Business

The difference between a trusting board and a loyal board

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 15, 2010 / Leave a comment

The Harvard Business Review blogger, Justin Fox had an interesting take last week on the whole Mark Hurd, HP, Oracle fiasco. He pointed out that what it really calls out is the difference in how tightly managed the executives are by the boards of the two companies. HP’s board forced...
Business Advice: Play Like the Penguins

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 11, 2010 / Leave a comment

Even the greatest companies occasionally find themselves in a rut. In 1993 Apple began losing its identity by releasing over a dozen different models with little differentiation. In 1995 they sealed the deal by letting other manufacturers like Motorolla produce machines that can support System7 (Mac’s OS at the time). The point of...
The CEO is an Investor

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 8, 2010 / Leave a comment

A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank. There’s a bit of a Meme going around...
The Social Eco-System can Learn Some Lessons from Supply Chain Work of the Early 2000s

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 7, 2010 / Leave a comment

Much was made in the early 2000s of the need for companies to focus on entire vertical solutions, even if they don’t own the entire system. For example, a producer of carrots that sells to a bagger of frozen vegetables must consider that bagger a partner in a vertical system,...
The Blueprint for Social Startups From Now On

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 31, 2010 / Leave a comment

When Twitter announced that they would be buying/producing clients for mobile phones and looking to advance their own web platform in attempt to crush other clients, many people started to wonder whether working with the Twitter API was a good idea (I was one of them). Around that time, Fred...
CloudCrowd, LaaS and the Unit of Work

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 17, 2010 / 2 Comments

Let’s take a journey through labor beginning in the early 1950s. At that time, the large American multinational firm hired Americans with High School or college degrees and put them to work. 40 years later those kids retired and their employer paid for their retirement. People may have been paid...
On The Netflix and Epix Deal

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 12, 2010 / Leave a comment

Netflix announced that it has reached an agreement with Epix to have exclusive online (and by online we strictly mean web here, not video ondemand) rights to all movies made by MGM and several other major studios (details). From a personal perspective, I’m a Netflix customer who uses their online...
Learning from Google About Learning from Mistakes: Part 2 – Opportunity Cost and Sunk Cost

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 6, 2010 / Leave a comment

I spoke yesterday about why I believed Google made the smart choice in investing in Google Wave. In that post I looked at the reasons why Wave’s loss wasn’t that tragic (thanks to intellectual capital generated during its construction). I also explained why the potential gain Google could have had...
Learning from Google about Learning from Mistakes: Part 1 – Taking Risks

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 5, 2010 / 2 Comments

Yesterday, Google announced that it was shutting down all future work on Google Wave. They unceremoniously ceased development on it, in spite of what must have been a ~$20M investment. Interviewed about it later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it’s...
Subscriptions Solve the All-Call (and More)

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 4, 2010 / Leave a comment

Seth Godin made a post a couple months ago (ok, a few now), that’s been in my “to comment on” stack forever. Today, I’m pulling it off the stack. Godin’s discussion focuses around the old telephone systems that allowed you to page everyone in the company with a single button,...

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The difference between a trusting board and a loyal board

Business Advice: Play Like the Penguins

The CEO is an Investor

CloudCrowd, LaaS and the Unit of Work

On The Netflix and Epix Deal

Learning from Google About Learning from Mistakes: Part 2 – Opportunity Cost and Sunk Cost

Learning from Google about Learning from Mistakes: Part 1 – Taking Risks

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