We are passionate about knowledge transfer

Hughes Consulting publish books and software.

A copy of the books can be purchased by following the hyperlink in the text.

Information and Institutions of Government Accountability

Information and Institutions of Government Accountability by Len Cook and Robert Hughes scrutinises the consequences of weak government accountability, and the costs this imposes on citizens. Citizens have successfully challenged government and had instituted new information sources that improve outcomes to those citizens and their communities.

Drawing on examples of past failures of the New Zealand government towards its citizens, Information and Institutions of Government Accountability presents the case for improved accountability. It concludes with a description of a new institutional structure needed to oversee the provision of trustworthy information provided by government.

The Drive of Business: Strategies for Creating Business Angles

The Drive of Business: Strategies for Creating Business Angles by Robert Hughes sets out the principles underpinning the creation and leveraging of core competencies, and the design of multi-sided platform businesses. These principles are useful to answer questions such as:

• What are the alternative business models available for start-ups?
• What are the business models available for a business in crisis?
• Why is there a range of different business models?
• What are the trade-offs between different business models?
• How can understanding the determinants of a business model be used to create competitive advantage?
• What are the various sources of business value that underpin core competencies?
• How can these be used to leverage existing core competencies into new opportunities?
• How are multi-sided platforms created and sustained?
• What are the different ways to exploit a perceived business opportunity and what are the different strategies available to do this?

Strategic Economic Relationships: Contracts and Production Processes

It matters to an organisation, whether a buyer or supplier, that appropriate contracts are used. There are specific conditions that determine the appropriate choice of contractual relationship. These conditions include the production processes used by the buyer and supplier. Certain contract types are best suited to specific production processes. Therefore, misalignment of contract type diminishes the core competencies of the organisation, consequently its competitive advantage, and its economic value.

Strategic Economic Relationships: Contracts and Production Processes provides practical guidance in the form of:

• A framework to distinguish different contract types, and
• Analytical tools to determine the appropriate contract type for the specific conditions facing the organisation.

Examples are drawn from the private and public sectors especially as applied to the construction and infrastructure, and information technology/management sectors – sectors characterised by their complex production processes.

Business Opportunity Thinking: Building a Sustainable, Diversified Business

To build a sustainable, diversified business requires continuous search for ways to parlay available scarce resources into new opportunities for profit. Business Opportunity Thinking: Building a Sustainable, Diversified Business describes a framework to identify new business opportunities. Leveraging scarce resources into new business angles can increase profit, improve the sustainability of profits, and diversify the contributors of profit, and thereby increase business value. The scarce resources considered are core competencies, brand, and multisided platforms with positive cross-group effects.

Business Opportunity Thinking: Building a Sustainable, Diversified Business explains three different discovery approaches that can be employed to uncover the kernel of an idea for a new opportunity that could form part of a strategic opportunity scanning exercise.

Core Competencies: Real options as Corporate Strategy

Core competencies are the most important scarce resource a business can create. Core competencies stem from the business’s accumulated experience, and its organisation wide systems and processes. Where these drive declining cost economies that result in the business having lower average unit costs than competitors, then it has a competitive advantage.

Core Competencies: Real options as Corporate Strategy provides practical approaches, and guilds to identifying and evaluating a business’s core competencies and how to improve them. It also describes the different ways that core competencies can be leveraged into new business opportunities.

Pricing Types: Signalling Market Positioning Intent

In choosing a price type an organisation signals its strategic intent, as it does with its choice of market positioning strategy. Price type, unlike market positioning strategy is an observable signal, and one that competitors respond to.

Pricing Types: Signalling Market Positioning Intent describes essential tools for analysing markets. These tools are:

• The value map. A graphical tool using demand and preference curves to plot the relative place of competing products in a market.
• A method to decode the information in an organisation’s selection of a price type. Price types are categorised according to the market positioning strategy they support.

Multisided Platforms: Evaluating Launch Conditions

The challenges in establishing a multisided platform are quite unlike those faced by other organisations. The reason for this is that to launch, the platform must overcome the obstacle of reaching critical mass. To do this, the platform’s products must offer enough benefit to each of the multiple parties transacting over it for them to change their current behaviour and join the platform, and then want to remain on the platform.

Multisided Platforms: Evaluating Launch Conditions describes a method to identify multisided market opportunities and assess whether there are prospects of it being developed into a multisided platform with positive feedback effects.

Simulation software

 Much of the work undertaken by Hughes Consulting involves econometric analysis and modeling. A simulation model for multisided platforms with positive cross-group effects is available by following the hyperlink in the text.

Trade inquiries

We distribute our books through IngramSpark’s Global Print Distribution Partners.