Management Archives
Here you’ll find a collection of articles published under the Management category.
Is Your Business Model Built for the Long Haul?
By Bruce LaFetra on September 22, 2008
Public statements notwithstanding, more business plans in Silicon Valley are built around technology than around customer relationships. It’s just the way it is; we’re talking about technology companies, right? The problem is that, given time, all technology either becomes obsolete or a commodity. With the increasing pace of technological change, this is happening sooner rather than later. The risk in building on technology rather than customer relationships is that you are never more than a wrong turn or two away from putting your business survival at risk. Customer relationships provide your business with more options, and strong relationships can be very forgiving of the occasional misstep, meaning your business is more resilient and your plans can be bolder. Further—and perhaps even more important—technology-centric business models limit your offerings and growth potential, so they are associated with lower valuations over the long term.
Dear Rubi
By Bruce LaFetra on September 20, 2008
How do I measure the culture of my company, and hold the team accountable for it?
Move Quickly to Strategic Alignment
By Nilofer Merchant on September 19, 2008
Executives at the helm of companies from small firms to large enterprises spend much of their time thinking about how to drive growth. But putting those thoughts into action can challenge even the most seasoned leader. Often executives focus on the “what” of strategy at the expense of the “how” — neglecting the “how” makes success a long shot.
Who’s making money on the Web?
By Bruce LaFetra on June 23, 2008
While failure for the high-tech entrepreneur is less likely to result in death, the parallels between the Gold Rush and the current Web-based economy are many. In both cases, participants must to adapt to a new way of life, with new rules. Or rather, no pre-existing, fixed rules.
Silicon Valley’s famous tolerance of entrepreneurial failure has its roots more than 150 years ago in the Gold Rush when more than 90,000 people made their way to California in the two years following John Marshall’s discovery of gold near Sacramento in January, 1848. By 1854, more than 300,000—representing more than one percent of the total population of the United States at the time—had come west in search of fortune.
No, No, Rupert
By Nilofer Merchant on May 25, 2008
In newspaper publishing, Rupert Murdoch is cutting a wide swath through the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post —even shrinking the physical size of both newspapers to cut costs.
New channels—Craigslist, Yahoo, Google AdWords and others—have pulled classified and other types of ads away from newspapers. The New York Times, in an attempt to increase its online readership, is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper “programmable,” says Josh Catone at ReadWriteWeb.
Pay it Forward: The Valley Ethos
By Harry Max on February 13, 2008
Before the holiday break, I met the founder / chairman (and former CEO) of a consumer electronics company to talk about what the future might hold and what was next for him. It’s a classic Silicon Valley tale: he founded a cool company, got it funded, built the product, and then hired a CEO to take it to the next level. And, for various reasons, it became clear it was time for him to step back and attempt to guide the company from the Board.
Yahoo in 2008
By Marsha Keeffer on January 12, 2008
It would be difficult to find a company that underwent more change in 2007 than Yahoo.
Making Marketing Matter
By Nilofer Merchant on January 11, 2008
Let’s face the facts.
Marketing isn’t what it once was. The pall cast by the Web 2.0 era where consumers are the beginning and end and marketers are no longer leading the brand, the demand creation process has gone awry, and to the point that corporate confidence has eroded for marketing’s function as a performance driver.
Winning Business Models: New products or markets often require new business models
By Bruce LaFetra on November 30, 2007
While SAP’s brand and development resources are enormous assets, SAP’s operations—the very way it does business—must be re-thought for BBD and the changes required for success are fundamental in every sense. SAP needs to re-think its sales, services, integration, support, development and revenue models. The enterprise sales force is too expensive to address mid-sized customers and the R/3 eco-system is ill-suited to address BBD deployment. Even the SaaS revenue stream will require major adjustments.
What’s your Company’s Arrogance Quotient?
By Harry Max on September 19, 2007
I don’t know anybody who likes being called arrogant. Yet, recently, it happened to me. And I found myself experiencing four parts of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of death:
This got me to thinking. What is arrogance? What is corporate arrogance? And other than being somewhat irritating, is it really a problem?
Not all Business Books are Created Equal
By Nilofer Merchant on January 23, 2007
Quick, what’s the difference between a book and a doorstop? The answer: nothing, if the book’s not well-written.
Here’s a list of ten books that have changed the way I think. I consider them must-reads for 2007. These are whack-on-the-side-of-the-head good. Some are practical, some are theoretical. If you haven’t read them, fire up your computer and start ordering. If you have, this is the right time for a refresher.
Good Profits vs. Bad Profits: What You Need to Know As You Grow
By Bruce LaFetra on January 3, 2007
“Good” profits are like compound interest or a snowball rolling down a hill. “Bad” profits are like eating your seed corn or spending endowment capital: the results are not immediately apparent, but over time it is an unsustainable situation. For growing businesses, the ability to differentiate between good and bad profits, and generate good profits, is especially important.
So why don’t businesses focus on good profits? One reason is that businesses today are under tremendous pressure to grow, and maintaining growth is hard. For public companies, quarterly reporting can provide a temptation to go for short term gains. As a result “savvy” managers look for any way they can generate a profit today.
Insights on Corporate Blogging
By Michael Mace on November 12, 2006
Robert Scoble, former lead blogger at Microsoft, was interviewed recently by Ziff-Davis. Some key points:
Cluetrain 2007: Ten Commandments for Communicating with People Online
By Michael Mace on November 8, 2006
Seven years ago, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger posted an online document called the Cluetrain Manifesto. It laid out 95 principles for communicating with customers online. The Manifesto created big stir, was signed by a lot of people working in the tech industry, and turned into a book that sold well at the height of the Internet bubble. But since then it has been largely forgotten.
Seven years later, the Manifesto is a mixed bag. Some of its maxims are seriously out of date, and a few are just plain wrong. There are also some things missing. Because the document is long, and parts of it are badly off target, we’re reluctant to refer any of our clients to it today.
However, parts of the Manifesto are just plain brilliant, and deserve to be spray-painted on the walls of corporations around the world.
Understanding the full impact of the web
By Michael Mace on September 27, 2006
This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses.
I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a reaction to the Internet bubble — because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don’t understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don’t understand its full impact across their entire company.
To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here’s what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.
The Valley depends on your Innovation!
By Nilofer Merchant on August 7, 2006
Fred Smith. Know his name? Likely not, but he’s the founder and CEO of FedEx. The innovator who changed the concept of package delivery in our lifetime. When he came up with the idea of FedEx, he “borrowed” it from a different industry. Since telecommunications and banking both applied a hub and spoke system of dissemination, he thought that could be applied to delivery services to increase speed and efficiency and enable a new business concept. And you know what his undergraduate professor thought of this “innovation? ” Not much. He got a “C” and a bad peer review.
The Rise of Product Management
By Michael Mace on April 17, 2006
We’re seeing a rising tide of interest in the art and science of product management. The product manager is the person who translates customer requirements into product features at the start of a development process, and who translates the features back into customer benefit messages at the end. As the point of contact between market reality and engineering reality, a product manager is the linchpin who can make a product into a market success – or doom it to irrelevance. But product management isn’t well understood within many corporations. They often fail to give product managers the support, training, and empowerment they need to succeed.
What’s the Big Idea?
By Nilofer Merchant on January 1, 2006
Greatness in leadership is often associated with being the “big idea” person. When most of us think “Big Idea,” we think of technology pioneers like Steve Jobs (personal computers), Jeff Hawkins (PDAs). Heck we might think of Ben Franklin (electricity!) or whoever it was that invented the Internet. And then there appears to be a gap between those “big idea” folks and us high-tech executives. Hooey I say.
Creating “Big Ideas” is available to all of us. While I do agree education, experience, connections, and intelligence play roles, here are some ideas to guide you. With this, I hope to debunk the myth of where great ideas come from, and help you generate “Big Ideas” in your field that help you and your company to win markets.
If You Had to Double Your Business Next Year, What Would You Do?
By Nilofer Merchant on December 1, 2005
With 2006 quickly approaching, many companies are in the midst of thinking about “what’s next.” Whether it’s new customer acquisition plans, or accelerating profits, or displacing an emerging competitor, the pace and magnitude of success lies in clear thinking and planning now. The words planning and thinking sometimes imply “slow down,” but in reality the pace of business is ever — increasing and we need to figure out how to cause market momentum. Not slower, but faster.
Raising Entrepreneurs
By Nilofer Merchant on December 1, 2005
An article in the December 2005, Inc Magazine talked about how to raise entrepreneurs. Here are a few great ideas that can be applied to kids or ourselves.
How to Add [more] Value as a Remarkable Executive!
By Nilofer Merchant on December 1, 2005
How do you become a world-class executive?
You’re a proven business leader, with respected subject matter expertise. But are you viewed as a key executive to the organization? Does your CEO or Board trust you to provide input on, and champion, the issues most crucial to your firm’s long-term success? Do you know what it takes to get there? Is it about increased skills and competencies, or about style and attributes to break the glass ceiling, or even about better networking so you increase your sponsorship within the organization? Or is it something else? What makes you more than good, what makes you remarkable?
Value Innovation: Tools for Meeting & Exceeding Investor Expectations
By Nilofer Merchant on September 1, 2005
Does your company need to win new markets in order to keep up with, or more importantly, exceed investor expectations? Will you be able to get there by evolving your products or solutions, or will it require disruptive innovation? Does the challenge of your “day job” managing the existing business and investor expectations keep you from your “other job” of developing the strategy and plans that will allow you to leapfrog the competition? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are not alone and have the company of many other executives, which very likely includes your competitors.