The models that shape our thinking
We all have our pet theories – something that helps us make sense of the world and guide us on making the best of the limited time we have.
I shared some of mine in a recent event held to bring some of the most exciting and pioneering firms in north Cymru together to network. One of them is the Boston Growth-Share Matrix… a simple model that gives an insight to how any healthy organisation should have a mixture of activities in different phases of their life. Google it! (And here’s a bit of trivia – this is where the term “cash cow” came from.)
The other model I shared was the resources triangle. This states that when we peel everything back to the fundamentals, we all have 3 key ingredients to work with – time, energy and cash. That’s all.
How we manage those 3 accounts for much of the differentiation we see between organisations.
The big news last week was the latest announcement for the Wylfa site. The default it seems within the Welsh ecosystem was to welcome this immediately with open arms without much awareness of the details and hence proper understanding or scrutiny…
There is a very long way to go, including finalising the R&D for the SMR concept and Rolls Royce have indicated that they need far more orders than 3x to make it worthwhile for them to start manufacturing.
If we go back to the resource triangle and the Boston Growth-Share matrix, I think we would be prudent to make sure we spread our limited time, energy and cash on a healthy mix of activities within our economy. Plans for Wylfa has consumed vast energy, time and cash already, whilst other sectors may have suffered with less time, energy and cash allocated to them. And this has been happening for the best part of 20years.
By all means, if the political will is to develop Wylfa, allocate the resources. Can we please at the same time spend as much energy, time and cash on the other sectors in north Cymru? Food, farming, tourism, creative sector, renewables, tech….
At least we would be more in control of them… which leads me to another favourite model of mine…