On Friday 18th I finally received my Master of Business Administration degree from Warwick Business School. I was very much impressed by the ceremony that took place in Butterworth Hall in the Arts Centre, hopefully I will be able to post some photos.

The evolution and revolution in information and communication technology over the past twenty years has driven and enabled a paradigm shift in the way, the scope and the speed at which companies interact with each other and do business. The business environment has never been so dynamic and interconnected as companies go beyond their organizational boundaries to make partnerships with allies and even competitors in order to gather the capabilities needed to be innovative and adaptive enough to prosper in the marketplace.

Relationships have become key resources for competitive success and thus a capital in itself. Very similarly to biological systems striving to survive in their dynamic environment, companies must show characteristics such as coordination, robustness, requisite variety and adaptability in order to leverage it.

Michael Porter’s idea of value chain need to be revisited from a higher perspective as activities are taken out of companies by gathering selected capabilities from third parties who in turn maybe gathering capabilities from other companies as well. It is more effective to look at a business operation as a network of value chains or, in other words, as an interconnected value system (Diagram adapted from Merali, 2008 - Business Transformation module).

Following my post on the 10/20/30 rule I would like add some tips on how to simplify PowerPoint presentations. I am sure most of us as seen slides crowded of unreadable fonts, silly little cartoonish characters flying around the screen and the sound of a typewriter for each letter popping up…

I am following the philosophy that a slide can only be effective if it has few well-defined simple elements.

When we prepare a presentation we should ask ourselves, what can I remove to make the message in my slide more effective?

It’s all about effectiveness and added value. It’s then up to the presenter to tell the story behind the slide to the audience. Additional notes can be written along the slide printout given to the audience.

For some guidelines on this:

Garr Reynolds: Presentation tips

Cliff Atkinson and Richard E. Mayer: 5 Ways to reduce PowerPoint overload

I have grown tired of boring-neverending-supposed-to-be salespitch presentations that someone in front of me simply reads out loud. Yes, one of those with 60 slides condensed of the latest acronyms where you try to be smart and don’t admit you have never heard of… just write them down to google them later or maybe wikipedia will come to the rescue….
I bought the idea from Guy Kawasaki, managing director di Garage Technology Ventures, a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine, that we all should follow the 10/20/30 rule:

A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides,
last no more than twenty minutes,
and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Watch his reasons below…