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?
Thought Sparks
Microsoft 1, Apple 0 in Mouse competition
The Wall Street Journal’s ‘personal technology’ column (August 4, 2005) compares Apple’s new “Mighty Mouse” with Microsoft’s new entry, the Wireless Optical Mouse 5000. Much to the evident surprise of the reviewer (Walter S. Mossberg),… Read more »
Stealing Copper - Second Order
In many countries in Africa, copper is extraordinarily valuable as the raw material input for trinkets and tourist souvenirs. Where do you get a ready supply of copper, if you are desperately poor? Easy ?… Read more »
Tech grows up?
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 »
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 »