How to compete with Asia without counting on Asia? Counting on competitive products and services is one of the main raisons d’être of companies; they assign important human and economic efforts to this. However, the lack of competitiveness of most consumption products manufactured in Europe becomes evident against Asian ones (we have begun to observe the repetition of this fact...

There have always been cases of products that exceed the dimension they were created for and are transported to a category of icons beyond their function, simply as a result of being objects. They are products which have become part of our lives’ imaginary and they constitute an active component of our culture.

I will not deny that I am especially fond of companies framed within the concept of retail. As with many other novel concepts, there are numerous interpretations of it; the Oxford Dictionary of Business reads: a retailer is a ‘distributor which sells goods and services to consumers. There are three categories of retailers: multiple shops, retail cooperatives and independent retailers....

When we participated in the redefinition of the strategy of the well-known toy retailer Imaginarium, the first thing we did was define an opportunity ‘umbrella’ that would broaden the company’s field of action. With this purpose and after carrying out several processes of analysis of the existing knowledge of its structures (Knowledge Stock), contrasting them with their strategic plan and...

In 2006 I wrote along with Alfons Cornella the book ‘La Alquimia de la Innovación’ (‘The alchemy of innovation’); in which we described 10 words or contexts that we both considered to be fundamental for the development of innovation and strategy in companies; words like hybridation, authentic/honest, teamdividualism, territory/frontier, ephemeral/effervescent, capillarity, catalysis, failure, radical and innovators were characterized according to...

One of the most frequently asked questions during my lectures or asked by our clients is: What is better, to innovate from inside or from outside? The question is focused on distinguishing if the best or the most efficient innovation is the one developed by the companies’ own resources or, on the contrary, if contracting out external resources or teams...

AUSA, (Automóviles Utilitarios S.L.U,) industrial car manufacturer and world leader in the sector of construction equipment (off road dumpers and forklift trucks), is a company with a long tradition in the industrial and innovation world, which has an outstanding and deep commitment to R&D topics, where it invests 5.5 % of its sales. AUSA used to be a primarily industrial...

It is not always the case that a prestigious brand active in the market coincides at the same time with a physical person and its vital course in time by means of an excellent product offer and retail model; on the contrary, today numerous brands have become marketing constructions developed as time went by or adapted to a specific time....

This second ‘historical’ article about Loop was published in the business supplement of ABC newspaper on Sunday, January 19th, 2003. If the previous article ‘A link takes control of the chain’ meant the digital integration of our development services, this second article ‘The cornerstones of competitiveness’ acts as the starting point of our path toward strategic consultancy, which was initially based on innovation and product optimization services.