Is the Sharing Economy a rebalancing of life goals for a more equitable society and more enriched lives for the majority or is it the gateway to an even more polarised economy with higher proportions of poor, more State-dependant people and an even more rarefied, rich, resilient elite?

Workshops are a key way organisations ensure collaboration and consensus on decision making and implementation. Sometimes these activities can only be entrusted to key internal stakeholders but it's worth considering the value and support that well qualified external facilitators can bring.

Most of us today feel we have too many things to think about and the Energy Switching agenda gives us yet one more. Powers that Be are frustrated with how stubborn consumers have been not to engage and switch. In the commercial world companies tend to stop and reconsider when they meet this much resistance to a product offering. As marketeers and consultants one of our key skills is to delve into motivations. I've read the public information and the motivation behind the Energy Switching agenda never seems to be explained satisfactorily. Read on for a perspective on the motivations in this area.

Recently I had the privilege of attending a conference by Citizen's Advice on Behavioural Economics and Utilities Switching Behaviour. The various speakers from industry, academia and regulatory bodies were each expert in their area, well-spoken and undoubtedly well-meaning throughout. However, I was struck by the extent of Groupthink that prevailed in the room.

In order to attract and hold customer attention in an increasingly fragmented digital world, brand experiences and customer journeys need to be compelling and memorable, as much as they need to be quick and easy.

Amongst the gazzillions of junk emails I like to glimpse before permanently deleting without reading properly each day, one from Belkin caught my eye today. It had the very un-catchy title of "Belkin's new USB-C Resource Center...now open to explore." My first thought was simply USB-WHATNOW?!

I've recently seen an excellent video execution of a PR event for Emirates. The brilliant tongue in cheek creative idea springs an unexpected surprise in which challenges are pre-conceived stereotypes to create a powerful brand message.

Constant monitoring and real time response is a mantra that is being repeated everywhere as a best practice in business. However, that may not be what your customers are really looking for. Is there a danger of micromanagement leading to a myopia that misses the bigger picture?

Organisational culture is increasingly a recognised as competitive differentiator for leading companies. Yet in the current business climate, leaders are often forced to find ways to balance investment in talent, motivation and employee engagement against the pressure to ruthlessly prioritise initiatives and reduce costs.

Affordances and Rituals can shape the working environment in ways that make us love our job, creating a productive workplace and making our work more meaningful.

We previously introduced the ideas of affordances to design a working environment that makes it easy for employees to be productive and be engaged. We will now look at brand rituals and how they make the brand meaningful by shaping the organisational culture that people buy into and believe in as employees and customers because it makes a difference to them as human beings.