Blog and Articles | Colin Iles | Innovation Catalyst

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I help leaders unlock their organisations potential so they can thrive in an exponential world. I write about leadership, finance, innovation and change.

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How Do You Build A $5Bill Unicorn In A Pandemic?

How do you create a business that is valued at over $5bill in under three years? I ask Deel co-founder Alex Bouaziz exactly that!

Company policies increase the risk of failure

Do company policies increase the risk of failure?

Andre, Why Did You Decide To Do That?

How does entrepreneur, Andre Hugo make the choices he's made to date? And what can leaders learn from his approach?

Why Was The Easy Equities and Discovery Partnership Inevitable?

Discovery Bank has partnered with Easy Equities to allow it's clients to buy and sell both local and international shares. This...

How Did Discovery Become One of South Africa's Great Companies?

Discovery Limited is without question one of South Africa’s most successful companies. But why? This isn’t simply my opinion. Pretty...

The Three Pillars Of Great Leadership

Great leadership is built on three pillars. Three pillars that you will have demonstrated multiple times over your life already, but...

5 Steps to Kill the Corporate Process Snake

Functionalisation might create robust processes, but it can have significant negative impacts on the client experience. Interestingly, it...

14 Leadership Lessons From Cell C's Impossible Turnaround.

Cell C seem to have made an incredible turnaround, both in terms of profitability..... Mobile operator Cell C has just reported R2.36...

Can Standard Bank Become A Platform Bank?

Standard Bank announced last week that they are attempting to transform from traditional to platform banking. But what exactly is a...

Why I changed my website

Over the weekend, I launched my new website. The goal was to create something which was simpler to navigate, easier to understand and...

Improve maths literacy in South Africa by 20% with 2 clicks?

I’ve probably rewritten this article 50x and I’m still not happy. It should be simple shouldn’t it? I’d start with something like the...

If you shared my last post you might be the next Larry Page

A bold statement, but hear me out… Last week I proposed that my network could help make a very significant improvement to maths literacy...

Organisations that lack purpose beyond profit will not survive.

This article introduces the argument as to why organisations that lack a “purpose beyond profit” are not going to survive the digital age...

A horse called Purpose

Everyone knows the hallmarks of a great company right? Books, articles, blogs & famous quotes all highlight what is required. There is a...

Leadership teams believe in purposeful organisations

In my last post, titled a horse called purpose, I argued that purposeful organisations (organisations with a purpose beyond profit)...

Abundance 360’s Massive Transformative Purpose

Who are Abundance 360? A360 is a community of leaders and entrepreneurs who have a massive transformative purpose. They want to utilise...

Should academic excellence be the only goal?

Let’s start at the end ~ Possibly (or maybe even probably). I had the opportunity to consider this question earlier in the year when I...

I Love You too! CB Insights CEO responds…

A response from the CEO of CB Insights Huge thanks to Anand Sanwal for emailing me his views about the power of purpose at CB Insights....

11 decisions that have made Capitec the best bank on the planet

In this post, I take a look at the 11 decisions Capitec have taken to catapult them from challenger bank to being recognised as the ‘best...

How will you respond to exponential technologies?

Having just got back from the 2018 Abundance 360 conference in Los Angeles, I’ve made a personal commitment to share as much of the...

36 Industries Blockchain Could Transform

If you are in a senior leadership position and only have time to read one article this week, this is it. CB Insights, who I’ve written...

Want to know how corporates can build moonshot factories? Clap, like and share to find out.

Saturday, 10th February 2018 Dear Astro, A huge thank you for encouraging me to post this article. That fact alone reaffirms my belief...

An Abundance of Capital for Purposeful Startups

I gave a keynote recently, to a corporate audience, where I highlighted that exponential technologies allowed startups to quickly become...

Another downgrade for Eskom. What can they learn from the Marlboro Man?

Eskom is in big trouble. In fact, if they were a listed company, they would be in existential trouble. Now, before you conclude this is...