I love it. The geeks at Google give the geeks at YouTube 1.6 billion dollars – and this is how they announce it. Brilliant!
Now let’s see if they can find a business model. [I think they will – will they go beyond Adwords and Adsense?]
“Gandhi Got a Shock and Took a Vacation”
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [मोहनदास करमचन्द गान्धी] :
“Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.”
“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
“It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“Fear is not a disease of the body; fear kills the soul.”
“They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”
“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”
“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.”
“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
“I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”
“The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are.”
“If you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.”
“He Ram!”
It was Gandhiji’s birthday this week. I kept hearing the words of this song by Big Audio Dynamite:
I’m afraid all the profound stuff about Gandhi escapes me. Except that he knew his PR and his politics, and he had real guts.
Who is today’s Gandhi? A non-violent, all-inclusive, social activist who can move millions… Nobody on the radar… The closest we have is Nelson Mandela.
Karamchand. What’s that about?
Learn more about this crazy fellow >>
Video: Tom Peters – “Give it Your All”
This is romantic drivel. Another example of “Tom-Peters-hyperbole.”
My view: Don’t let your work kill you. Do less. Do it better. And have fun.
Football players and ballerinas are sick people, very sick people.
On the other hand, I do sometimes collapse with exhaustion after working on a project – usually because I haven’t slept at all. This is not the best way to be creative, but it is the best way to meet a deadline. Why do they call it deadline anyway? Because you’re dead at the line? Tom Peters supports that.
Let’s see – do the workers on the Toyota production line keel over at the end of the day? Hope not. Not exactly a sustainable business model.
Marketing Toyota on Second Life
From the Economist:
“Toyota is the first carmaker to enter Second Life. It has been giving away free virtual vehicles of its Scion brand and, in October, will start selling all three Scion models. The price will be modest, says Adrian Si, the marketing manager at Toyota behind the project. Toyota really hopes that an “aftermarket” develops as avatars customise their cars and sell them on, thus spreading the brand “virally”. Toyota will be able to observe how avatars use the cars and might, conceivably, even get ideas for engineering modifications in the real world, he says.
“Those Scion cars have “great driving performance for in-world physics,” says Reuben Steiger, the boss of Millions of Us, a company he founded this year to bring companies like Toyota into Second Life for marketing and brand-building. “How it corners and makes sounds when it changes gears is great.” So Toyota, which is a client of his, along with Sun Microsystems and even Mr Warner, shows that Second Life is “perfect for creating experiences around a brand,” says Mr Steiger. “We don’t think that conventional advertising will be very prevalent,” he says, because it would “be badly received culturally”. Advertising in Second Life is not about “trapping people” but about captivating and stimulating them. A good campaign in Second Life costs about $200,000 dollars, he reckons, of which only a tiny part is property leases and most goes to paying the talented designers to create great virtual stuff.”
MMORPGs meets Web 2.0.
Who has time for reality? For global warming? For politics and corruption? For war-profiteering? See what I mean?
This is a form of double loop marketing all right, but I don’t like it.
Channel Surfing Past Your Democracy
A funny paper I stumbled upon thanks to Larry Prusak who’s talking about knowledge populism.
“Our cable company offers over seventy channels. About 7:00 p.m. there are mostly sitcoms, game shows, and tabloid TV. The FCC decided to strike a blow for programming diversity by effectively forbidding the major network affiliates to program network-produced shows before 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.(8) The major result of this regulation is that the independent stations (and Fox) fill the time with reruns of previous network shows. This means I get to see all the episodes of Roseanne I missed over the years. Generally speaking these are shows that appealed to a broad enough segment of the public taste that they have survived long enough to go into syndication. So much for diversity. Meanwhile local network affiliates fill the time with game shows like Wheel of Fortune and tabloid shows like Hard Copy and Inside Edition. So much for attention to serious issues. One station has started showing reruns of The Simpsons. I am delighted. Nothing like good, cynical humor that undermines everything honorable about American life.
“It may seem controversial or strange to say that there is a problem for the Madisonian system if people do not seek serious coverage of serious issues. Perhaps this suggestion is unacceptably paternalistic; perhaps we should take people however we find them. But as I have noted, the system of deliberative democracy is not supposed simply to implement existing desires. Its far more ambitious goal is to create the preconditions for a well-functioning democratic process…”
Hmmm. Let’s think for a second. Nah, better to click on something else.
ExxonMobil: the Most Irresponsible Company on Earth?
– ExxonMobil is the world’s biggest publicly listed corporation – and one of the biggest polluters. A Friends of the Earth study found it responsible for 5% of all man-made carbon dioxide emitted over the past 120 years.
– In 2001 the White House thanked it for its ‘active involvement’ in crafting US global warming policy, describing it as ‘among the companies most actively … opposed to binding approaches to cut greenhouse gas emissions’.
– In 2005 a record 28.3% of its shareholders voted to recommend that ExxonMobil review how it will meet greenhouse gas reduction targets in countries participating in the Kyoto Protocol. Exxon’s board ignored the vote.
– When asked about global warming by the Wall Street Journal in March, outgoing ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson replied: ‘At a minimum, there’s an enormous amount of uncertainty around this whole question.’
This is brand suicide.
What is with these people? For a contrast between BP and Exxon, see here >>
Bill Clinton’s First Interview on FOX
Update: the YouTube video of Clinton versus Wallace got axed. So here’s something to take its place:
I just found an alternative:
and
Wake up, America!
Read this from Jane Smiley as well.
Here’s the transcript of the Wallace “interview”:
Von Hippel: Democratizing Innovation
I meant to do this quite some time ago, but it slipped my mind (like most things). So here it is: a free download of Democratizing Innovation by MIT’s Eric Von Hippel.
The table of contents:
1 Introduction and Overview
2 Development of Products by Lead Users
3 Why Many Users Want Custom Products
4 Users’ Innovate-or-Buy Decisions
5 Users’ Low-Cost Innovation Niches
6 Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations
7 Innovation Communities
8 Adapting Policy to User Innovation
9 Democratizing Innovation
10 Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations
11 Application: Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design
12 Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields
Here’s why I keep going back to this book:
“Firms can make a profitable business from identifying and mass producing user-developed innovations or developing and building new products based on ideas drawn from such innovations. They can gain advantages over competitors by learning to do this better than other manufacturers. They may, for example, learn to identify commercially promising user innovations more effectively that other firms. Firms using lead user search techniques … are beginning to do this systematically rather than accidentally—surely an improvement. Effectively transferring user-developed innovations to mass manufacture is seldom as simple as producing a product based on a design by a single lead user. Often, a manufacturer combines features developed by several independent lead users to create an attractive commercial offering. This is a skill that a company can learn better than others in order to gain a competitive advantage.”
Fact-Free Reality
“Ask yourself what percentage of the ‘input’ — the information on which we must navigate our busy lives in this new world of markets — is fact-based? If the input comes from ‘news’, is the ‘news’ fact based? If the input comes from the Bush White House, is it ‘fact based’? If the input comes from TV programming (even ‘reality shows’), is it fact based? How about from your relgious leaders? What about schools? How about work?”
Doug Smith’s brilliant post is here >>
Video: “What’s Going On?”
Now is a good time to ask yourself this question…
Boeing, Boeing, Ford!
Why? Why appoint Alan Mulally, head of Boeing’s commercial airfcraft division, as Ford Motor’s new chief executive?
According to outgoing CEO Bill Ford: “Business skills by and large are transferable”…
Wait there’s more:
According to Billy-Boy, there are striking similarities between the car and aircraft industries. Just your everyday issues like:
– long development times
– complex manufacturing processes
– troublesome unions
– thousands of supplier relationships.
Wow.
One more industry similarity they forgot to mention – incompetence in senior management?
Update: BusinessWeek has an interesting angle…
Martin Sorrell Doesn’t Get It
The Internets is not just another new media.
And Sorrell should know better.
I must say I’m stunned by his ignorance. It’s not TV. Not even close. If you want Internet strategy, based on Sorrell’s view, I would not talk to these people:
– Grey Global Group
– Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
– Young & Rubicam
– JWT
– Hill & Knowlton
– Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
– Burson-Marsteller
– Cohn & Wolfe
– Mediaedge:cia
– Mindshare
– MediaInsight
– Maximize
Step down Sorrell. No wonder you guys at WPP and Co. don’t have a clue.
Dimitar Vesselinov: The World 2 Come
The World 2 Come is a wonderful blog by Dimitar Vesselinov from Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Dimitar has a knack for finding really cool stuff on innovation and soccer! For example, see his entry: Marissa Mayer on Innovation at Google and his Event of the Month – you guessed it, the FIFA World Cup!
Go check it out >>
The Culture of Entrepreneurship
Will the boys (and girls) from Bangalore eat their lunch? Is today’s Silicon Valley too complacent?
Math, Science, and Social Mobility
Why do some people climb up the social ladder while others stay put? What personal characteristics account for the fact that some people “get ahead” in life and others fall behind?
Here are three contending theories of social mobility >>
In my opinion, there is still a lot to be said for putting your shoulder to the wheel. In this case, the wheel happens to be math and science.
I know from personal experience that even not-so-bright kids get pretty good at physics and calculus if they get put through an Indian style education.
This is something we don’t understand in the West, because we have lost our capacity for heavy lifting – both as a society and as individuals.
Who needs to think? If the Lord wanted us to learn science, calculus would be included in the Bible, etc.
Unfortunately, America seems to be slacking off big time. Apparently, we’re turning into a nation of massage therapists, according to GE’s Immelt. 🙂
Thoughts?
The Return on Attention
John Hagel is his usual insightful self in his blog post “Paying Attention“…
He asks: what is behind the desire to receive attention?
Is it a weak sense of self? A desire to be recognized and liked? An unhealthy need to be seen? Envied?
Let’s go back to before Goldhaber, to someone like St. Augustine, perhaps.
There is No Shame
Doug Smith’s angry for a very good reason, as he blows the whistle on yet another business transgression.
Why are we surprised? Isn’t this what we voted for?
Now let’s watch an infomercial on PBS…
Ignoring the Death of our Planet
These are sad days. The president, the business community, and the religious establishment have all turn their backs on Life on Earth.
Now Al Gore wants to save the world, with a powerpoint slideshow (and a movie).
At least he’s doing something.
The oil lobby has already come out with anti-Gore attack ads defending Carbon Dioxide (and their profits). Yay!
America, when did we lose the ability to think? At what point did we decide that the future doesn’t matter any more?
What Would Jesus Do to Save the Planet? Play bingo? Drive an SUV? Hint: He kicked the money lenders out of the temple…
Mark Hollander: Life is not a Meritocracy
Mark Hollander reminds us that life is not a meritocracy.
According to Hollander, your success depends upon a combination of:
– Who you know
– How good you are at what you do
– How many people know that you’re that good
– Luck
I tend to agree with Mark, but there’s a huge difference across countries.
In the US, we’re talking about success. In other countries, we could be talking about survival.
Countries in which cultural and religious traditions dominate are even less likely to be meritocracies. My prime example is India. You can’t make it in India without “connections.” I know people who have left India to achieve success and then went back and set up successful businesses. Had they not left India for the meritocracies of the West, they would not have succeeded.
The question I have is where do meritocracies flourish? What are the conditions necessary for a meritocracy to take hold in business? in public office?
It all hinges on performance. If performance becomes the key driver of sucess, like it does in sports, for example, then meritocracy should be the rule. And to a large extent it is.
But even in sports, success is not assured. A superstar performer has to learn how to play with his teammates, even the ones who are jealous and want him to fail.
What astounds me is that we are so petty. Across the globe, pettiness trumps sound decision-making almost every time. From politics to sports, it is our social ability or “people skills” which makes all the difference. And these skills can be taught. As a society, we’ve got to be careful about what we’re teaching our kids.
Kissing-up is one of those surprisingly important skills they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.
Thank goodness I work for myself. I failed “Butt-Kissing 101″…
Creation Nets: A Global View from JH3+JSB
On his blog, John Hagel III talks about the emergence and growth of creation nets.
Question: What is a creation net?
Answer: forms of open innovation that involve sustained relationships across large numbers of participants collaborating together to create new knowledge across traditional institutional boundaries.
Read the working paper – Creation Nets: Harnessing the Potential of Open Innovation>>
The Meaning-Driven Business
Does your business have meaning? A purpose beyond the purpose of making money?
See Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of the Start” clip below (hat-tip to Dominic Basulto from businessinnovationinsider.com)
Funny thing – we must find a way to do what we love, or we are wasting our lives:
Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s research on performance suggests that when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don’t love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don’t like to do things they aren’t “good” at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don’t possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better…
– from the NYTimes article by the Freakonomics nerds – read the article at soccer blog >>
Hypocrites
Now we have the President of Iran lecturing Bush on morality… in the language of the 12th century.
Oh, great – the neo-cons have dragged America (and the world) into the New Dark Ages.
How far have we fallen? Condi Rice shows her diplomatic skills are still far below world class.
Should we be surprised by our incompetence? At the wolf at our door?
Here’s a song to cheer us up:
Meanwhile, the family values we are so caught up with in the US don’t translate to action. The US ranks 32nd out of 33 industrialized countries when it comes to newborn mortality. Is this the “culture of life” our “religious” leaders talk about?
Here’s the list of newborn deaths per 1,000 live births in the top 33 industrialised countries. They are grouped from A to F. Each group is listed alphabetically.
A – Japan 1.8/1000
B – Czech Rep 2/1000
B – Finland 2/1000
B – Iceland 2/1000
B – Norway 2/1000
C – Austria 3/1000
C – France 3/1000
C – Germany 3/1000
C – Israel 3/1000
C – Italy 3/1000
C – Luxembourg 3/1000
C – Portugal 3/1000
C – Slovenia 3/1000
C – Spain 3/1000
D – Australia 4/1000
D – Belgium 4/1000
D – Canada 4/1000
D – Denmark 4/1000
D – Estonia 4/1000
D – Greece 4/1000
D – Ireland 4/1000
D – Lithuania 4/1000
D – Netherlands 4/1000
D – New Zealand 4/1000
D – Switzerland 4/1000
D – United Kingdom 4/1000
E – Hungary 5/1000
E – Malta 5/1000
E – Poland 5/1000
E – Slovakia 5/1000
E – USA – 5/1000
F – Latvia 6/1000
We have no shame… Have a nice day.
Blogger Becomes CEO at Sun
Jonathan Schwartz gets his day in the Sun!
Scott McNealy’s still around, but Schwartz now gets a chance to lead.
“Scott has a short haircut,” says Schwartz. “And unless he pulls something out that mandates it as a part of my employment contract, I’m keeping my haircut.”
Here, on his blog, Schwartz meets Brazil’s Lula to discuss the World Cup which starts in 45 days, 14 hours and 56 minutes. Any tips for Bruce Arena, Jonathan? Be sure to send them on to our soccer blog!
I wonder what the first post as CEO will be? Let’s hope he doesn’t stop blogging… my guess is he’ll be the CEO to change the landscape of corporate communications – using his blog!
Mira this Miro!
Last Thursday’s Google logo had painted versions of each letter in the Google name — allegedly incorporating images from Miró’s “The Escape Ladder,” 1940; “Nocturne,” 1940; and “The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers,” 1941.
The artist’s family showed their true colors by demanding Google take down image.
Morons. They don’t care about art at all, simply money.
Google actually did them a great service. Now millions more know who Miro is. They should be paying Google!
Next we’ll have the Earth suing Google as well – for Earth Day copyright violations! 🙂
Womenomics: The Business Value of Women
Question: What would happen to the world if the CEOs of ExxonMobil, the NY Times, Wal-Mart, GE and Microsoft were all women?
The Economist tells us that women are now the most powerful engine of global growth. Apparently over the past decade, the increased employment of women in developed economies has contributed much more to global growth than China has.
Listen to this:
Making better use of women’s skills is not just a matter of fairness. Plenty of studies suggest that it is good for business, too. Women account for only 7% of directors on the world’s corporate boards—15% in America, but less than 1% in Japan. Yet a study by Catalyst, a consultancy, found that American companies with more women in senior management jobs earned a higher return on equity than those with fewer women at the top. This might be because mixed teams of men and women are better than single-sex groups at solving problems and spotting external threats. Studies have also suggested that women are often better than men at building teams and communicating.
To make men feel even worse, researchers have also concluded that women make better investors than they do. A survey by Digital Look, a British financial website, found that women consistently earn higher returns than men. A survey of American investors by Merrill Lynch examined why women were better at investing. Women were less likely to “churn” their investments; and men tended to commit too much money to single, risky ideas. Overconfidence and overtrading are a recipe for poor investment returns.
Is anybody listening?
I posted about this a while back: Advice to Women who would be CEOs: “Stay away from HR”
I usually think of “business-women” in two camps – the toady – a conservative woman who moved up the ranks by reinforcing the stereotypes (eg. Kay Bailey Hutchison) or – the trailblazer – a talented woman who created her own way despite the barriers and obstacles thrown in her way by the good-old boys (eg. Anita Roddick).
Of course some people in certain parts of the world still think of women as property. Is it a coincidence that our problems with terrorism stem from these same places?
The World’s Most Innovative Companies
The Boston Consulting Group and BusinessWeek tell us that these are the 100 most innovative companies in the world:
Rank Company
1 Apple
2 Google
3 3M
4 Toyota
5 Microsoft
6 General Electric
7 Procter & Gamble
8 Nokia
9 Starbucks
10 IBM
11 Virgin
12 Samsung
13 Sony
14 Dell
15 IDEO
16 BMW
17 Intel
18 eBay
19 IKEA
20 Wal-Mart
21 Amazon
22 Target
23 Honda
24 Research In Motion
25 Southwest
26 Porsche
27 Genentech
28 Cisco
29 Nike
30 Motorola
31 DaimlerChrysler
32 Infosys
33 Ryanair
34 Pixar
35 SonyEricsson
36 Whole Foods
37 Capital One
38 Tesco
39 Danone
40 BP
41 PepsiCo
42 Hewlett Packard
43 Disney
44 jetBlue
45 W.L. Gore & Associates
46 Skype Technologies
47 FedEx
48 Bang & Olufsen
49 Renault
50 L’Oreal
51 ExxonMobil
52 Siemens
53 Johnson & Johnson
54 Shell
55 Pfizer
56 Singapore Airlines
57 Nissan
58 DuPont
59 Zara
60 TiVo
61 Yahoo!
62 Macquarie Bank
63 Audi
64 Harley Davidson
65 Progressive Insurance
66 Volvo
67 Philips Electronics
68 ING Bank
69 Nestle
70 Boeing
71 Matsushita Electric Industrial
72 easyJet
73 UPS
74 Coca-Cola
75 Cirque du Soleil (tied)
75 McKinsey (tied)
75 Woolworths (tied)
78 Hutchison Telecommunications
79 Salesforce.com
80 ACS
81 ITC
82 Time Warner
83 Danaher
84 Costco Wholesale
85 LG Electronics
86 bankinter
87 Amgen
88 Caterpillar
89 Accenture
90 SAP
91 SK Telecom
92 Home Depot
93 LVMH
94 Gap
95 Unilever
96 Goldman Sachs
97 John Deere & Co.
98 Whirlpool
99 Entel
100 McDonald’s
To me this makes no sense. This is in fact a list of the world’s most innovative dinosaurs. Massive companies which are still able to create value using new ideas. But these companies (w/ the exception of IDEO and a few others) are NOT at the forefront of innovation. Rather, that honor belongs to small companies, often at the periphery, which introduce the dinosaurs to these innovations.
Furthermore, innovation is relative, and needs to be measured in the industry or marketspace of the company. IDEO is more innovative than McDonald’s in absolute terms, but what really matters is how innovative McDonald’s is against its competitors.
What I enjoyed was the cover story:
Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool of new ideas, it’s about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time.
In the 1990s, innovation was about technology and control of quality and cost. Today, it’s about taking corporate organizations built for efficiency and rewiring them for creativity and growth. “There are a lot of different things that fall under the rubric of innovation,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and author of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution. “Innovation does not have to have anything to do with technology.”
Here’s an article from Tom Davenport on the types of innovation. I think it helps make the point that product innovation is just one type of innovation.
Another great insight comes to us from John Hagel, who talks about the limits of western thinking in his critique of Gary Hamel‘s latest thinking. Hagel tells us to focus on understanding the continuous management innovations across enterprises that are emerging in Asia.
Question: How does one link innovation to brand? to shareholder value? to sustainability? Branding, design, eco-imagination. They’re all linked…
The Community Trap: Joga.com vs. SoccerBlog.com
At first glance I have no chance.
How can my puny soccerblog.com site take on the likes of Joga.com from Nike + Google?
Answer: It doesn’t have to.
Joga.com from Nike + Google is too commercial, period. So it’s no contest.
Communities have to be open – in spirit and intent. They cannot exclude players, teams, or participants. I’m sure Nike + Google will learn. Until then, I’m having fun!
John Hagel: Joga.com and the Return of Community
William Dunk’s Global Province: Agile Companies #281
Microsoft: A Dinosaur?
The Economist:
The pressure Microsoft is facing in its core businesses is similar to one confronted by IBM—another firm that was once synonymous with computing. At the beginning of the 1990s IBM had to face up to the shift from a computing world dominated by mainframes to one dotted by personal computers. In this new world hardware became a low-margin commodity and Microsoft’s operating system took the privileged position. Today, Microsoft still dominates the PC market. But like IBM before it, today’s giant knows that its position is under threat.
and
So Microsoft now plans to graft subscriptions, downloadable add-ons and advertisements on to its core products. Again, it portrays this as an opportunity to open up new revenue streams, rather than a defensive tactic. “There are three ways to pay for anything in this business: ads, transactions and subscriptions,” says Craig Mundie, one of Microsoft’s chief technology officers. “You’ll see the company offer a full range of different ways to buy our product.” The difficulty will be getting the timing right, so that new products do not undermine existing cash cows.
For now, however, too many Microsoft managers are still measured by their success with yesterday’s business model—selling boxes of software. Microsoft is still formulating its response to the rise of online software. As one former Microsoft executive explains: the company’s problems are not just technical but organisational. “It has a vision but not a roadmap; it can see the peaks but doesn’t know how to cross the foothills to get there.”
C’mon Gates! Show us what MS can do – get funky! You guys are too big, too top-driven, too reactive… Unleash your employees! Start leading! Let’s see some disruptive innovation from within…
Read the article>>
Steel Pulse & Damian Marley: No More Weapons
Sing along:
We don’t really need…
There’s no time to beat around the BUSH
Now all the world is living in fear
The consequence a great disaster zone
The thought alone I cannot bear
And now that war has raised its ugly head
And all I can predict is woe yeah!
This claim for power paints the city red
I isolate the Status Quo.
We no want no weapons of mass destruction
We no want no weapons of mass destruction
No we no really need
No no weapons no
This has got to be the final conflict
Bestowed upon humanity
So much for a global coalition
A false sense of security
We are just pawns in the scheme of things
No matter what our race or creed
Survivors of this holocaust
We international refugees
We no want no weapons of mass destruction
We no want no weapons of mass destruction
No no no lethal weapons
No no lethal weapons
No weapons no weapons
This crave for power
Is one disaster, destruction’s in the air
These ego trips, by heads of states, who giveth not a care
For all your children and all my children
The future’s in despair
No no no No no no
We do want no weapons no…
Rules for Innovators?
From the Talentism blog, a great list for wanna-be innovators:
(1) Innovation starts with “And”
(2) Not Just Smart, But Always Focused
(3) Make Sure You Have the “No But” Critic in the Room
(4) Build Crappy Prototypes Fast
(5) Don’t Listen To Customers, Watch Them
(6) If It’s Right, Change It
(7) Sell it Like you Play It
(8) Iterate ‘Till You Drop
(9) Appoint One Person Bad Cop and Follow Their Command
(10) Innovation Is About Learning, not Genius
Here’s one more:
(11) Constancy of Purpose!
Cartoon: Help The Rastafarian get to Zion
The Ship of (April) Fools
Question: Where does one find the most incompetent collection of managers and leaders in America today?
Answer: The Bush White House.
Ouch!
Doug Smith, one of America’s smartest consultants, doesn’t mince words…
Ram Charan: Got Business Acumen?
What is business acumen?
In the latest S+B, Ram Charan writes:
“the art of business acumen: linking an insightful assessment of the external business landscape with the keen awareness of how money can be made — and then executing the strategy to deliver the desired results.”
and:
“…the ability to position their companies advantageously while operating within the same external landscape as their competitors.”
So how does one go about getting these insights into the external business landcape?
Charan suggests you ask yourself a series of six questions, and explore the ideas with colleagues and peers:
1. What is happening in the world today?
2. What does it mean for others?
3. What does it mean for us?
4. What would have to happen first (for the results we want to occur)?
5. What do we have to do to play a role?
6. What do we do next?
Hmmmm.
Read the article >>
Doug Smith on Brand Delivery
Writes Doug Smith on his blog:
“…brand is the upshot of three related human actions: promising, delivering and experiencing. Employees (a category that includes executives) promise and deliver. Customers (and investors who are not actively involved in companies) experience. Most of us have yet to catch up with the latter two of these activities: delivery and experience. Because we are bombarded with logos and symbols and promises, we tend too rarely to look beyond the promising to the delivery and experience.
“That is, until the experience is entirely out of line with the promise.”
Read the post to get what “brand delivery” really means. Smith also gives us an example – FOX vs. WaPo – guess which one has a consistent brand delivery…
Vinod Khosla’s Eco-imagination
From my other favorite, the Economist:
A lesson he [Vinod Khosla] learned from India, he says, is that one has to think big: “Unless you influence the lives of at least a million people, it simply doesn’t matter.”
And:
“Mr Khosla is particularly enthused by “cellulosic” ethanol, a highly efficient way of making fuel from agricultural waste. President Bush touted this new technology in his recent state-of-the-union speech, suggesting that it may come to market in six years. In typically impatient form, Mr Khosla wants to halve that gestation period. Anyone who spends time with him is liable to be hit with his well-researched but mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation on ethanol—unveiled with the affection that some men reserve for pictures of their grandchildren.”
But this is not a joke, guys. It’s the next wave of capitalism- natural capitalism, as some call it.
Wake up Amrica. It is time.
Again:
“It is easy to dismiss this enthusiasm as the irrelevant obsession of a rich hobbyist or the harmless utopianism of a capitalist who has made his pile. But the big oil companies are certainly not taking Mr Khosla lightly. The oil industry is funding a lavish counter-campaign to his ballot initiative called “Californians Against Higher Taxes”. Perhaps the best reason to take Mr Khosla seriously is that his professional success and Republican leanings mean that he has the ears of powerful people. He has been making the rounds, from the White House and Capitol Hill to the World Economic Forum at Davos and the TED conference (a big annual gathering for top venture capitalists), banging the drum for ethanol. Before Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, attended a recent TED conference in Monterey, California, he was sceptical about ethanol. After hearing Mr Khosla, he decided to help fund the cause. “When have you ever seen greens, farmers and guys like me and Larry on the same page?” demands Mr Khosla.”
Read the article >>
The BBC as a Global Online Brand
“The BBC is both an entrepreneurial anomaly and an illustration of the importance of branding on the internet. It has received considerable financial backing – from a government- mandated licence fee rather than venture capitalists. But its growth stems mostly from the reputation the BBC has earned through its old-media activities in radio and television.” writes the FT.
Darn right. The BBC has done what Rupert Murdoch could not (and would not) – it has become the online brand for trusted news, blowing away the pathetic efforts of the CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX.
Why? Because the BBC is truly more fair and balanced. And it has something no American network has- constancy of purpose.
Read the article >>
PS- The other global British success story is the good old Economist.
The Top 30 CEOs: Where’s H. Lee Scott?
From Barron’s via Business Innovation Insider:
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
Kenneth Chenault, American Express
George David, United Technologies
Lew Frankfort, Coach
Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers
Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric
Steven Jobs, Apple Computer
Richard Kovacevich, Wells Fargo
A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble
Arthur Levinson, Genentech
John Mackey, Whole Foods
Raymond Mason, Legg Mason
Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial
Anne Mulcahy, Xerox
Steven Reinemund, Pepsico
Glenn Renwick, Progressive
Steven Roth, Vornado Realty
Bob Simpson, XTO Energy
James Sinegal, Costco Wholesale
Robert Toll, Toll Brothers
My question: Where’s H. Lee Scott?
How to make China even richer
That’s the Economist for you- always prodding us to think a step ahead.
What would really happen in China if the “peasants owned their own land”?
Branding in Asia: Interview with Martin Roll
I recently interviewed Martin Roll, the founder and CEO of VentureRepublic, a leading strategic advisory firm out of Singapore. Roll is the author of the ground-breaking bestseller Asian Brand Strategy: How Asia Builds Strong Brands.
Here are his 10 steps to building an Asian brand:
1. The CEO needs to lead the brand strategy work
2. Build your own model, as not every model suits all
3. Involve your stakeholders including the customers
4. Advance the corporate vision
5. Exploit new technology
6. Empower people to become brand ambassadors
7. Create the right delivery system
8. Communicate!
9. Measure the brand performance
10. Adjust relentlessly and be ready to raise your own bar all the times
For details, read the interview at the Zyman Institute of Brand Science website >>