Not really a commentary per se, but just some interesting recent research I wanted to share. I am fascinated with the family firm model (remembering, this is the origin of modern business), but also because many development economists support the notion that SME’s and family firms are key drivers of an economy – a theory I also subscribe to. My own research into Chinese family firms in the mid 1990’s also highlighted similar findings – although innovation wasn’t necessarily the keyword back then. 

_________________

Family firms aren’t typically thought of as particularly innovative. More often, they’re viewed as risk averse, traditional, and stagnant.

However, many family-owned businesses are among the most innovative in their industries. Consider Herr’s Potato Chips and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. There are countless other examples of family firms that have brought innovations to market. We wanted to determine how family firms actually compare to their nonfamily counterparts when it comes to being innovative. Our research, conducted with Patricio Duran and Thomas Zellweger, suggests the answer is not simple.

The findings, published in the Academy of Management Journal, show that family firms invest less in innovation than other firms (both public and private) that aren’t family-owned. On average, family firms have a smaller R&D budget than other organizations of similar size, but that does not mean they are less innovative. On the contrary, our study found that family firms are more efficient in their innovation processes. For every dollar invested in R&D, they get more innovative output, measured by number of patents, number of new products, or revenues generated with new products. The level of innovation is higher in family firms.

Why might this be? We offer one explanation: Entrepreneurial families tend to concentrate their wealth in one or few firms — consider, for instance, the Walton family’s huge wealth concentration in Walmart. These families are very cautious about investments, aiming to avoid any waste. Family firm owners can use their powerful shareholder positions to ensure that managers engage only in prudent investments.

Their parsimony extends to their innovation process. In contrast to many other shareholders, family owners have the ability to make sure that money is invested in the right projects and that resources are employed in an effective way. Because of their long relationship with the firm, family owners typically have a deep knowledge of the industry, the firm, and its stakeholders. They also spend considerable time with the organization and communicate frequently with employees, clients, and other stakeholders. Moreover, many family firms profit from their “family-like” culture and their close relationships with a handful of partners, from suppliers to customers, who can help these firms develop their creative ideas, products, and processes.

We also find that the “less input, more output” effect is stronger when family members not only own but also lead the company. In such cases there are fewer conflicting interests between the owners and managers. For instance, family owners and family managers are often aligned with regard to the time horizon of their investments as well as with their appetite for risk. A family CEO can be a valuable resource since they have grown up in the business, socializing in the firm’s network and becoming more familiar with the industry dynamics and the power distribution among competitors.

Yet this finding is not true for all family CEOs. Contrary to what we expected, our results show that firms led by later-generation family members are more innovative than other firms, while firms led by their founders are less efficient with regard to innovation. In other words, the latter spend more money on innovation but have less innovative outcomes. Based on existing theory on family firms, we argue that this is because the advantages of family firms build up over an extended period of time; they do not appear right away or when firms are led by first-generation members. In addition, one might argue that groups of dedicated owners, which most later-generation family firms have, are better able to identify and discard bad ideas, whereas founders may have largely unrestricted discretion to push risky ideas.

Findings from our study reveal that family firms, despite their risk aversion regarding investment, can build on many strengths in order to leverage their innovativeness:

Be a committed and informed owner. As Kammerlander and Ganter show in their case-based work on digitization in family firms, family owners can have a positive impact on firm innovation when they actively participate in the innovation process. They can support innovation by drawing on their personal networks and by sharing industry information with the employees they have worked with over decades. Owners can also foster innovation by allocating budget for long-term innovative projects.

To be able to effectively steer innovation processes, family firm owners need to be informed about what is going on in their organizations. They need to gather as much information on technology developments and customer demands as possible. One example of a committed and informed family firm owner is Simone Bagel-Trah, chair of the board at Henkel, a multigenerational consumer goods firm where some 150 family owners (descendants of the founder Fritz Henkel) possess more than 60% of the company’s shares. According to various interviews with the German press, Bagel-Trah is active in bundling the interests of the family and discussing them with company representatives on a frequent basis.

Use the family firm’s culture to empower employees. One example of a trust-based family firm culture that fosters innovation is the manufacturing firm W. L. Gore and Associates. It gives employees one afternoon per week to come up with new ideas for improving processes and products, and it tries to foster an open, creative, and constructive exchange of ideas within the organization. One of the company’s guidelines is: “If you haven’t made a mistake this week, this means you haven’t sufficiently tried to think outside the box.” It also makes sure ideas are shared openly, without fear, across hierarchical levels and departments by holding cross-functional, cross-hierarchical meetings to exchange ideas.

We’ve found that other family firms facilitate encounters between the CEO and employees. While some innovative family firms formally schedule “idea exchanging” lunches with the CEO and employees, others invest in events, such as anniversaries and workshops, with the family owners and employees.

The CEOs of family firms that empower employees are also frequently in touch with employees — not only electronically but also in person. Many family CEOs we have talked to enjoy walking through their buildings and plants to exchange thoughts and ideas with their employees.

Leverage your trust-based external network. Research has shown that building on a small number of trusted sources can be effective for developing innovative and implementable ideas. When searching for new business models, for example, a German family business invites a diverse group of “friends” of the organization — internal and external managers, politicians, university professors, and other family firm owner-managers — to discuss ideas.

One Swiss family business hosts a yearly innovation competition among its suppliers. The winner, which is the supplier that comes up with the best idea for improving the business’s products or services, is awarded with a certificate and a dinner with the firm’s management team. The benefit for both sides is huge — the family firm receives valuable ideas and the supplier gets a reputation boost — while costs remain manageable.

Source: https://hbr.org/2017/01/research-family-firms-are-more-innovative-than-other-companies

Source - www.shutterstock.com

Are you a dirty consultant? She was.

When she was the consultant two decades ago, she refused to advise until she knew what she was advising on. She would do a night with the night-shift, spend a day with the truckers, work the warehouse, visit different branches and speak to white and blue collar workers about their experiences. She never assumed she could make a good call without knowing how it would impact jobs across the company.

But she couldn’t do it anymore.

The consultants the company now employs don’t do that. They are suited and booted, equipped with shiny laptops and digital tools, promising high-tech solutions for all her woes. But never, ever, doing the dirty work of finding out what was going on in the messy organisational reality.

Instead, they produced engagement platforms, driven by cutting-edge technologies running on pumped up algorithms aimed at discovering who was disengaged and providing real-time data on what they were doing and how they were feeling.

They would then proffer solutions on how to sort it out. But these solutions had no context. They were drawn from best practice models about behaviour that had no relationship with the work the people were actually doing or the contextual complexities of the issues.

Read more here.

All industries are affected by change. The extent of which may not be immediately obvious, but the filter-down impacts of change can be far-reaching and somewhat unexpected. One such case in point is the textbook industry – reacting to changes in the format of tertiary education delivery, the humble well-researched textbook is being phased out slowly and replaced with other models.

Source - Jessica Ruscello

In the early 1990’s when I read Law, our lecturers compiled a printed textbook of excerpts from relevant books, journals, newspaper articles, and case law (online didn’t exist back then) – a very first attempt at faculty-led text resources for students. We didn’t have a prescribed textbook – none was written suitable for the scope of the course.

Nowadays it is somewhat more advanced – online excerpts, blog posts, e-articles and e-books are manipulated (just as I do here with the following article) to provide a concise summary of relevant text; rather than leaving students to be inundated with the plethora of peripheral material a traditional printed textbook may offer.

Source - Alexis Brown

Is this change good? Are we watering down the student experience by focusing student reading too much, or are we simply channelling the right information to the student and hoping for them to explore further on their own? I won’t answer that here – I am guilty of developing courses with bespoke materials for students, just as I am equally guilty of accepting gifts from publishing houses for assigning their mammoth volumes. I know my preference.

This commentary is not about my personal opinion on the educational value of this, but is more towards understanding a fundamental paradigm shift in the textbook industry. Internet, social media, online publishing has generated a different style of reading – short bursts – where we consume minute aspects of knowledge (one or two paragraphs, videos or sound-bytes at a time) – could this render traditional textbooks obsolete into the future? A very possible yes.

Denise Wydra, Principal of Branch Ideas Consulting (US) gave consideration to how emerging paradigms of tertiary education delivery are impacting on the traditional textbook market. Well worth considering – and, if you’re currently writing a manuscript or two (as I am), you may need to rethink your ultimate publishing medium.

__________ 

The state of New York made big news in the education space earlier this year when it announced plans to offer tuition-free college to qualifying families. Part of that plan includes $8 million that will be used "to help defray the prohibitive cost of textbooks."

Both of these moves could have far-reaching consequences, but one of them is far more radical than the other. Here’s why.

The tuition grants are called Excelsior Scholarships. Students who receive them will be going to the same schools as students who don’t, will take the same classes and will have the same instructors. The only difference is that they won’t pay the same tuition.

But how is that possible? Will instructors give up their pay for courses with high proportions of Excelsior students? Will instructors be replaced with volunteers (maybe retired business executives) or have their work outsourced to cheaper sources of labor overseas? Or even robots?

No, the simple answer is that the instructors will get paid, the lights will stay on and the cafeteria will continue to function. The only difference is that the cost will be borne by the state -- that is, by New York state citizens via their tax dollars. Same providers and offerings as before, but the state and taxpayers are picking up the bill.

So what about the other part, the textbooks? Here’s where the radical innovation is found.

If New York were to save students money on textbooks the same way it is saving students money on tuition, then students would have the same textbook providers and offerings as before, but the state would be picking up the bill. This isn’t what’s planned, though. Instead, the traditional providers -- textbook publishers -- are being bypassed altogether. The $8 million, which will be split between the State University of New York and City University of New York systems, will go to continued efforts to use completely different learning materials from a completely different source: open educational resources.

The big excitement hovering around OER is usually because they can be far less expensive than traditional publisher-supplied materials -- or even free. In most cases, they can also be adapted more easily than traditionally copyrighted materials, but it’s the “less-expensive” part that is so alluring to the state of New York. The hope is that by using OER, the cost of not only tuition but also course materials can be greatly reduced -- and not just for Excelsior students, but for every student.

Most likely change won’t happen for all courses, all at once. Early efforts will probably be focused on the big introductory courses where inexpensive textbooks could lighten the burden for the largest number of students.

Still, the approach is deeply disruptive in multiple ways:

1. The work of creating course materials will increasingly be done differently. Fully formed, high-quality textbooks don’t just pop into existence, a natural by-product of the web. They take work to write, to illustrate, to fact-check, to design, to assemble, to review, to update and so on.

This was once the work of textbook publishers, who, along with their authors, performed these tasks pretty much from soup to nuts. The same work exists, but now it’s being broken up and redistributed to a variety of parties who can, collectively, do it more cheaply. Rather than a renowned biologist explaining mitosis and earning a royalty, a freelance writer with a background in biology can write the passage. Rather than an editor within a publishing house assembling materials into a chapter, educators themselves might take on this work.

In the state system, SUNY OER Services provides training and support for faculty members because, in the words of Katherine Pitcher, SUNY Geneseo’s interim library director, "faculty have to be involved -- it has to be coming from them." That’s a new burden for college instructors, but also a chance for creative input and control.

2. There is a "new breed of organization," in the words of David Wiley at Lumen Learning -- publishers aren’t the only ones in the game. Wiley, Lumen’s chief academic officer, argues that traditional publishers will be unable to shift their business models sufficiently to accommodate OER as a central offering, which opens up space for companies that are “only too happy to … provide all the services necessary to make OER a viable alternative to commercial offerings.” Lumen is itself a successful exemplar of this new breed, a group that is being given a boost by New York’s move.

3. Bypassing publishers means all-new course materials. That’s a huge opportunity to sidestep whatever strictures have evolved over the past decades and introduce new content that aligns more closely with the goals of today’s instructors, students and educational organizations.

For example, Thomas Carey has argued that the creation of OER textbooks can be used to “make visible the way faculty work with knowledge in [their] teaching,” which will in turn help educate students about knowledge making -- a valuable skill in today’s economy.

The state of New York is taking bold steps to make high-quality higher education more accessible to more people than ever before. Reduced tuition is nice, but the state’s pursuit of inexpensive textbooks is disrupting the familiar landscape in fundamental ways.

Link: OER Disrupting Textbook Marketplace

Craig J Selby | Craig is a long-time proponent of structured and measured change. His early career saw him teaching marketing and management at a variety of Universities and PTE’s in his native New Zealand, where he quickly climbed the management ladder to head several private sector institutes. Needing to do that little bit extra, Craig formed his own consultancy firm and was engaged by many in the sector as a trouble-shooter - responsible for internal auditing, restructuring and redevelopment of many departments and institutes in order to remain competitive in a highly contested market. This involvement motivated him to branch out and work with other industries - focussing on change and development as a core theme in business survival. When Craig moved to Malaysia, he went back into the Education sector to share his ideas with local private sector educational facilities. In 2009 Craig co-founded Orchan Consulting Asia, an award-winning Public Relations agency. His areas of specialisation are Crisis Management Communications and Change Management.

Revolution is more a function of evolution than anything else. At least, in the marketing world. The simple evolves into the complex; conversely, complex into simple. One such evolution was the humble #hashtag – a simple, almost obscure symbol which championed an entirely new method of targeting, connecting, and tracking customers; and offered marketeers new avenues of exploration to claim aspects of cyberspace for their brands. 

The humble #hashtag celebrated its tenth birthday recently. This signifies ten years of how something so simple as a # can transform how we connect and opened up new realms of possibility. #goodjobhashtag #change

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It started ten years ago as one man’s suggestion to group messages and ideas with the # symbol and now over 125 million hashtags are used on Twitter every day.

The symbol is older than keyboards and telephone keypads, stretching back to when the English started writing lb, short for libra – the Latin for pound.

Skip forward a few hundred years to 23 August 2007 when Chris Messina wrote the following tweet:

 Follow

⌗ChrisMessina 

✔@chrismessina

how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

3:25 AM - Aug 24, 2007

•  333333 Replies
 
•  4,8044,804 Retweets
 
•  9,7199,719 likes

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The rest, as they say, is #History.

Now celebrating its tenth birthday (#hashtag10), the hashtag has become part of everyday lexicon and was added to Oxford English Dictionary in 2014:

hashtag n. (on social media web sites and applications) a word or phrase preceded by a hash and used to identify messages relating to a specific topic; (also) the hash symbol itself, when used in this way.

The BBC has compiled a list of some of the most popular hashtags, including #BlackLivesMatter, #EdBallsDay, #TheDress, #HeForShe and #PutYourBatsOut. While we think of these stand out moments and trends (#IceBucketChallenge anyone?) as being very popular on Twitter, it is the everyday hashtags that dominate the platform, the most popular being #FF, or Follow Friday, with hundreds of millions of tweets.

EvolutionThe little hatch mark (that’s right, ‘hash’ came from the word ‘hatch’), has evolved over time. Its original purpose, as suggested by Chris Messina, is still the dominant usage but hashtags have evolved written (and in some cases spoken) language to create clarity of meaning, especially with irony. An increasingly common usage is a hashtag modifying a statement so its obviously ironic and as such it’s become an extension of punctuation, giving meaning to text.

View image on Twitter

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Andrew Wortman @Amoney666

Here's Trump's Chaotic Last 4 Weeks on One List #Winning

4:57 AM - Aug 19, 2017 · Ronkonkoma, NY

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•  291291 Retweets
 
•  357357 likes

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And it’s not just Twitter, other social networks picked up the # as the de facto method of collecting conversations, grouping posts and creating searchable content. Instagram, which relies on hashtags for growth but doesn’t have the character limit, is perhaps now king of the hashtag.

On Twitter, two hashtags is the sweet spot for engagement, but on Instagram the most engagementcomes from posts with 11 or more.

And the most popular hashtag on Instagram? #lovewith 1.1bn uses and counting.

Article by Jake O'Neill

Business leaders hope never to face a crisis. It can affect their brand, their credibility, and erode the loyalty of customers. And, chances are, it’s outside of their control. 

But that doesn’t mean a business shouldn’t be ready – preparing for a crisis is one of the most effective tools in our arsenal of minimising opportunity for crisis to impact our brand.

Metanoia Ltd are strong advocates of training – at the coalface, all the way up to C-suite. We work with our clients teams to help them prepare for everything media-related – crisis management being just one of these themes. 

Last week, Metanoia’s Directors, Craig J Selby and Farrell Tan facilitated an intensive one day training seminar for a large local player in the telecommunications industry. Targeting their Heads of Department and mid-level management team, the session brought together inter-connected themes from several areas of crisis management, condensed into a full-on one (1) day workshop, where the most important nuggets of advice were explored in context for the client - from Preparing for a Crisis, to Social Media Management in Crisis Situations, to Training Your Team Internally.

Although participants had a degree of prior exposure to issues crisis management; many had not been put in a position to think it through end-to-end, and thus to all the nuances that relate to issues of crisis management and crisis communications. This full day session served up the opportunity to explore these, and to discuss best-practice actions and response protocols, along with issues of how one needs to influence organisational culture to positively support crisis management planning. 

Many were aware of the role that social media plays in perpetuating (and elevating) a crisis, but few had fully grasped the strategic integration of this into the organisations holistic response. They sure did after this workshop.

With exercises designed to embed humanity into crisis management, to challenge ones understanding of the fundamentals of communication, and to get the crisis team working on the same page, we were able to successfully work through a range of issues which the participant’s corporation potentially face, and to strengthen the inter-organisational knowledge-sharing practices departments, in order to fully understand the crisis communications landscape.

Client feedback was very positive, and gauging from the high level of intelligent questions being posed by participants, they each got a lot out of the experience.

__________ 

Metanoia Ltd offers six Crisis Management workshops amongst its schedule of customised training options: 

Developing Your Crisis Management Plan

Crisis Management Spokesperson Training

Responding to a Crisis

Getting Media on Your Side

Digital & Social Media Management During Crisis

Training Your Team Internally

Each of these workshops are run as either half day or full day – tailor-made to client’s organisational needs. Our training can be held in-house or off-site at one of our partner’s facilities.

Source - www.bloncampus.com

Your employee made a mistake. He apologised and you went on with your usual business. He does it again. Now you are upset.

Your own boss calls, says, “what’s going on”?

You say, “it is Michael”. 

He is now toast. 

He may not get a good raise, ever. Your boss may not let you, even if you try. 

You blacklisted Michael in your own mind.

He might quit soon. Actually though, he is very good.

Now, consider this …

Most mistakes are made by employees who are trying to follow processes set up by managers. Often, it is easy to make mistakes because of the process that has been set up.

Review the process together with the employee and see what can be done to make mistakes less likely.

When Michael made the first mistake, you should have taken responsibility. You should not have even let him apologise.

And when your boss called asking about what is going on, you should not have even mentioned his name.

Fix your process, not the person.

#debate #change #perspective

Orchan’s Christina How and Craig J Selby discuss the landscape for food and beverage operators and how they can stay current / relevant to their patrons.

1)      What are some of the challenges restaurant operators face in this competitive climate?

CJS: There are many challenges operators face.

At the coalface, finding suitable and appropriately-trainable staff is a major hurdle; sourcing reliable and consistent suppliers of quality ingredients at non-fluctuating prices. But deeper the issue is staying relevant. It is building a recognisable brand and keeping your customers loyal – getting your customers as unofficial brand ambassadors, and building the business from strength to strength. Restaurants come and go, and in an industry as fluid as this, its important to be able to react positively to trends.

2) We are seeing a “hipsterisation” of the food & beverage industry. Is this shaking things up, or is it simply a fad?

CJS: I personally believe this is a fad. I’m all for it though, as it is shaking things up. It is forcing more traditional restaurants to reevaluate themselves, and to up their game.

However hipsters are not new. Every generation has hipsters in some form or another, and the approach simply brings us back to square one. The advantage is that it opens doors for customers first – to see what is possible beyond existing confines, and this then translates into higher customer expectation – and ultimately better response from operators as they sharpen their game.

For a long time here, the industry has been quite staid, in the sense that innovation was not at the forefront – hipsterisation is one of the contributing factors to changing that experience.

CHYL: I agree with Craig that it is forcing more traditional restaurants to reevaluate themselves and up their game. But, I don't think it's a fad.

I believe there's always been that group of people who appreciated things that were unusual to what was traditionally offered in the F&B industry, but never got to access it until someone decided to ignore the "label" and went ahead to create such space for these people. At the very core, there are those who truly appreciate it. But, as with anything, it comes with those who just ‘jumped on the bandwagon’.

3) How do consumer habits and spending power affect the survivability of restaurants? What can outlet operators do to influence this?

CJS: Being value-to-the-table is always key. No matter what your price point is, your customers must get perceived value or higher. Anything less and you are selling yourself short.

Consumer spending habits directly affects survivability. If no one is spending, it of course affects business. Operators needs to look at ways to extend their offerings to customers – perhaps off-peak specials, changes in opening hours, promotional dining packages, etc.

CHYL: Just to add on, it's important to connect with your target market regularly; not to a point of annoyance, but enough for them to remember your establishment the next time they decide where to dine. People these days consume food with their eyes before it actually enters their mouths, and they're more often than not socially active. Connecting with them on that level gets one foot in the door. Then, the rest is up to you and your team to ensure their experience is worth every penny.

4) What are some of the elements that can make a food and beverage outlet standout for consumers and tenants?

Both: Design. Service. Cuisine. Publicity. Innovation. Guest chefs. Location. Tie-ins.

5) What are some of the strategic approaches existing operators can take in order to keep up with the game?

CHYL: Engage an external party to help re-evaluate your brand and what it offers. However, it's important to engage one who is going to listen to your brand story (or help you build one if you don't have one), take time to understand and actually help strengthen your brand inside and out. When we are so engrossed in our own brand, sometimes we forget how to step outside and see from a different point of view. Engaging external party helps with gaining new perspective within the F&B industry, but still have a say in the direction your establishment is going to take.

6) Looking into outlet concepts might be one of the ways restaurants can stand out. What are some concepts operators and owners can consider?

CJS: Let’s not look at what they can consider, but lets look at what they shouldn’t/ I recall both a hospital themed restaurant, a toilet themed restaurant, and then a cat café with only two cats. Whilst we want our concepts to stand out from the others, this standing out still needs sensibility constraints.

Source - www.kenhuntfood.com 

The hospital themed restaurant (in Penang) failed. Why? It felt odd. Customers felt the concept was too clinical, and could not enjoy the theme of the atmosphere. For some, it crossed the line. For others, one does not have positive association between food and healthcare – hospital food is never deemed good. For me, they over invested in a large retail space, but lacked the marketing to promote it. Getting a small crowd into such a restaurant is a challenge – but whenyou have in excess of 100 seats to fill at any one time, the task is monumental.

The toilet themed restaurant is great. It gets publicity, and it draws the curious crowd. But that’s the issue – the curious crowd only want to try something once – they are unlikely to become your long term clients. Long term clients want a concept that they can fall in love with – an ambience, a feeling – not a curiousity which can be satisfied on one visit.

By rights the cat café concept should have worked. People love pets. Their food was great. Their location great. But, when you can seat 40 pax at a time, and you only have two cats – well, excuse me? Expectations were not met – customers expected to see many friendly cats walking around to interact with. But two – and not very friendly ones at that – meant customers didn’t get the interaction – only the visuality.

Any theme, be it simple (eg; Italian, Mediterranean) or complex (30’s style jazz bar) needs to endear customers, and it needs to be the real thing. If you cant transform your customer into the essence of your theme, you have failed. Let them forget where they are – they need to be embedded into your theme for the duration of their visit. That may be as simple as good food and service, or it might extend to the feeling of “I forgot I was in Malaysia for a while”.

7) What is more important – concept, menu, or staff / service?

CJS: All. They are intertwined, but fluctuate. It's important to balance all positively so customers enjoy the experience.

CHYL: Hahaha~ I cannot agree more. A positive balance between all aspects will earn you return customers. Here's the potential outcome if you were to compromise one of them. If you compromise concept, people are going to get confused as to what they're going for. When they plan their next meal, your establishment will not be at the top of their mind simply because they're unsure what you actually offer. If you've got a great concept but an irrelevant menu to match, it defeats the purpose of having a concept. If you've got an amazing concept and superb menu but terrible staff / service, they're going to walk out.

8) Are food delivery services necessarily a threat for brick-and-mortar outlets? How do these newly-emerging concepts fit into the industry?

CHYL: They are a convenience, not a threat. They don’t replace restaurants, or the experience that diners seek from a restaurant; they value-add to the industry in terms of convenience or ‘samplers’. Chains such as Little Fat Duck grew from food trucks – but you never see established restaurants substantially grow by adding a food truck. For several it is just a gimmick to reach more customers.

Source - http://www.jiaaqieats.com

9) What is the role of our more traditional or long-standing fast food outlets in the industry?

CJS: There will always be a place for fast food providers in the landscape. They suit a certain psychographic and demographic, and have over the years carved out a segment all for themselves. This segment is highly contested, and is quite challenging to break in to. For example, international chains trying to go against Starbucks face challenges; likewise to emerging local chains trying to go head-to-head with existing players such as OldTown White Coffee or PappaRich.

The role of these outlets is to provide an element of convenience for customers. It is also to provide staple, standardised food. Some may argue that a further role is to help youth transition into the workplace, by ensuring that low-skill jobs are available for youth to engage with and receive training, thus providing them a valuable experience.

For customers, it is simple comfortable convenience, hopefully with 24 hour access.

10) Does having a pretty view and/or an expensive address guarantee success?

CHYL: No. It is a draw-card factor that might motivate a customer to try an outlet, but it does not guarantee any form of success. Success is a combination of multiple factors, and the customer must tick-off the positive experience of each of these in order to want to return; therefore, the outlet needs to ensure it is constantly delivering at the appropriate pace and level.

CJS: Many great outlets are not in ideal locations, are stuck in hidden alleys or others (think Speakeasy’s) – they simply provide the whole package. Several outlets in prime KL real estate failed – not because of the location – but simply failing to stay relevant to customers.