Oriol Guitart 
Some organizations confuse participation with leadership and end up diluting responsibility in “democratic” processes where everyone gives an opinion and no one decides. Listening to multiple perspectives is valuable, but the decision must have a clear owner. Otherwise, focus is lost, execution stalls, and the role of the professionals hired to lead is undermined.
Portfolio-based businesses enjoy stability, but that same recurrence acts as an anesthetic that slows innovation. Sectors like insurance or healthcare show deep-rooted inertia, slow processes, and outdated technology. Innovating requires investment and delayed returns — a tough proposition for organizations, especially publicly traded ones, trapped by short-termism and pressure for immediate dividends.
Setting prices in professional services is a fragile balance: we make promises before delivering anything. Perceived value can work in the client’s favor or against us as providers. Brand can reduce uncertainty, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk of a mismatch between price and expectations. Did someone say “balance”?
The screen democratized access, leveled the stage, and turned the pixel into a battlefield, but it also flattened impact and drove up the cost of attention. In a saturated market, a product no longer competes only on attributes; it competes on meaning. The only thing that cannot be replicated is the concept that connects emotion and identity, because in an oversaturated world, we don’t remember what we saw, we remember what moved us.
In e-commerce, success often feels provisional, and revenue tends to outrank the narrative. When sales dip, past achievements barely buy time, and analysis speeds up—driven by data, pressure, and doubt. But growth isn’t an absolute merit, nor is decline automatic incompetence. What sets strong teams apart is their ability to diagnose without panic, to distinguish what’s within their control and what isn’t, and to redefine the path that leads—once again—to growth.
For years, digital marketing has measured performance using metrics that gave a false sense of control. Many attribution models and ROAS figures were accepted at the time without much scrutiny over their accuracy, even in large companies with surprisingly manual processes. But understanding incrementality—what we actually generate by making a change and wouldn’t have achieved by leaving things unchanged—is crucial to avoid confusing activity with real, measurable impact.
The funnel was never a snapshot of reality, but a tool to model and organize our actions with potential customers. Simply measuring and automating can lead to mechanical marketing. By contrast, recognizing patterns, accelerated stages, and human unpredictability allows the funnel to be used as a more powerful tool, balancing efficiency with understanding.
Nostalgia may not help us manage the past, but it does help us understand it. In strategy, looking back isn’t a melancholic gesture — it’s a way to recognize patterns that return under new names. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Incorporating that retrospective lens turns the SWOT into more than just a diagnosis: it becomes a tool for projecting with memory.