InnovationTalk
Adam Hartung

CEO / Managing Partner - Spark Partners

Adam Hartung

I currently serve as the CEO of three companies: Content Laboratory (a content services company,) Spark Partners (a growth strategy firm offering assessments, strategy consulting and on-line self-administered revenue growth tools,) and Soparfilm Energy (an oil & gas exploration & production investment company.) Over the last thirty years, I have served on multiple boards, including Audit Chair for a NASDAQ traded company, and advised boards of directors on managing for disruptions and promoting innovation into corporate management.

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My passion is public speaking on the importance of growth, innovation and strategy to succeed. As a keynote speaker I have been invited to over 1,000 leadership events, both multi-company and single company. My portfolio includes speeches, presentations, workshops and executive coaching on how to achieve faster growth from higher levels of innovation driven by trends.

1,099 articles · Page 17 of 46

Solutions by the Pound
Leadership4 min read

Solutions by the Pound

the U.S. federal Government Accounting Office (GAO) was concerned about how much was being paid to programmers working for "beltway bandit" consulting firms.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

So Easy to Quit – Home Depot
Leadership4 min read

So Easy to Quit – Home Depot

Home Depot is a company with a very strong Success Formula. That Success Formula met the market needs so well in the 1980s and 1990s that the company excelled beyond all expectations.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Small Business Lesson
Innovation1 min read

Small Business Lesson

Markets are dynamic. Entrepreneurs jump in because they see opportunities that existing competitors leave available.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Small Boxes
Leadership3 min read

Small Boxes

Businesses get Locked-inside their boxes. GM, Ford and Chrysler have sold cars in Europe – but largely they have always been happy to be U.S. companies selling products in the U.S.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Sitting Duck
Innovation3 min read

Sitting Duck

Motorola should focus on growing its successful units, rather than trying to revive its stagnant mobile phone business.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Signalling Lock-in
Leadership2 min read

Signalling Lock-in

Microsoft’s Lock-in to their old Success Formula has kept them out of these new markets.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Should You Moto?
Leadership4 min read

Should You Moto?

The company quickly began operating as it had 8 years earlier when it slid into disarray, lousy returns and massive layoffs as the future grew murky.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Short Wins, Long Losses
Leadership3 min read

Short Wins, Long Losses

McDonald’s will once again be a "focused" franchisor and operator of hamburger establishments.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Shoot at the Big Target
Innovation2 min read

Shoot at the Big Target

Amidst all these calls for belt tightening, busines jettisoning and head lopping we need to remember that GM needs to grow.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Shifting Banking Market Requires New Strategy – Jpmc, Bofa, Citi, Etc.
Innovation4 min read

Shifting Banking Market Requires New Strategy – Jpmc, Bofa, Citi, Etc.

Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor who first described in detail how "disruptive" innovations shift markets, allowing upstart competitors to overtake existing companies that appear invulnerable. I just found a 4 minute video clip "Clay Christensen's Advice for Jamie Dimon" at BigThink.com. In this clip the famous professor tells the story about how the big "banks" allowed themselves to be overtaken by "non-banks" – and then he offers advice on what the big banks should do (Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of J.P.MorganChase, and an HBS alumni.) Dr. Christensen lays out succinctly how banks relied on loan officers to find good loan candidates, and make good loans. But increasingly, borrowers were classified by a computer program, not by loan officers. Once the qualification process was turned into a computer-based Q&A, anybody with money could get into the lending business – whether for credit cards, or car loans, or mortgages, or small business loans, or commercial loans. Losing control of each of these lower-end markets, the bankers had to bid up their willingness to take on more risk to remain in business while also chasing fewer and fewer high-quality borrowers. The result was greater risk being taken by banks to compete with non-banks (like GMAC, GE Credit, Discover Card, etc.) What should they do? Dr. Christensen says go buy an Indian or Chinese phone company!!! Hand it to Dr. Christensen to make the quick and cogent case for how Lock-in by the banks got them into so much trouble. By trying to do more of the same in the face of a radically shifting market (people going to non-banks for loans and to make deposits), they found themselves taking on considerably more risk than they originally intended. Rather than finding businesses with good rates of return, they kept taking on slightly more risk in the business they knew. They favored "the devil you know" over the "the devil you don't know." In reality, they were taking on considerably more risk than if they had diversified into other businesses that were on far less shaky ground than unbacked mortgages. This is Strategic Bias. We all like to remain "close to core" when investing resources. So we keep taking on more and more risk to remain in our "core" — and for little reason other than it's the market and business we know. Because we know the business, we convince ourselves it's not as risky as doing something else. In truth, markets determine risk – not us. Because we assess risk from our personal perspective, we keep convincing ourselves to do more of what we've done — even when the marketplace makes the risk of doing what we've done incredibly risky —- like happened to Citbank, Bank of America and a host of other banks. And in great form, the professor offers a solution almost nobody would consider. His argument is that (1) these banks need to go where demand is great, go to new and growing markets, not old markets, and loan demand cannot be greater than in emerging markets. (2) To succeed in the future (not the past) banks have to learn to compete in emerging markets because of growth and because so many winning competitors are already there, and (3) you want to enter businesses that are growing, not what necessarily your traditional business or what you are used to doing. He points out that the traditional "banking" infrastructure is nascent in emerging markets, and well may not develop as it did in the western world. But everyone in these places has phones, so phones are becoming the tool for transactions and the handling of money. When people start doing everything on their phone (remember the rapidly escalating capabilities of phones – like the iPhone and Pre) it may well be that the "phone company" becomes more of a bank than a bank!! Who knows if Clayton is right about the Indian phone company? But his point that you have to consider competitors you never thought about before is spot on. When markets shift they don't return to old ways. It's all about the future, and banking has changed, so don't expect it to return to old methods. Secondly, you have to be willing to Disrupt old Lock-ins about your business. If the "loaning" of money is now automated, banking becomes about transaction management – not making loans. You have to consider entirely different ways of competing, and that means Disrupting your Lock-ins so you can consider new ways of competing. Thirdly, you don't just sit and wait to see what happens. Get out there and participate! Open White Space projects in which you experiment and LEARN what works. You can't develop a new Success Formula by thinking about it, you have to DO IT in the marketplace. Big American banks have tilted on the edge of failure. More will likely fail – although we don't yet know which the regulators will put under or keep afloat. What we can be sure of is that the market conditions that put them on the edge will not revert. To be successful in the future these organizations have to change. Probably radically so. So if they want to use the TARP money effectively, they had better take action quickly to begin experimenting in new markets with new solutions. Gotta hand it to Professor Clayton Christensen, he's made a huge improvement in the way we think about innovation and strategy the last few years. His ideas on banking are well worth consideration by the CEOs trying to bring their shareholders, employees and customers back from brink.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

Shift Happens – Fast – Telephony
Leadership5 min read

Shift Happens – Fast – Telephony

The tendency is to think change will happen slowly. It doesn’t. When markets shift it happens quickly. Much more quickly than the entrenched competitor expects.

Adam Hartung · 29 April 2025

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