2008 May 20 - Tue

Confusion by Committee

In reading Rob Weir's An Antic Dispoition blog today, he has a very cogent observation regarding committees:

I have a theory concerning committees. A committee may have different states, like water has gas, liquid or solid phases, depending on temperate and pressure. The same committee, depending on external circumstances of time and pressure will enter well-defined states that determine its effectiveness. If a committee works in a deliberate mode, where issues are freely discussed, objections heard, and consensus is sought, then the committee will make slow progress, but the decisions of the committee will collectively be smarter than its smartest member. However, if a committee refuses to deliberate and instead merely votes on things without discussion, then it will be as dumb as its dumbest members. Voting dulls the edge of expertise. But discussion among experts socializes that expertise. This should be obvious. If you put a bunch of smart people in a room and don't let them think or talk, then don't expect smart things to happen as if the mere exhalation of their breath brings forth improvements to the standard.

The quotation stems from his observations regarding the committee which was stick handling Microsoft's OOXML standard through the fast track process. Sometimes committees, when doing things properly, can be better than the sum of the parts, but without proper communication and time allotments, can turn out to be no better than the weakest link.

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2007 Oct 21 - Sun

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Today I was introduced to The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual through a NANOG posting in response to someone's quote:

I think you greatly underestimate how customers react to the truth.

A few easily reachable quotes from the full online text:

The connectedness of the Web is transforming what's inside and outside your business -- your market and your employees. 

We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers.  We are human beings  -- and our reach exceeds your grasp.  Deal 
with it

Facebook is probably one of many excellent examples of how humans interact, and companies are having a hard time trying to make those sites work for themselves. hmph. Perhaps when companies learn that they are made up of humans who share and interact, maybe good things can happen.

I'm thinking that many a great open source company has learned to share what could be classified as the family jewels, and thus have profited immensely from embracing the way humans naturaly interact.

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2007 Oct 06 - Sat

New Ideas -- For The Market Place, not the Existing Business Model

Dare Obasanjo wrote a nice blog entry summarizing some key ideas from Marc Andreessen and Clayton Christensen. In his entry entitled Stupid Things Big Companies Do, he had a great exerpt that confirmed that companies need to diversify their business models, offered up a key irony, and ended by providing a possible solution:

People come up with lots of new ideas, but nothing happens. They get very disillusioned. Never does an idea pop out of a person's head as a completely fleshed-out business plan. It has to go through a process that will get approved and funded. You're not two weeks into the process until you realize, "gosh, the sales force is not going to sell this thing," and you change the economics. Then two weeks later, marketing says they won't support it because it doesn't fit the brand, so we've got to change the whole concept.

All those forces act to make the idea conform to the company's existing business model, not to the marketplace. And that's the rub. So the senior managers today, thirsty for innovation, stand at the outlet of this pipe, see the dribbling out of me-too innovation after me-too innovation, and they scream up to the back end, "Hey, you guys, get more innovative! We need more and better innovative ideas!" But that's not the problem. The problem is this shaping process that conforms all these innovative ideas to the current business model of the company.

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2007 Sep 12 - Wed

Snow Squall Inn

If you happen to be the Wiscasset, Maine area, and need a place to stay, try out Snow Squall Inn. My good friend Melanie and her husband Paul own and operate the 7 room Bed & Breakfast. I hope to see them in October and check out their place.

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2007 Aug 05 - Sun

Shopping by Night Owls

I'm not sure who dreamed this one up, here is a good one:

While shopping on the Internet has always been a 24-hour ordeal, some retailers are starting to realize the potential of offering online-only discounts when their stores are closed. Traditional stores like Sears (SHLD), Kohl's (KSS) and Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) are offering online-only discounts between midnight and dawn. [Reference Link]:[http://www.chicagotribune.com]

Do they want people not to go to their stores?

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2007 Jul 28 - Sat

Manipulating Perceptual Focus in Advertisments

At Science Daily is an article about how to arrange advertised items so as to make the targeted item stand out:

In a new study from the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers from Northwestern University demonstrate how advertisements can be manipulated to cause overemphasis of a particular feature and increase the likelihood that a certain product is chosen. Their finding runs contrary to economic models, which assume that choices are based on stable preferences and should not be influenced by the inclusion of inferior options.

"By showing the impact of perceptual focus on consumer preferences, this research demonstrates that in addition to the many overt ways companies can draw attention to products, the visual arrangement of alternatives can also have a significant influence on their relative choice shares," explain Ryan Hamilton, Jiewen Hong, and Alexander Chernev.

In a series of fascinating experiments, the authors show how grouping together options with similar characteristics can emphasize dissimilar options and help them pop-out. For example, consider a comparison of two sofas, A and B. Sofa A has softer cushions; Sofa B is more durable. In a head-to-head comparison, sofa A is preferred by less than half of the survey participants -- 42.3 percent.

However, if sofas A and B are grouped with three other sofas, all of which have a low rating for cushion softness, then preference for sofa A jumps to 77.4 percent. One of these things is not like the others, and that apparently makes it more desirable -- a phenomenon the authors term "perceptual focus effect."

"The research presented in this article has practical implications for manufacturers and retailers in determining the size and composition of their product assortments," conclude the authors. "In particular, when designing product displays, in both print and electronic media, companies need to be aware of the potential impact of the visual characteristics of choice alternatives on consumer preferences."

The researchers also found that how consumers process information can influence how susceptible they are to perceptual focus effect. Those who rely on intuition are more likely to choose a perpetually focal option. In addition, having participants perform an analytical test before making a product choice drained logical reasoning resources and increased the likelihood that the person would choose the perpetually focal option.

Reference: Ryan Hamilton, Jiewen Hong, and Alexander Chernev. "Perceptual Focus Effects in Choice" Journal of Consumer Research: August 2007.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Chicago.

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2007 Mar 19 - Mon

Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker

Benson Shapiro wrote an article at the Harvard Business School called commodity Busters: Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker. In the article, he very elegantly writes about the importance of differentiating oneself from the competition. Rather than competing head to head, it is wise to pick a niche and become a monopolist in ones own right.

He provides a series of steps for doing it right:

• Create customer value
• Choose your customers
• Be different
• keep it simple
• Determine customer value
• Deliver on your promise
• Be courageous

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