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… Read more »
Archives for July 2005
Flowers at Chevron-add empathy
Loved the snippet on Seth Godin’s blog (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2894478) showing a photo of fresh flowers at a Chevron station. Reminded us of the many ways we have observed companies to create differentiation through adding a quality… Read more »
A new use for Botox
One of our colleagues, Jim Thompson, passed along a tidbit that expands even further on the Botox story we wrote about in MarketBusters. It seems that Botox, which is actually a highly dangerous substance in… Read more »
Korean parents send their kids to China
On our trip to Korea, we learned quite an interesting little snippet about where Korean parents are placing their bets for the future. It seems that it is now quite typical for Korean families to… Read more »
Backward looking consulting frameworks
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… Read more »
Cash-rich, imagination poor?
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… Read more »
An Update on Service Corp. International
Euphemistically named Service Corp. International (SCI) is actually a mega-presence in the world of funerals. We wrote about their strategy of ‘industry roll-up’ in MarketBusters (chapter 5) noting that the company had skillfully managed to… Read more »
Japan surges forward
I just read a short piece in Business Week (July 18, 2005 issue, p. 30) in which evidence of Japan’s recovery – even resurgence – are detailed. Among the numbers I thought were very interesting… Read more »
New bankruptcy laws and entrepreneurship
On October 17, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act will make the use of bankruptcy as a way to erase debts and create a fresh start much more difficult. Although clearly some people… Read more »
Where Japan’s new growth could come from
I’ve just two days ago returned from a visit to Japan, where I met with people from an incredible diversity of companies while giving talks and directing the Columbia Business School Program “Creating Strategy”. Although… Read more »
Where Japan’s new growth could come from
I’ve just two days ago returned from a visit to Japan, where I met with people from an incredible diversity of companies while giving talks and directing the Columbia Business School Program “Creating Strategy”. Although… Read more »
Websense tames the Wild West of the Internet for Profit
Websense (WBSN), a software company, has hit a sweet spot for growth by making products that allow employers to optimize their people’s use of the Web. Some interesting data from the company’s web site (http://www.websense.com):… Read more »