GM is hemorrhaging cash and wants to merge with Chrysler. Banks are buying and dying like lottery-winning centenarians. GM and Chrysler say a merger would make for a stronger, more competitive company. The buying-banks argue that they’ll be in a better position to lend if they buy up all the dying-banks. Good strategic moves, all around, right? Bigger companies means fewer...
Marketing
Obama and a Groundswell Government?
Barack Obama tapped into the Groundswell during his campaign. He recognized that people were connecting with each other to get the things they need, rather than going to traditional institutions. He recognized the power of a bottom-up strategy and how an army of energized campaign partners–not just supporters– is infinitely more effective than the...
Context
We’re all connected. We have the entire sum of human genius and misery at our fingertips. Given that, I’m constantly befuddled by people who don’t at least try to understand the whole, rather than just the parts. You have to understand the context of a thing to do anything with it. So, since this is all...
El Guapo, a BMW and Authenticity
Driving home one day, I noticed a shiny white BMW 3 Series with seriously dark tinted windows and a personalized “vanity” license plate. The license plate had attitude. Suave confidence bordering cockiness. I decided the driver was obviously cool. James Dean cool. Then BMW turned right into my neighborhood. “What’s he doing in my neighborhood?”...
Assumptions
I’ve been in Texas for a little over a year, and I’ve been frustrated by lack of options in talk radio. You have a choice: conservative or ultra-conservative. I kept looking for public radio station. I looked all over the am dial. First mistake: assuming that because 820 WOSU was am, so would the...
Corporate Inertia and Jujitsu
Visual thinking for the day Ok, so, big corporations are… well, big. Brilliant insight, I know. Bear with me. They’re big, change-resisting, money-making machines. But, at some point they were small, nimble and entrepreneurial. Jujitsu is a martial art based on the idea of ”using an attacker’s energy against him, rather than directly opposing...
Profit vs. Greed
Wall Street is a mess. Obviously. And amid all the fear and flagellation is a fight over appropriate CEO compensation. One side says they get too much, the other says they get what they’re worth. A frequently used “what they’re worth” arguments goes something like this: “Yeah, but what is $70M as a percent of net profit?!” That may be...
A Simple Question
On his blog last week, Tim Brown (IDEO bacon-double-big-cheese) tells a story about an insulated coffee mug he received as a gift. Then he asks a ridiculously simple question: “is this a product or an experience?” It’s a simple question, but it has a profound and fundamental effect on product development and management. Too often, we focus...
When life gives you lemons
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Collaboration or Competition
I don’t like the idea of crushing the competition into an pulsating pile of people-pulp. But I worry that if I don’t, they may not be so kind in return. Insert bland reference to jujitsu/kung-fu/etc. here. My problem with crushing the competition– or even using the competition against itself (think jujitsu)–is that the customer is left as a...
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