Ronan Lyons – Economic Realities Presentation

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Future Focus Edinburgh – Live Case Study: The Balmoral

We move to the beautiful city of Edinburgh today to the wonderfully decorated Hub in the city center. Today’s Live Case Study comes from The Balmoral hotel chain – find out more about them here: http://www.thebalmoralhotel.com/

Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh

The Rocco Forte Collection’s Balmoral is a luxury hotel in the true sense of the word. With its majestic clock tower, the hotel is a unique and contemporary luxury five-star property in the very heart of Edinburgh. While many Edinburgh hotels claim to have Edinburgh’s landmarks on their doorstep, few can say their doorstep is a landmark. Located on Princes Street, in Edinburgh’s main shopping area and next to Waverley Station, The Balmoral is close to the leading luxury department stores and within walking distance of many Edinburgh attractions.

David Hennery from The Balmoral mentioned this afternoon “Every time you interact with a customer is a ‘moment of truth’ when you succeed or fail” – and motivating staff in these difficult times is a tough job, as well as continuously finding investment whilst maintaining customer service.

As today’s case study they came to Future Focus with their own set of challenges, and so we want your help to solve these issues.

Here are there main challenges:

• Maintaining and enhancing service delivery
• Maintaining or leading Market Position
• Employing technology that meets business travelers needs
• Embracing Social Media to communicate with customers

Big challenges require even bigger ideas, so we want to hear yours, submit them as comments here, and follow the conversation on twitter.

VLOG 10: Future Focus Manchester – Stephen Radley, EEF

The word recession is on everyone’s lips, but maybe those elusive “green shoots” are on the way? This certainly is the opinion of Stephen Radley, Economist from EEF.

When we caught up with him in Manchester at Future Focus he told us how he sees the changing political landscape truly shaping the way the worldwide economy is being molded.

Presentation Materials From Future Focus – Coming Thursday

After a great day on Thursday, many of you have been asking us for the presentations from the day, to continue learning from all the great insights from the day. Just wanted to post you all a short note to say that these will be going online on Thursday (11th  June). We will pop them up on slideshare so you can find them there, here on the blog or on the Telegraph Business Club Website

As we look forward to tomorrow in Manchester, we want to know your thoughts on the programm so far. Did you attend in London, what were your thoughts on the presentations from the day? what were your key learnings? What did you take away?

Let us know by commenting on any of the content from the day here on the blog, check out the VLOG to see all the videos from London, or join the conversation on Linkedin or on the Facebook Page.

Don’t forget you can also follow all the action from Future Focus in Manchester and Edinburgh this week by following the #futurefocus hashtag or the @FutureFocus twitter feed.

VLOG 8 -Future Focus London – Looking Back On London

As we draw activities to a close in London and look forward to Manchester and Edinburgh for the next week of Future Focus we chat to Dr James Bellini, Futurologist and Chairman of the Future Focus conferences.

With over 300 delegates in London debating and learning about becoming “future proof companies”, Future Focus London has sparked a lot of debate, and that will continue in the coming weeks as the conferences head for Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin.

For more information about the conferences and to register – check out www.telegraphbusinessclub.co.uk/futurefocus

VLOG 6 – Future Focus London – Richard Farleigh

In our second conversation with investor extraordinaire Richard Farleigh (formerly of Dragons Den fame) we talk to him about his views on the future of global economy, and on how taking risks can sometimes blossom or backfire.

VLOG 5 – Future Focus London – Euan Semple

We are privileged to have Future Communications Specialist Euan Semple speaking across the Future Focus Events. For those of you who are not able to make it to a conference over then next couple of weeks, we caught up with him at the London conference today!

Euan gives us some thoughts on how to avoid the easy mistake of leaping into social media too quickly, but encourages SME’s to get educated about these topics, otherwise they could find themselves being left behind.

VLOG 4 – Future Focus London – Considering A Changing Economy

As the delegates debate the economic realities that we are all facing, we hear from the voices that are shaping the way we think about this current recession.

In this video we speak to Stephen Radley, an economist from EEF who presented a far more positive view of the current situation this morning, and how trend spotting is going to be key for SME’s to survive in this tough economic climate.. We also caught up with David James, Professor of Marketing at Henley Business School, and heard from him how focusing on customers first, and margins second can ultimately be more profitable for businesses.

VLOG 3 – Welcome to Future Focus London

Welcome to Future Focus 09 – Kicking off in London’s Westminster Central Hall, we chat to Dave Sumner Smith from Telegraph Business Club, about why they have partered with IBM to bring together these events, we also hear from delegates as they look forward to the days events.

Backgammon Vs Chess: Why Richard Farleigh prefers to manage elements of randomness in business

In his Keynote opening speech at today’s Future Focus event in London, Richard Farleigh opened by comparing business to a game of backgammon rather than a game of chess.

It has been well documented that Richard plays chess as a hobby and is an internationally-ranked player who has represented both Bermuda and Monaco at the Chess Olympics. His interest in chess began at an early age and was a joint winner of the 1978 NSW (Australia) junior chess championship.

But shining knight Farleigh made his name, not in chess, but in financial investments. Today he enjoys legend status in the financial community – inspiring Dragons’ Den rookies here in the UK. At age 34, he made enough money to retire in Monaco. Did his love for the black and white checkerboard help him in business? It would appear not.

His original view on business success was to approach his investments in the same way as he would play out a game of chess: purely analytically. His theory was that as in chess, if you make the right moves, you should end up winning. However he soon realised that it is in managing randomness (a strategy frowned upon in chess) you’re more likely to succeed in business as you maximise your chances of a clear win.

Farleigh calls this the ‘backgammon strategy’ and points out that often in business, the best ideas and strategy can end in failure whereas sometimes the worst plans can often reap the highest rewards. In Richard’s mind, it is this randomness that proves that actual outcome doesn’t necessarily equate with merit.

Richard isn’t the first person to draw the clear distinction between chess and backgammon. Why have the two games been always compared against each other, when chess is not a gambling game unlike backgammon?

I came across an article online which highlights the similarities and differences between the two games which raises a few interesting metaphors for business strategy. Here are the key take-outs:

• Without analytical thinking, game players would be lost in backgammon. Like chess players, they need to learn certain attacks and strategies to be able to win. That is why a lot of books about this game have already been written, for beginners, for intermediate gambling players, and even for the professional ones. There is so much to learn, and it hard to perfect the craft of this game, much like the game of chess.

• Certain strategies in this game can also be used in chess. Backgammon players may choose to be aggressive, which chess players also do in chess matches. Some people opt to hit a lot of their opponent’s checkers as soon as possible, and then make it to the homeboard fast. They may also raise the stakes quite too often. In chess, aggressive players are the ones who try to do a checkmate on their opponent early in the game.

• Another backgammon strategy that players use, which can be applicable to chess, is the passive strategy. Passive players in backgammon set up traps instead of attacking their opponents’ pieces as fast as they can. These types of players wait for their opponents to fall into their trap which is why the game speed is much slower. Chess players on the other hand are on passive mode when they seem not to attack the king directly, and scatter the pieces in a strategic set up on the board.

• Backgammon players may also influence or even force the opponent to move his pieces in their desired way. This they do by moving their own pieces to positions that would leave the other opponent little or no choice at all. As for their part, chess players also do this which results in the opponent sacrificing his queen or even getting himself in checkmate.

• The biggest difference between backgammon and chess is the factor that luck brings to those games. In backgammon, players rely heavily on their luck in casting the dice; however, afterwards, moving the checkers depends on the players’ skills. Meanwhile, chess players need very little luck to win games. They win almost totally because of their good strategies. If luck is any factor, then it may only come in the form of the opponent’s mistakes.

Having listened to Richard Farleigh’s keynote speech in which he humbly outlined his dotted career as a tech investor, he is an extremely charismatic speaker who has benefitted from years of diverse business experience. He has made millions of dollars after investing his own capital in British technology companies. The Rich 200 list estimated his personal wealth at around AU$160,000,000. He is ranked as the 876th on the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 with an estimated net worth of £66million. His management of randomness is a testament to his undisputed success.

I’ll hopefully be interviewing Richard later on today. Perhaps we’ll film it in the bar here in Westminster where I guess the round will be on him. Question is, will the chessman be paying by cheque, mate?

Richard’s book, Taming The Lion: 100 Secret Strategies for Investing is available on Amazon

Rax Lakhani is a social media consultant specialising in brand marketing. You can read his blog at raxraxrax.com or follow him on Twitter @raxlakhani