Growing up in Baltimore, I got in a lot of fights – more than I’d like to admit, but probably fewer than my memory serves. One particular fight, at age twelve, stands out in my memory. In my neighborhood there was a pecking order. And I, a skinny kid with an undersized stature, needed to [...]
Game Theory: How a CES Announcement Provided PS3 Another Year of Profits
Way back in the 20th century, 1994 to be exact, a price war was raging between the Daily News and the New York Post for the price of New York’s Daily Tabloid Newspaper. The lessons of this exercise in game theory provides insight into the ongoing console wars between Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. In addition, [...]
A closer look at the Freakonimics pay for grades study
A few weekends ago, I watched the movie version of Freakonomics (available on Netflix instant streaming here). Except for the film’s final section, “Freakonomics: The Movie” covers exactly the same topics as the first book in a more digestible format.The final section covers a test conducted at a Chicago Heights High School, exploring the question: [...]
The McDonaldization of Starbucks
‘We dropped our shorts to make more money. Hope you don’t mind.’ (this excerpt is a bit lengthy but I find the in the trenches Starbucks anecdote interesting, hopefully you find it worth it!) . . . Now, Starbucks was hiring hundreds of specialists from the outside, many from management positions at Burger King, McDonald’s, [...]
Recollections on Healthcare
I recall . . . As an intern sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry leading up to the 2004 Presidential elections the company I was working for had its sales force in a stupor. Everyone was deathly afraid of Kerry being elected. The consensus was that if John Kerry was elected it would mean death [...]
Why Barnes & Noble Is Not in the Book Selling Business
Second post in the ‘Is Nook a Kindle Killer?’ series by Mikal Lewis. At the conclusion of the last post on Barnes & Noble’s strategy I wrote: What I would do if I was Barnes and Noble: Discover what business you’re in. You’re not in the book selling business. You decided that long ago when [...]
Is Nook a Kindle Killer?
In a word. No. Barnes and Noble execs (hopefully) know it, Amazon knows it. Everyone except for PC magazine knows it. But I don’t blame David Coursey’s cursory commentary, after all someone had to write the obligatory five reasons why… list. Silicon Alley one of my favorite blogs has a good list of reasons explaining [...]
Slow M&A process leaves Sun eclipsed
When I first heard the news Oracle - Sun merger, I had high hopes that given a quick transition there would be some interesting disruptive effects. This immediately threatens IBM who for years have used less expensive, home-grown hardware to propel sales in higher margin enterprise software. Oracle not only acquires the hardware to implement [...]
A principled approach – Part 1
This will be a two part blog series on some exciting news and future blog topics As you can see Mikal and I have been grappling with this notion of aligning our personal and professional goals to fundamentally engage and help people in a transformational way. Every day on the news we hear about the [...]
Indelible
Pepsi’s branding vs. Coca-Cola over the years. Read more to see graphic. via Digg What does it mean to be Indelible? Visionary ● Discipline ● Consistent ● Timeless ● Visionary ● Patient ● Relevant ● Is your business strategy indelible? *the graphic is representative not intended to be taken literally- there have been brand changes [...]
Mikal-El 