Leicester Business School Lecture Series
Podcasts from the Leicester Business School Lecture Series bring you recordings of lectures given by leaders in their field.
Anthony Pile - Blue Skies Founder
(2011 Lecture)
Anthony set up Blue Skies in 1998 in response to his idea that fruit tastes best immediately after harvest and at source. Anthony strongly believes that everyone should be able to know what real, fresh fruit tastes like and is committed to supplying only the freshest, best quality, prepared fruit in the world.
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Simon Tuckey
My career in business started with a TV programme called The Power Game. It featured a swash-buckling CEO with a phone in the back of his chauffeur driven car and I thought it looked like a lot of fun; but what it really made come alive for me was the chess game of business – the deployment of the pieces in infinite ways to achieve a win. That was what inspired me.
So of course I started in biscuits – McVitie’s naturally. I was the first McVitie’s salesman to be banned from Northampton Coop for “over enthusiastic selling”.
Since then, mostly in the food business (McVitie’s, KP, Anchor) but also in healthcare, I’ve bought, sold, started and closed businesses in the UK and Asia. My children think it’s really cool that I invented Mini Cheddars (now a £50 million plus business in its own right).
Now I have a property company , a development company (seeking opportunity businesses to buy) and I’m Chairman of the London Region of England Athletics, the new organisation for the sport of athletics in the UK., where I am the Commercial Director for British Basketball.
It’s said that business is “all about the numbers”. It’s true but you have to actually look at them, not hide behind them – the most important check and balance is an estimate, however crude, of market share.
My advice to young entrepreneurs – get an old entrepreneur to advise you occasionally.
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Mike Southon
Well known for being a weekly columnist in the FT every Saturday, Mike Southon
is also co-author with Chris West of best-selling business books ‘The Beermat Entrepreneur’, ‘The Boardroom Entrepreneur’, ‘Sales on a Beermat ‘and ‘Finance on a Beermat’ and Marketing on a Beermat.
He has also produced two e books..’Tendering on a Beermat’ and ‘Networking on a Beermat’
Mike has had a varied career from Boarding School to selling scaffolding…corporate life to entrepreneur.
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Jennifer Kirkby
Consulting Editor, MyCustomer
Director, Mutual Marketing
Marketing is at a turning point; the mass broadcast, strategic planning techniques of the second half of the 20th century are giving way to principals and techniques that the ‘corner shops’ of yesteryear would have recognized. Service, conversations with customers, and requests to stock items, have turned into the scaled-up versions of, sales through service, customer communities and co-creation. But, how do companies and marketers let go of what they know; the business benefits of direct marketing, the ‘control’ of the brand story? How to they move into this new world of opportunity and threat, as they mingle with their customers? The only thing we do know is that no-one has the complete answer, we have to rethink and experiment to build the good marketing practices of the future. This presentation starts that journey.
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Liz Machtynger
Liz Machtynger has worked in the area of Customer Management for more than 25 years, and has worked with many blue chip names (such as BP, IBM, RSA, SAS, BT), in the UK and internationally as well as more medium and smaller sized businesses and public sector. Liz visited the University to share with us her wealth of experience in developing and delivering successful Customer Propositions. She set out the rationale behind customer propositions and the value to the company and the customer of delivering successful customer propositions. She shared some examples of propositions that stand out, and those that stand out as not delivering value and failing. Liz provides a useful framework for you to think through in designing propositions or evaluating customer propositions for yourselves.
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Deycy Janeth Sánchez Preciado
Deycy Janeth Sánchez Preciado, Researcher at the University of Cauca in Colombia provided a talk about the Use of Green Strategies in Columbian Industries to final year 'Greening Business' students. Deycy discussed the purpose of a Green Strategy and differences between commodities and the products for specialised markets. A number of cases were explained (i.e. special coffee, organic silk, panela and fish production), each case were used to illustrate production requirements, development of appropriate technologies and support for innovation capabilities. The lecture was introduced by Miles Weaver, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management, Department of Strategy and Management in Leicester Business School.
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Professor Merlin Stone
Professor Stone introduced the topic of marketing to the super-rich, using the case study of super-yachts, which cost upwards of $15m. His lecture was based on his presentation given to a super-yacht marketing conference in Monte Carlo in early 2010. He explored where the super-rich come from and how the evolution of the global economy changes the pattern. He examined their needs and how new customers can be introduced to the proposition. He discussed how standard key account management and customer relationship management techniques could help the industry. He concluded with suggestions as to how 24 hours multi-lingual contact centres could be used to service the industry.
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Tim Ireland
Tim Ireland has worked exclusively in the field of search engine optimisation for over a decade. He has worked with a long list of household names (most recently Greenpeace and Viz Comic and previously Foxtons, Tesco, Corgi, GMTV) and conducted extensive experiments and campaigns in pursuit of his personal goals and material for his ongoing series of seminars. He is the reason Tony Blair was the top search result for 'liar' for almost two years, and once started his own religion so he could compete for the top result for the single word 'religion' in Google. He eventually peaked at 6th, but is happy to have outranked the Catholic Church and the Church of England in the process.
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Peter Ford
Peter Ford of the Design Unit at De Montfort UniversityPeter Ford has thirty years experience of product design in industry. Peter visits the business school to share his experiences of designing everything from toilet roll holders to trains with the second year Design Management students.
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Anthony Pile - Blue Skies Founder
(2009 Lecture)
Anthony set up Blue Skies in 1998 in response to his idea that fruit tastes best immediately after harvest and at source. Anthony strongly believes that everyone should be able to know what real, fresh fruit tastes like and is committed to supplying only the freshest, best quality, prepared fruit in the world.
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Andrew Myers of AMC Analytics
Andrew Myers shares his experiences in forming a small business venture, some of the challenges that pursued and any opportunities to learn from any difficulties faced. Delivered to students on the 'Understanding Business' module at Leicester Business School. Further details can be obtained from the module leader, Miles Weaver, mweaver@dmu.ac.uk|.
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Anthony Pile - Blue Skies Founder
(2008 Lecture)
Anthony set up Blue Skies in 1998 in response to his idea that fruit tastes best immediately after harvest and at source. Anthony strongly believes that everyone should be able to know what real, fresh fruit tastes like and is committed to supplying only the freshest, best quality, prepared fruit in the world.
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Merlin Stone Lecture
Merlin is one of the UK’s most experienced consultants, lecturers and trainers in all areas relating to changing organisational capability to meet the needs of customers and stakeholders, including CRM, database marketing and customer service. His consulting experience covers many sectors, including financial services, utilities, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, travel and transport, retailing, automotive, energy, IT and the public sector.
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John Seddon
John Seddon, a visiting professor at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University will be giving a talk to post graduate Customer Relationship Management and undergraduate Customer Management students from 2-4pm this Thursday in the Bede Island main lecture theatre. John has for a long time been a fierce opponent of ISO9000 type quality standards seehttp://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/3.asp. The QAA provide us with the academic equivalent of ISO9000.
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Professor Malcolm McDonald
Part 1: B2B MARKETING MASTERCLASS
Professor Malcolm McDonald is Emeritus Professor of Marketing and until recently Deputy Director of Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University. He is Chairman of six companies and spends much of his time working with the operating boards of the world’s biggest multinational companies, such as IBM, Xerox and BP. He has written forty two books including: the best seller "Marketing Plans; how to prepare them; how to use them" and many of his papers have been published.
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Professor Nigel Piercy
Part 2: B2B MARKETING MASTERCLASS
Professor Nigel Piercy of Warwick Business School, Warwick University has held posts in retailing, and in business planning with Nycomed Amersham He was the SirJulian Hodge Chair in Marketing and Strategy at Cardiff University, and lately Professor of Strategic Marketing and Head of the Marketing Group at Cranfield School of Management. He has global experience in executive education and management development with leading companies and has published more than 250 books and articles in Europe and the USA.
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Dr Sophie Kain
Dr Sophie Kain, an entrepreneur and former contestant on hit BBC 1 show 'The Apprentice" talks with business students at De Montfort University.
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Successful Franchisee
Dan Archer from the British Franchise Association presents a guest lecture on "How to become a Successful Franchisee"
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Merlin Stone Lecture
Professor Merlin Stone, one of the UK's most experienced consultants, lecturers and trainers in CRM presents the first in this series of lectures from Leicester Business School
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Institute of Direct Marketing
Jill Hancock from the Institute of Direct Marketing presents a guest lecture on Careers in Marketing – client and agency possibilities. The first half of the lecture is on finding jobs at both client and agency levels, with further reference to career progression and career development. There is also an overview of an integrated promotions campaign with specific reference to creativity, costs and measurement.
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