Day of Reckoning
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 30, 2010
One of the most inspiring speeches I’ve seen – ever.
Just watch. And maybe show it to your kids.
The Importance of Startups
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 23, 2010
some compelling evidence of the importance of startups and small companies – and the absolutely critical role they play in job growth
Kauffman Foundation has done extensive research on job creation. Kauffman Senior Fellow Tim Kane analyzed a new data set from the U.S. government, called Business Dynamics Statistics
, which provides details about the age and employment of businesses started in the U.S. since 1977. What this showed was that startups aren’t just an important contributor to job growth: they’re the only thing. Without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S.
economy . From 1977 to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per year. In contrast, new businesses in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs annually.
Simply put, if we are serious about lifting the economy out of its rut, we need to focus all of our energy on helping entrepreneurs. Provide them with the incentives (tax breaks and seed financing); education; and infrastructure. And gear public policy—like patent-protection laws—toward the startups. Let’s not bet on the companies that are too big to fail or too clumsy to innovate.
Is this really the End of Management and the Corporation?
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 22, 2010
Fascinating piece in Friday’s WSJ – great read.
In recent years, however, most of the greatest management stories have been not triumphs of the corporation, but triumphs over the corporation. General Electric’s Jack Welch may have been the last of the great corporate builders. But even Mr. Welch was famous for waging war on bureaucracy. Other management icons of recent decades earned their reputations by attacking entrenched corporate cultures, bypassing corporate hierarchies, undermining corporate structures, and otherwise using the tactics of revolution in a desperate effort to make the elephants dance. The best corporate managers have become, in a sense, enemies of the corporation.
Resource allocation will be one of the biggest challenges. The beauty of markets is that, over time, they tend to ensure that both people and money end up employed in the highest-value enterprises. In corporations, decisions about allocating resources are made by people with a vested interest in the status quo. “The single biggest reason companies fail,” says Mr. Hamel, “is that they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.”
In addition to resource allocation, there’s the even bigger challenge of creating structures that motivate and inspire workers. There’s plenty of evidence that most workers in today’s complex organizations are simply not engaged in their work. Many are like Jim Halpert from “The Office,” who in season one of the popular TV show declared: “This is just a job.…If this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.”
The Roads to Fiscal Ruin
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 21, 2010
I fully realize that I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of doom & gloom essays lately – not because I enjoy them, but because the handwriting is so obviously on the wall.
This is one of the better of those essays – it is not hysterical, but presents a clear-eyed view of what’s ahead for the US. It’s not a pretty picture.
Actuarially, existing entitlements have already bankrupted us. Mighty and exceptional as we think we are, demography and arithmetic are mightier still. Everyone knows it. They have known it for some time. Yet none of these programs has ever been cut back in a material way, so powerful and tenacious are the attending lobbies.
It does not promise us a stately and peaceful decline. We will have what others have had: at the very least a divisive and even violent struggle as the crisis mounts. The longer we dither, the worse it will be, fed by the uniquely bitter passions that men have always reserved for governments that betray them, and being bankrupt, are too weak to help themselves.
$GM bailout ‘akin to theft’
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 19, 2010
Never bailing GM out in the first place would have been even more ‘the right move’ but since we’re past that (and since liquidating the company and distributing the proceeds to taxpayers is apparently not an option) I guess we’ll have to live with this.
But I certainly don’t plan to participate.
A GM initial public offering is the right move, and cannot happen soon enough. Let’s get the government out of the car business now.
But successfully reprivatizing GM should not be seen as a sign that the intervention itself was successful. The intervention was akin to theft — from Ford, Honda, Toyota, the other automakers and taxpayers — and was highly damaging to crucial longstanding institutions in the United States, like property rights and the rule of law.
The costs of GM’s ”turnaround,” if it is to happen, will never be fully appreciated. The other auto companies were denied the spoils of competition. Had they been able to pick up the market share that the nationalized GM has maintained, then more resources would have flowed to the companies that are best at making the products that people want to buy. These are huge implicit costs–the costs that are not seen–that are happily swept under the rug by Obama administration officials.
It is also highly likely that the timing of the IPO talk is politically motivated. Democrats want to have a business success to tout for their campaigns this fall. But there is the real prospect that that the IPO won’t raise anywhere near the amount of cash to make taxpayers whole, which could generate a lot of bad press before the election. With economic growth and auto sales prospects apparently in doubt and the $41,000 Chevy Volt about to be unveiled when gas prices are relatively low, investors may not be ready to own GM stock.
CRM in the Cloud webinar next week – please join us
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 19, 2010
I’m looking forward to working with Mitch Lieberman, Sage North America and Focus Research next week on this event – please join us by signing up at http://bit.ly/d9yW9K
Scottsdale , AZ – Aug 19, 2010 –
Sage North America today announced sponsorship of the “CRM In The Cloud” webinar to help small and midsized businesses discern the advantages of on-demand and on-premises CRM deployments. Focus Network technology experts Mitch Lieberman and Chris Selland will detail the top eight considerations for CRM deployments and how business can combine the benefits of on-demand and on-premises CRM systems. Registration for the August 24th 1:00 p.m. EDT webinar is available at www.sagesaleslogix.com/cloudwebinar.
“CRM In The Cloud” webinar attendees will learn:
- How the rapid time-to-value of on-demand CRM systems can be combined with the security and control of an on-premise systems to give businesses the best of both worlds;
- What to look for when evaluating CRM systems and how they can help businesses reach more profitable customers and enhance the customer experience offered;
- What evolving CRM systems can provide in terms of information and insights to aid sales and marketing planning, managing and forecasting; and
Read more at www.sagenorthamerica.com
- The Top 8 Business Considerations for CRM deployments.
Oracle M&A Targets $ORCL
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 16, 2010
Of the many analyses and speculations on who Oracle might buy next, this is definitely one of the better & deeper ones I’ve seen – excellent stuff from Stephen Jannise of SoftwareAdvice.com.
Oh, and I voted ‘Informatica’
Before we go any further, let’s put this all in context by looking at a graphical illustration of Oracle’s recent M&A activity.
Oracle’s M&A Strategy
At the highest level, the motivations behind Oracle’s largest acquisitions appear to be the following:
- Grow market share leadership in key enterprise markets;
- Expand profitability by consolidating high-margin support revenue; and,
- Increase strategic relevance by offering a complete technology stack.
America, Heal Thyself (before it’s too late)
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 15, 2010
This post is an interesting and important – albeit extremely pessimistic – read. It’s certainly not Morning in America right now – but is it too late?
The ‘rape and pillage’ statements, while they certainly contain some truth, do bother me. There’s no denying that – as a whole – the US citizenry has gotten fat, lazy and stupid and the average American has done far too little to protect themselves and their families from the unholy alliance of Big Business and Big Government. For many, things are going to get worse – probably far worse – for many before (if?) they get better.
But does ignorance and sloth on the part of the citizenry have to imply ‘fraud’, ‘rape and pillage’ or similar by the ‘ruling oligarchs’. Not necessarily.
What it does imply is Americans need to wake up and do MUCH more to protect themselves and their families. We ALL need to get a lot more serious about who we put in office, and much more closely monitor the relationship between big business and big government – which has gotten far too cozy – leading us to the place where we find ourselves.
I spent some time in Place de la Concorde (i.e. Place de la Révolution) recently. We don’t want to go there – and we don’t need to. But if we don’t wake up, we will.
Freedom requires responsibility – responsibility that too many Americans have abdicated in their rush to spend their home equity at the strip mall. The question now is whether we still have the time – and the discipline – to regain that responsibility and turn things around.
America resembles a 40 year old aging baseball icon with two bad knees, a pot belly, receding hairline and delusions that he is still the ball player he was at 24. He doesn’t realize that his skills are shot, as he flails at curveballs in the dirt thrown by 21 year old kids. The rest of the league knows he is washed up, but he refuses to accept reality. America isn’t even running on fumes at this point. It is running on delusions. Politicians think they have saved the country from a Depression by adding $3 trillion to the National Debt and allowing Wall Street banks to pretend they are solvent. Americans have been deluded by the ruling oligarchs that a $700 billion bank bailout, an $800 billion pork filled stimulus plan, the Federal Reserve buying $1.2 trillion of toxic mortgages, and the Treasury forcing taxpayers to pick up a $400 billion tab for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s bad loans has actually solved a problem created by too much debt.
The American herd has gone mad. A few people have regained their senses, but the vast majority still exhibits the behavior of sheep being led to slaughter. The ruling oligarchs have utter contempt for the average American, but they fear the masses. In order to retain their power and wealth, they gladly hand out two years of unemployment payments, food stamps, and welfare payments to keep the masses sedated. The working middle class foots the bill. Corruption abounds and is sustained by the passage of more laws and regulations. The sociopathic powers that control the levers of power in this country need to be brought to justice if this country has any chance at survival. The den of vipers and thieves have trampled on the Constitution, speculated with the country’s funds, risked blowing up the financial system, committed fraud on a massive scale, and continue to rape and pillage the American citizens. Vincible ignorance by the American people is no longer a legitimate excuse. The criminals on Wall Street and Washington DC must be routed out and Americans must awaken from their delusional state before it is too late. I weep for the liberty of my country.
how Google plans to make money on Android $GOOG
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized on August 14, 2010
“You get a billion people doing something, there’s lots of ways to make money”
I recognize the jury’s still out – but makes complete sense to me.
For one thing, just a couple days earlier, Google had publicly estimated that 200,000 Android smartphones were being activated daily by cell carriers on behalf of customers. That’s a doubling in just three months. Since the beginning of the year, Android phones have been outselling iPhones by an increasing clip and seem destined soon to outstrip Apple in global market share.
True, Apple sells its phones for luscious margins, while Google gives away Android to handset makers for free. But not to worry, says Mr. Schmidt: “You get a billion people doing something, there’s lots of ways to make money. Absolutely, trust me. We’ll get lots of money for it.”
“In general in technology,” he says, “if you own a platform that’s valuable, you can monetize it.” Example: Google is obliged to share with Apple search revenue generated by iPhone users. On Android, Google gets to keep 100%. That difference alone, says Mr. Schmidt, is more than enough to foot the bill for Android’s continued development.
And coming soon is Chrome OS, which Google hopes will do in tablets and netbooks what Android is doing in smartphones, i.e., give Google a commanding share of the future and leave, in this case, Microsoft in the dust.
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