-Principles

From this understanding of the various Macro-Trends at play, we can extract Macro-Principles, heuristic tools that translate Macro-Trends into guiding principles for action. Macro-Principles can be characterized as Shifts underway coming from one or more Macro-Trends.

Fundamental Shifts

Fundamental Shifts are deep, structural changes that are mostly a given. For example, the rising relative scarcity of attention is a Fundamental Shift, coming from the exponential growth in the core digital technologies we described earlier.

Strategic Shifts

Strategic Shifts are changes in how leaders, individuals and organizations need to operate to be successful in this new context. They should guide you on realigning your strategy and vision. Continuing my the example of attention scarcity, the strategic shift to succeed in a world of attention scarcity, is to measure and act on the Return on Attention businesses are providing in all areas of their operations, to their employees as well as to their customers.

Schumpeterian Edges

Macro-Principles are critical, because they are foundational. But they are not readily actionable. Actionable frameworks directly coming from these Macro-Principles are what I will call Schumpeterian Edges. In a world where the pace of creative destruction (music industry? newspapers? car makers? Lehman Brothers?) is accelerating and becoming more brutal, they provide edges to weather this chaotic environment.

You will notice in the attached PDF figure that Schumpeterian Edges span multiple domains: I have put 4 of them (Strategy, Marketing, Organizational Structures, IT Applications) but there are many more. Those 4 are the classic ones being reinvented though, and need to be tackled as a coherent set. Reinventing 1 in your organization won’t work if the other 3 stay the same.

I have isolated an “Enterprise 2.0″ Edge. The reason is simple: combining innovative organizational changes with powerful IT Applications is the deepest and easiest opportunity to realize today. It still is difficult, but the means to achieve this potential are growing and maturing daily, and need to be acted on.

This figure describes a bit how I see the world, and can guide you through this site (links are clickable). This is still a personal blog though, with its mess, lack of time, etc. I will of course quote extensively, particularly around the Macro-Principles: great thinkers (John Hagel and Umair Haque in particular) are doing a much better job I would have been able to do, ever.