When you think about your product strategy — do you make a distinction between WHAT your customers want to buy versus HOW they want to buy it? If not, you are overlooking significant opportunities to better serve your customers. The most obvious example is Dell, who redefined HOW customers could buy an industry standard PC…
Amazing. Even Siebel, who outlasted the big ERP players for years, has fallen — “Oracle to buy Siebel in $5.85 bln deal – Yahoo! News” Oracle to buy Siebel in $5.85 bln deal – Yahoo! News. The interesting question is what does this say about the market for enterprise software. It seems to me that…
Thought-provoking article from McKinsey & Company The 21st-Century Organization – Human Capital – CFO.com. The main point is that U.S. companies are increasingly comprised of knowledge workers who unfortunately, are trapped in organizational structures that don't support them. While there are some good ideas here, like separating current line businesses from new strategic initiatives, I…
Examples of clueless marketers at Seth's Blog: Clueless. Amazing how penny-wise, pound-foolish companies are when it comes to service. Airlines are one of the best examples of this problem. I just flew back from a workshop in Connecticut, flying from Providence through Charlotte to Raleigh. Summer storms in the northeast caused all sorts of havoc…
Rich Karlgaard writes a fascinating, informative, and entertaining historical perspective on the first ten years of the Internet economy — WSJ.com – The Ghost of Netscape. (subscription required) In many ways, this story parallels my early career. I was in graduate school at Stanford when Jerry Yang and David Filo quit their Ph.D. programs to…