Blackberry’s been running a great campaign. It started with a banner ad. The banner asked you to share with Blackberry “why you loved it”. From there, you could read other stories of why people loved their blackberry. There are lots and lots of stories. And you can learn more about your Blackberry in the process. [...]
Archive | Tech & Trends
CMOs: Lead a Revolution!
A CEO I was working with at a Fortune 500 asked if I could leave my company and join his exec team as their (latest) CMO. I loved the company, its customers, and the team so I was seriously tempted. Yet, I knew the chances of surviving and thriving in that context were let’s just [...]
Some good reads …
I’d like to simply point you to some good articles with little commentary that I think are worth noting. Here, a great visual of every product Apple ever made since 1976. I became a customer in 1984, worked there from ’89-96, left the line briefly for two years and returned in or around the year [...]
Amazon S3: No More Flat-rate Pricing
What does it mean when a vendor adopts flat-rate pricing, but later moves away from it? Does this mean the vendor misjudged the market initially or wised up and found new ways to exploit their customers? The truth is both more and less complicated than any of these explanations.
Amazon is in the news because they announced that as of June 1, they are introducing tiered pricing for parts of their S3 web services. Amazon’s announcement states that many customers will pay less and some will pay (a lot) more. To understand what is going on, it helps to understand a little about pricing theory and practice.
Separating “How” from “What:” An open letter to the tech industry
One of the advantages of working as a consultant is that you get to look at the big picture across corporations. You can see trends and common themes that might not be obvious to somebody working in a single company.
One of the themes that’s become very clear lately is our industry’s difficulty telling the difference between “how” and “what” when designing products.
Value Chains Come and Go
The PC era came into an end when open took over. Dell, IBM, Microsoft all had market power. And then Open Source + white boxes came along. Now decentralization is driving innovation. No one owns web 2.0. Small teams of 5 or 7 create, and then mash ups and with the alternative business models available, [...]
Porter Model is Dead
I’m at the O’Reilly conference of Emerging Technology and it’s giving me just the right setting (and time away from the day job of leading Rubicon) to capture an idea I’ve been brewing for some time. Because the work I do is about helping companies to win markets, I pay a lot of attention to [...]
Execute revenue growth, or not
I was just reading Double Digit Growth by Michael Treacy. Yes, during work hours. Call it my version of eating bon-bons. I needed a break. And his book is one of many in my recent pile of acquisitions. Recent being the last 3 months. And I’m so far behind, I’ve actually NOT bought a book [...]
Mobile Users non Loyal … Explained
Is anyone surprised by this content: Loyalty To Wireless Carriers Is Hard To Come By. By Antone Gonsalves TechWeb.com Two-thirds of U.S. adult mobile phone users comparison shop for wireless carriers, with more than two out of five doing so within the two months before their contracts expire, a market research firm said Friday. While [...]
The Holy Grail of the SMB Market
I’ve been working with many a new client who wants to reach the SMB market. These are traditional enterprise companies who want to expand. And they the SMB market as a viable one to pursue for growth. But this market has been elusive to many for a long, long time. That’s changing of course. But [...]