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To borrow a movie phrase from the 1970s — the anachronism seems strangely appropriate — Lee Iacocca is mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore. He thinks you shouldn’t, either.
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The book’s most refreshing observation, though, may be the simplest: Engaging in meaningful work is as important to a woman as it is to a man.[book link]
April 26, 2007
links for 2007-04-26
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April 25, 2007
Wii-ly Cool
In a current Business 2.0 article, “How the Wii is Creaming the Competition,” John Gaudiosi discusses how Nintendo remade itself with its latest gaming system: the Wii.
If you haven’t heard of it, Wii is a relatively inexpensive, motion-controlled system that blends physical activity with the video game environment.
Unlike high-end products like the Sony Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox, Wii has a basic design that allows Nintendo to make a profit from the get-go. Nintendo knew it could make an instant $50 in profit on the system (whereas Playstation and Xbox actually take a hit before they make a profit on expensive games and accessories), so they offered its “killer app,” Wii Sports, for free with the purchase of console and controller.
Gaudiosi explains how, in addition to the system itself, Nintendo revolutionized its marketing approaches:
Finally it came time for Nintendo to market the Wii to the world. In addition to its standard TV campaigns targeting schoolkids, the company pumped 70 percent of its U.S. TV budget into programs aimed at 25-to 49-year-olds, says George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America.
He even put Wii ads into gray-haired publications like AARP and Reader’s Digest. For Nintendo’s core users, he took a novel, Web-based approach: ‘To reach the under-25 audience,’ he says, ‘we pushed our message through online and social-networking channels’ including MySpace.’
It seems the Wii serves as an excellent example of taking a popular technology and incorporating social values and marketing trends.
I had the chance to bowl with “the Wii” over the weekend with some friends. It’s a pretty cool experience–and my score was surprisingly close to its real-world average. (I hoped it would be better, though.) I’m not a gamer in any way, shape, or form, but I have to say that even a short experience with the Wii was enough for me to say that it was unlike any other game I’ve played. And somehow, that made it even better.
You can read the article here.
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links for 2007-04-25
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Life isn’t fair. Many of the most coveted spoils — wealth, fame, links on the Web — are concentrated among the few. If such a distribution doesn’t sound like the familiar bell-shaped curve, you’re right.
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In “Last Harvest” he tells the story of New Daleville, a subdivision in rural Chester County, Pa., 30 miles west of Philadelphia. It makes for an improbably compelling narrative, from the subdivision’s earliest beginnings as a twinkle in a developer’s eye
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April 24, 2007
A Manifesto from a Praised Young Person.
Did you see the WSJ’s Weekend Journal this past Friday? Smack dab in the middle of the front floats a large-headed young employee with his nose to the sky. The article, “The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work.”
This is the generation of twentysomethings who have grown up on praise and the words “you’re special.” The generation where everyone became a winner on the soccer field, swim team, or drama club. Gold stars and ribbons abound their world.
I, too, am in this generation brought up on praise and warm-fuzzies (a.k.a. compliments, as one of my elementary school teachers explained). Employers are responding to our generation of praise.
They “are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up. Corporations including Lands’ End and Bank of America are hiring consultants to teach managers how to compliment employees using email, prize packages and public displays of appreciation. The 1,000-employee Scooter Store Inc., a power-wheelchair and scotter firm in New Braunfels, Texas, has a staff “celebrations assistant” whose job it is to throw confetti — 25 pounds a week — at employees. She also passes out 100 to 500 celebratory helium balloons a week.”
Bob Nelson, thank you consultant and author of 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, would tell you that each generation has different praise requirements:
60+ years — prefer public, formal awards but don’t need constant praise.
Baby Boomers — are looking for “more self-indulgent treats” such as massages and new technology.
Under 40 — need a bit more praise and “near-constant feedback.”
He goes on to explain that, “‘It’s not enough to give praise [to this generation] only when they’re exceptional, because for years they’ve been getting praise just for showing up.’”
If an employer is complimenting “us” for merely showing up, of course we expect to be praised when we do something above and beyond showing up. It’s Pavlov’s basic rule. The expectation for praise becomes a reflex.
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Your Chances Are Not Good (Failure – Part 3 in a Series)
Chris Zook is the head of Bain’s Strategy Practice and the author of three books on growth.
Michael Porter created the framework for how most think about strategy. Zook’s work provide clues on how to improve your chance of success.
What I have always liked most about his books is his quantification of the stark reality of business. Your chance of success are not good. This from his second book Beyond The Core:
In looking at adjacency expansion moves, my research team and I combed the literature, and we conducted out own independent analysis to understand as completely as possible the odds that major growth initiatives would truly drive a new source of sustained, profitable growth. We found, in our own data as well as in the secondary data, the success to only about one in four. Just 25% of investments in growth initiatives, most of them true adjacency expansions, created value and added growth
Of 160 reports worldwide we were able to find on the topic of growth, only twenty-four contain sufficient sample size and make clear assumptions regarding the criteria for success. The average success rate for new products is about 30 percent; for start-ups, below 10 percent; for joint ventures, about 30 percent. These studies span a wide range of methods and quality of data, but all show how hard it is to find and execute on new sources of growth in a company.
Zook’s books give you methods that can doubled your chance of success, but you still only end up at a 50/50 chance of something working.
Failure is a part of doing business.
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links for 2007-04-24
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In “Send,” David Shipley and Will Schwalbe offer us help in separating the useful from the impositional and in making the useful more so.
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April 23, 2007
This Week: National Small Business Week
This week is National Small Business Week. We are going to highlight some books for those out there is the small business world and those who want to be.
I figured we should start with the definition of a small business. This is from the Small Business Administration website:
A Small Business is one that:
- is organized for profit;
- has a place of business in the United States;
- makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy by paying taxes or using American products, materials or labor; and,
- does not exceed the numerical size standard for its industry.
The business may be a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or any other legal form.
SBA has several general Size Standards. A business in one of the following industry groups is small if it is not greater than the size standard indicated.
Industry Group Size Standard Manufacturing 500 employees Wholesale Trade 100 employees Agriculture $750,000 Retail Trade $6.5 million General & Heavy Construction (except Dredging) $31 million Dredging $18.5 million Special Trade Contractors $13 million Travel Agencies $3.5 million (commissions & other income) Business and Personal Services
Except:$6.5 million >Architectural, Engineering, Surveying, and Mapping Services $4.5 million >Dry Cleaning and Carpet Cleaning Services $4.5 million
Now that you know where you stand, we can move onto the books.
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Read an excerpt from The New Language of Business
The new excerpt on our Excerpts blog is from Chapter 11 of The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0 by Sandy Carter.
Carter shows how, by levering SOA (service-oriented architecture), Web 2.0 and other technologies, business leaders can use innovations in technology to drive process improvements and support change.
With the growing sophistication about how and where innovation occurs, companies know that business flexibility is the driver. New ideas don’t just come from inside their company, but from wikis, blogs, partners, customers, and even competitors. This world requires collaboration to solicit the ideas and flexibility to respond to those ideas. The insight is that CEOs now say that more of their ideas for innovation come from partners and clients than from their own employees.
Go directly to the excerpt to continue reading.
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The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0 by Sandy Carter. In this book, Carter shows how, by levering SOA (service-oriented architecture), Web 2.0 and other technologies, business leaders can use innovations in technology to drive process improvements and support change.
Chapter 11: Putting It All Together
I am on the
North Carolina
coast today, and I am surprised to learn that more than 2,000 shipwrecks have occurred off these coasts. Why so many? Hurricanes, treacherous shoals, unpredictable weather, and war caused the majority of the wrecks. My family and I rented jet skis and went exploring around the area to check out and learn about the history. It was neat to see how many other captains had “learned
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links for 2007-04-23
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It concerns the occurrence of the improbable, the power of rare events and the author’s lament that “in spite of the empirical record we continue to project into the future as if we were good at it.Comments Off
