So along the 'don't call us' theme, here is an example of a waste of money. The ad appears in the August 2005 issue of Inc, on what would be page 39. "Don't Call Us." it boldly begins, followed by the phrases "when a technology performs flawlessly and is simple to use, it soon becomes something you don't need to think about, won't need to think about. Fortunately for your business, XOptionsFlex is exactly that kind of "no need to call" technology".
What they don't tell you is what technology they are selling! I gather after scrutinizing the ad that it is some kind of telephone service provider. But what a name - XOptions Flex???
Don't lose the irony in this one - this company, along with others, is trying to simultaneously sell you a telephone service (I think) while the main thrust of their ad is about not making calls.
Oh well, maybe times have changed but when I went to business school Marketing 101 taught us that you need to tell customers what you are selling before they'll be prepared to buy.
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- Posted Admin on August 08, 2005
Is it a coincidence that in a recent edition of INC magazine that within a few pages the phrase "don't call us" came up over and over?
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- Posted Admin on August 08, 2005
If our colleague Geoffrey Moore is to be believed (and who wouldn't believe him, given how many times he's been right), life cycle determines destiny. I keep seeing signals that Silicon Valley and tech in general are growing up, growing older, maturing... (see the July 25, 2005 Fortune article about Larry Ellison - "A Bad Boy and His Business Grow Up" (p. 36).
Does that mean that tech companies are finally going to have to invest in real management? What would they look like? A lot more like GE and a lot less like pets.com? Food for thought!
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- Posted Admin on July 31, 2005
Our Korean colleague, Hyokon Zhiang, is the Managing Director of a newly formed consulting practice, the Innomove group (
http://www.innomove.com). He was a rising star at Bain, but decided to pursue building his own innovation-oriented consulting group after extensive experience with the tools of consulting left him discouraged. Many of the most time-honored and productive tools (such as the product-portfolio matrix, or portfolio allocation tools) are based on trends from the past. Although useful for making certain kinds of decisions, he notes, such tools aren't really helpful when it comes to finding new opportunities. That is a process which begins with ideas, and is future oriented, rather than starting with what's around today.
We have had the same concern about other consulting type tools - such as Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). Although just fine to use in certain contexts, we've noticed a tendency for companies to try to fit them to everything that they are doing, with what we suspect will be disappointing results.
It all supports and argument we've made for a while - while frameworks and management tools can be helpful in the right circumstances, part of the skill of using them is figuring out what tool works when. Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor make a similar argument in their book "The Innovator's Solution" in which they make a plea for better management theory to guide actual decision making. There is no silver bullet, and no one-size-fits-all approach to innovation. The good news is that there is thus plenty of opportunity to benefit from infusions of fresh thinking.
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- Posted Admin on July 21, 2005
It stunned me to read that the 80 technology players comprising the Standard and Poor's index have $229 billion in cash and equivalents on their balance sheets (reportedly more than 2 times what they had at the end of bubble-year 1999). Depressingly, what are they doing with all that cash? Stock buybacks, acquisitions and dividends -- things shareholders like, but that don't necessarily create opportunities for the future. Indeed, one used to buy technology companies for growth, not for cash out. And yet, I constantly hear leaders in high-tech companies complain that they don't have the resources to manage both today's shareholder expectations and meet tomorrow's growth needs.
Perhaps the agenda should include more investment in time for the kinds of opportunity identification MarketBusting suggests.
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- Posted Admin on July 18, 2005
