Emerging Power Dynamics Between Employers and Employees

HPA Partner Richard Berger explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced positive workplace changes for many workers, shifting the employer-employee power balance and acting as a catalyst for long-needed improvements in work/life balance. Richard also examines the effects of the pandemic on our most vulnerable (essential) workers, who are perhaps the most impacted and yet the least protected.

3 Ways 2021 (and Beyond) Will Be Different

HighLights | Richard Berger | Tuesday TouchPoints

HPA Partner Richard Berger reflects on the lasting changes wrought by the events of 2020, and shares predictions for how business (and life) will remain forever changed.

The Key to Creating a Successful IT Strategy? Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

HighLights | Richard Berger

Learn more about what a simplified IT strategy looks like – and why simplicity is key to its success.

Time for Payback

HighLights | Richard Berger

There’s no doubt our personal information, preferences, habits, dislikes and opinions are being collected and used by everyone from Facebook to florists. These businesses benefit from the data they collect on us – it’s time they used that data to our benefit as well.

Amazon and the Food Fight to End All Food Fights

HighLights | Richard Berger

Retailers like Aldi and Amazon are now challenging traditional CPG companies like Kellogg and Campbell Soup to transform the way they think about and approach both strategic acquisitions and their online offerings. It’s a new kind of competition that goes beyond your typical food fight.

The New Rules of Banking

HighLights | Richard Berger

You’ve heard the old saying “if it looks like a bank, swims like a bank, and quacks like a bank, then it probably is a bank.” Or something like that. Whatever the saying was, it isn’t true anymore.

Moving the Chains: Taking Strategy Pointers from the World of Fantasy Football

HighLights | Richard Berger

Fantasy football’s runaway popularity – and the massive gambling activity it attracts – are borne from the endless combinations and possibilities it offers. After all, there is no such thing as fantasy boxing or tennis. Two competitors meet, one is victorious and the result hinges on individual performance. A football team, on the other hand, is an interconnected web of capabilities, flaws and potential. It’s a puzzle. At Highpoint, we think about that puzzle in the corporate context all the time and seek inspiration wherever we can find it.

Reflections While on a Glacier in the Canadian Rockies

HighLights | Richard Berger

Earlier this month, I spent some time hiking in the Canadian Rockies with my wife, and reflected on my last eight years at HPA and how much the business has changed over that time.

When I started at HPA in early 2009, we were in the throes of a major market correction and business slowdown that many had not experienced in our lifetimes. Today the concerns we most often hear from clients are how to best position themselves in a rapidly changing world.

Bouncing Back

HighLights | Richard Berger

Once again, much of the talk leading up to this year’s Super Bowl was about the ads and the record billions spent dazzling TV’s biggest audience of the year. Despite our advice from last year, ad revenues spiked a new high, exceeding last year’s $15.5 billion, with each 30-second spot costing $5 million or an astounding $166,667 per second.

When Did Boomers Lose Their Cool?

HighLights | Richard Berger

When Disney starts bailing on the Boomers, is it the end of the ride for the generation that used to set the trend for just about everything?

Ditching “The Twilight Zone” for a new “Guardians of the Galaxy” theme on its popular Tower of Terror ride, Disney might not be the first to throw Boomers aside in pursuit of younger, hipper Millennials.