Learning Business on TV

Posted on by under Business Media

There is also an article in March’s Inc. titled Getting An MBA Via Tivo. If you have the current issue, you can find it on page 34.

The article is a series of snippets about different shows and business problems their characters are facing. They then interviewed a real life experts that offered advice. On Six Feet Under, an employee with an ownership stake is headed for divorce. On Miss Match, a divorce lawyer mixes her matchmaking business with defense of her clients. On The OC, a developer is sued by environmentalists over a potential site.

Again, I am not sure I am going to be looking to television for business advice.

Learning from Trump?

Posted on by under Business Media

I think I have given up on The Apprentice. When it started, I was trying to pull business lessons out of each episode. After the third week, I was finding it almost impossible. Businesspundit also had higher hopes for the show.

Consider this week. The teams had to sell Donald’s new product – “Trump Ice”. One team beat the other and Ereka got fired. They showed some of the selling, but it was edited to create the proper tension. What could you really learn from the teams?

I think there is a segment of reality television that plays to a viewer’s interest in learning. Trading Spaces, What Not to Wear, and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy all have that component. I think the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel also has it.

I wanted to learn something from The Apprentice. I guess I’ll go buy Trump’s book instead.

Would You Like Technology With That?

Posted on by under Personal

Rob posted yesterday about Jeff Immelt’s comments in BusinessWeek. He took the typical GE line and said we should all embrace globalization. The comments seem to coincide with the article in yesterday’s WSJ about GE and their recent power-generation deal in China. Here is the first four paragraphs of the article:

In his two decades pursuing contracts in China for General Electric Co., Delbert Williamson’s strategy was always simple: Sell the most power equipment at the best price.

But by the time Mr. Williamson sat down at a banquet at the historic Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing last March, to celebrate the award of a $900 million contract for high-tech electricity-generation turbines, the formula for GE’s success in China had changed dramatically.

In addition to offering a competitive price, Mr. Williamson had to agree to share sophisticated GE technology with two Chinese companies that wanted to eventually make the equipment themselves.

Mr. Williamson, then GE’s president of global sales, was reluctant to open his company’s technology vault. But GE had little choice. To be considered in the bidding for equipment contracts totaling several billion dollars, GE and its competitors were required to form joint ventures with the state-owned Chinese power companies. GE was also required to transfer to their new partners technology and advanced manufacturing guidelines for its “9F” turbine, which GE had spent more than a half billion dollars to develop.

I am appalled by the idea that to play in the Chinese market you have to give them the technology for what you are going to sell. While they are at it, I think they should ask for a complete customer list. Can someone give me another example of anything like this?

I can already hear the opposing arguments.

“If we didn’t, someone else would.” As a GE shareholder, I think it may have been in the company’s best interest to pass on this deal.

“We will continue to innovate and make even better products.” That is great, but you have just given the Chinese a pass on the last 100 years of industrial evolution.

The Chinese have the long view. They are not thinking about the equipment they are buying now. They are thinking about the turbines they are going to be building 20 years from now. They are thinking about how applicable turbine technology is to jet engines. Boeing has Chinese partners building pieces of planes now. The complete planes is not far behind.

What will they ask for next?

[I want to thank Mr. Foster calling out the WSJ article in businesspundit’s comments. I missed the WSJ yesterday and would have missed the article altogether.]

Apple of My Eye?

Posted on by under Personal

Some people asked me to talk about how the switch to Apple is going.

I continue to get acclimated to the new Powerbook. I knew there would be new things to get use to. The navigation is a little different. I like Expose and how it manages multiple windows. I am really impressed with how the iLife products work so well with each other. My wife has already made her first movie and published it to the web.

I also knew I would have to sacrifice. There have been two casualties thus far. The first is my Oddpost mail. The service is only available for Internet Explorer. With that I lost a great web-based mail systems with a RSS aggregator.

The second loss is the Movable Type interface. I was really annoyed to find the tag buttons missing on the New Entry page of MT. I use those constantly. Again, the javascript that runs those buttons is only supported on IE.

The encouraging part is for every problem, I find a better solution on Apple. I use NetNewsWire for my RSS feeds. The interface is outstanding and I love the ability to group feeds in folders. For blogging, I am trying out Ecto. Ecto is a client that sits on your desktop and does more than I could ask for managing posts.

Still looking for a killer email program…

Blogging and Business IV

Posted on by under Business Blogs

Today I want to talk about a Harvard Business Review case study called “A Blogger in Their Midst” This was put together by Halley Suitt and released in September 2003. I have seen a couple mentions of the case in the blog world, but no in-depth discussion of it.

The case study is about a fictional company that make gloves for the medical community. At an industry conference, the company is upstaged by “Glove Girl”, an employee who is blogging about the company and has been invited to the same conference. She has talked about everything from the medical practices of customers to conditions at the company’s overseas plants. The reader sees the story swing from the company wanting to fire Glove Girl to her receiving in a job offer from a customer. This is a story that is yet to take place at many companies.

The case contains commentary by four people – David Weinberger of Cluetrain Manifesto fame; Law Professor Pamela Samuelson of UC-Berkley; Ray Ozzie of Groove Networks; Erin Motameni, VP of human resources at EMC.

To no surprise, the tech contingent is sympathetic to blogging and offers words of caution. Weinberger says that Glove Girl is just talking about what she and the customers are interested in and that is why the company so worried. Ozzie and Weinberger both stress the importance of making clear who the blogger is speaking for. At Groove, they have developed a weblog policy around four ideas:

  1. The blog needs to clearly state that the blog is the personal views of the blogger

  2. Confidential information cannot be disclosed inadvertently or intentionally

  3. The company, employees, partners, or customers may be disparaged

  4. No postings can violate securities law or other regulations

Samuelson warns of the liability the employee and the employer by proxy could have by the information posted. Motameni is the only one who has real problems with Glove Girl. Motameni thinks Glove Girl has overstepped her bounds as an employee and claims management is failing by not reeling her in. She think marketing and senior leadership should be talking to customers, not a renegade employee.

If you are trying to get people in your company familiar with blogging, I think this is a great primer to examine the issue from many different angles.

Business and Blogging III

Posted on by under Business Blogs

I am on a quest. I want to find businesses that are using weblogs to communicate with their customers. I want ones that are doing it well. I want companies that are creating conversations with their customers

I have highlighted Jewelboxing in the past.

I am looking for more good examples.

Please leave your examples in the comments section or send me an email – todd at apennyfor dot com. Please include your thoughts on why you think they are using weblogs well.

To sweeten the offer, I will send a copy of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow to three people who provide the best examples.

Business and Blogging II

Posted on by under Business Blogs

In addition to stopping at B&N, I stopped at the library. On a whim, I did a search on blog in the electronic card catalog. The book that came up was We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs by Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey, and Meg Hourihan. I checked it out to find out what they had to say about business and blogging.

They spend a chapter talking about using blogs in business. Here is what they have to say about adding blogs to an external site:

  • People return to sites that are trusted providers of information – blogs make websites more addictive and give people a reason to come back more often. By providing information your customers are interested in, weblogs build trust, inspire consumer confidence, and strengthen your brand.

  • Keeping customers up-to-date – weblogs are a great way to talk about news items both big and small.

  • Point people inside the site – I like this one alot. You can use your weblog to get people to the new content on your site. This might be a hot job posting or a new product.

  • Consistent location for news and information – people always know where to look for the latest goings-on at the company.

  • Update on your timeframe – Weblogs give users the ability to easily update the website with new content.

These ideas also describe everything that is great about weblogs in general. My question is why aren’t more businesses using them?

Nothing stays the same

Posted on by under Strategy

The Wall Street Journal reports today that DeBeers is in talks with the Justice Department to reach a settlement in the long-standing case against the South African based firm. DeBeers is best known for their virtual monopoly of natural diamond. They are also a strong competitor in the industrial diamond market.

The case against Debeers stems from their industrial diamond business. It has been open since the 1940’s and was reignited in 1994 when they and GE were both charged with price fixing. The case against GE was thrown out after only two days in trial. With no business operations in the U.S., the Justice Department was unable to prosecute DeBeers. Sources say DeBeers is going to plead guilty and pay a fine to settle the case.

Why settle? Times are changing. There are more sources for jewelry quality diamonds. Artifical diamonds are starting enter the market. DeBeers has decided they need to have a physical presence in the U.S. They have been developing retail stores in Paris and Tokyo with a French firm. Other plans may be in the making. Legal issues cloud their ability to establish a high quality brand.

My interest in the story is that I worked for GE Superabrasives for three years. I started about six months after the price-fixing case was thrown out. What I always found interesting was DeBeers’ strategy to create stability in the marketplace. They wanted stable demand and stable prices. This held true in both their natural and industrial diamond business. That started to change in industrial diamond with new competition from Asia forcing prices lower.

It now seems DeBeers is dealing with the same problem on the other side of their business.

Business and Blogging

Posted on by under Business Blogs

I have become pretty interested in blogging and its effects as it relates to business. There are a number of different aspects that I want to cover this week.

Today, I want to point you to Lee at Commoncraft. Last month, he posted an entry on George Dafermos’ paper, Blogging the Market. Dafermos covers a lot of interesting ground in this paper.

He starts by talking about the agora of Ancient Athens.

In the city-state of Athens, about 3,000 years ago, Athenian citizens used to meet regularly at the “town centre” to announce projects, discuss politics and military affairs and decide on matters of common interest. What was so peculiar about this congregation – that came to be known as ‘agora’ – is that all Athenian citizens had the right to speak their own mind about almost anything and address their fellow citizens and when a decision had to be made, no one’s vote mattered more than someone else’s.

Dafermos believes weblogs create these coversations again.

He talks about Gizmodo’s for-profit blogging model. He discusses Macromedia’s strategy to use blogging as a new products communication tool. He devotes a section to the risks of allowing employees to talk openly about the company. Some of the more interesting sections discuss weblogs as knowledge management systems and how weblogs can motivate employees to share knowledge by giving proper credit to its origins.

Check it out.

The new computer

Posted on by under Personal

I purchased a 15″ Powerbook G4 this weekend.

I am pretty happy about the purchase. We made the switch for three reasons.

  1. I wanted portability. I plan on being out of the house a couple days a week working on my next thing.
  2. We think it handles photos and video better. My wife wants to make DVDs with movies, pictures, and music.
  3. For once, I wanted to be cool.

The Apprentice Catch-up

Posted on by under Business Media

I finally caught up this morning on the three episodes of NBC’s The Apprentice that I missed.

Here is a quick summary and my thoughts:

  • Donald has the teams selling at the flea market, putting together celebrity packages for a charity auction, and renting Brooklyn apartments.
  • Kristi, Jessie, and Tammi were all weak based on their performances. I think it starts to get interesting now.
  • How do you lose $200?
  • Could the show be any more about Trump?
  • I have the same problem as Jeremy. I can’t apply to Apprentice 2. My wife works for GE, NBC’s parent company.
  • My wife and I think the show should be longer in length, so you can get a better sense of what is happening during these competitions. The way they edit the shows is starting to annoy us.
  • We are going to keep watching 🙂

Business in France

Posted on by under Etc.

I got into a conversation with a friend while I was in France. We were planning our next day’s activities and without any strong plans, I thought we should put up a lemonade stand out in front of the house. He said we couldn’t do that. I found that a bit odd.

That led into a hour-long conversation about business in France and US. The idea of the lemonade stand or the neighborhood kid mowing someone’s lawn is completely foreign. That really made me wonder what was so different.

Here are a couple of things:

  • All businesses need to go through some 20+ step governmental process before you can begin operating.

  • The average person doesn’t have the means of starting their own enterprise. That leaves banks as a main source of capital. Banks show a similar rigor in the approval process as those in the States.
  • There isn’t bankruptcy protection in France. If your business fails, the owner is personally responsible for the debt and will spend the rest of their life repaying it, if need be.

So, its hard to set-up, it is difficult to raise capital, and failure means a lifetime of repayment.

Laws and regulations do make a difference. I think we take for granted the entrepreneurial climate that exists in the U.S.