Tag Archives: Business and Economy

Thinking Differently

Apple used the slogan in its advertising “think different” years ago.  Over time, I think we all can appreciate how that mantra, perhaps grammatically incorrect or perhaps not,  has come to be reality in the types of products produced by Apple.  I’ve always admired that much of what Apple produces isn’t original per se – there were mp3 players before the iPod, for example – but Apple manages to take a product sector as it evolves, marry it to better technology, and change everything.

What has me babbling like an Apple fanboy this morning?  A piece of research on TV‘s of course, and a thought about how some research points to the need to think out of the box. Continue reading

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Filed under digital media

Warranties

National Lampoon's Animal House

Image via Wikipedia

I’m sure you’ve all seen Animal House.  It’s one of my favorite movies and most of the guys (and it is mostly guys) I know quote from it fairly regularly.  One of the lines I find myself repeating way too often comes from Otter to Flounder, the hapless freshman who lends the frat his brother’s car only to see it destroyed:

Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up… you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.

I thought about that this weekend listening to some of the news but it triggered a business thought as well. Continue reading

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Filed under Reality checks, Thinking Aloud

Skin In The Game

As part of the mix of services I provide to clients, sometimes I write RFPs and evaluate the responses in order to select the top couple of potential vendors.  It’s not all that different from what I used to do in a previous life.  Hardly a day went by that some new company asked for a meeting in order to pitch the latest and greatest piece of technology or a service that was going to increase my group’s revenues dramatically.  Then and now, the conversation turns to the business model:  how are the two organizations to work together, where does money change hands, and what accountability do we have to one another?

It was usually during that part of the discussion that there was a “tell”, as poker players call it – the thing that gives away how good a hand you’re playing.  For me, this tell was always about how much skin the company had in the game, and to this day I think it’s an important factor in evaluating partnerships. Continue reading

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Filed under Consulting, Thinking Aloud