- Beyond the crisis - the importance of wealth creation and enterprise softwareJanuary 5
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2009 looks bleak, people are nervous, businesses have found the handbrake and sounds of changing gears without using the clutch can be heard.
But a crisis has a side effect; it spurs changes and new ideas that moves society forward. Even stronger, it cries out for changes and new ideas, just cost-cutting your way forward does not cut it.
As I said to my
EI friend
Dennis the other day - you have two choices:
- Try to understand what's happening and get a grip on the future so you can prepare a defence (futile on all counts I would say), or
- put on your best running shoes, a headlamp and a big smile as you venture out into the dark in search for opportunities.
I'm more inclined to the latter approach.
So let's put on the headlamp and do some nocturnal orienteering:
The credit crunch is scary, the loss of share and house values is devastating for pension plans and of course the loss of jobs is heart wrenching. But they're all inevitable results of the mechanism in how society works; either by the downs in the natural up-and-down imbalanced nature of things, or by the bigger shifts in "ways".
Imbalances and natural ups-and-downs are only surface effects, the core issue is how fast and efficient "real" wealth is created in the society as a whole. An increase in "real" wealt
- Anatomy of a financial crisis - where are we going?December 29 2008
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"How could this happen?" - the big question in two parts:
- What was wrong prior to the crisis.
- What triggered the crisis.
Why bother with "what triggered it"; is it not fair that you react and sell all your too expensive shares when you find out? When you're oblivious then see the obvious shall you not act quickly? And anyway, any reasonable construct should withstand a sneeze.
As a good friend of mine puts it - "why all this use of "Panic"? It's nothing but good sense kicking in!"
What was wrong is slightly more interesting. Of course something was skewed, off-balance, out-of-whack: In 87 share prices had gone up faster than ever and to scary P/E ratios, in 1998 many Asian states were into bubbly growth with precious little currency reserves to withstand even the smallest pin prick, the dot-coms and their eyeballs became eventually too ridiculous for common sense, as did 100% mortgages without a credit check this last time.
But then, nothing new in that, off-balance is the normal, it is the nature of things and the reason for having markets. Actually off-balance drives us forward so do not change that.
In reality there is the only one important question that should be posed:
- Who were confused by the sudden reality shift and how did they get out of confused mode again?
Confusion often leads to participants acting alone and against eac
- Long Tail and Long Snout strategiesDecember 15 2008
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The Long Tail is a great image for a strategy to get the most out of large and mature markets like music and books.
But what about new and virgin markets? When a product is new and unknown and uptake depends on understanding, which is inherently slow? When the product "creates" the "new" market so to speak?
Like the car that did not "take off" until (with the T-Ford) 30 years after the first patented automobile. Like Lotus Notes that took about 7 years in the market and version 4 before they started to talk about "explosive growth".
What could be the image for this strategy be (if indeed any strategy existed)?
That's what I'd call "The Long Snout".
[Hat tip to
Thomas who got me thinking this morning]
[Update: Not to be confused with the classic "Hock
- Economic growth - what's next?December 3 2008
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What's the most repeated word we hear these days?
GDP.
If it goes down a recession is declared and all hunker down, stock markets tumble and worse happens.
GDP is
defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time. It includes government as well of course. By the way, GDP is in principle same as GNP, differs only in how the import - export equation is worked out.
So how to stop a recession from happening? Simple, very simple, here's the answer:
- You write a paper (you choose the theme, it does not matter what) and call it a Report. Slap an invoice (any sum, big is fine) onto it and send it to me.
- Upon receipt of your "Report" I'll add some notes and scribbles on the bottom. Then I'll send it back to you with another invoice for "services rendered". Your invoice is balanced by my invoice by the way.
- Now you slap more notes to the thing, add another invoice and send it to me again.
- Rinse and repeat as fast as we can.
- At the end of the quarter we'll add up all the invoices and send them to whoever do the GDP calculations.
Voilà, GDP miraculously increased and we've done our duty.
Obviously this is not what an economist would suggest, too easy to criticise. No, some have a much be
- Business framework explained - the true versionNovember 25 2008
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Business is about process, typically starting with a customer calling, then proceeding through a sequence of tasks and activities ending with the delivery of some value.
No process exists unless there is a framework. And for that reason business have a framework, an old and proven one. Here's a condensed list of it's most important parts and how they work, in no particular order:
Meetings:
So we can get together, listen and pounce on presentations or remarks made by those we do not like. Actually meant to be a place where work is distributed and then later dissected.
Budgets:
AKA the elevator. This nickname is due to the fact that the boss wants higher sales and lower costs while you want higher costs and lower sales to make your life easier. Thus the budget process involves sending up, sending down, sending up, until you agree on something in the middle that nobody will be happy with. The result usually have a "© Walt Disney Inc" in invisible ink in the bottom right hand corner.
Deadlines:
This is important so you can keep your eyes focused at the end of a process and avoid having to focus on the beginning of a process as this might lead to immediate action that will ruin your already busy schedule (emailing, meetings, creating charts and bullets). Beside the excellent time-wasting method of meetings this is one of the best ways to
