Blog Yes & Know

What defines scale?

In the past 100 years, we needed institutions to create scale. Firms provided us with a more efficient way to create value by lowering collaboration costs and increasing the access …

Must-Read Weekend Reading …

Wall Street rewards New Product Lines “There’s tremendous pressure on companies, particularly publicly traded companies, to grow and grow. You see, for the most part shareholders don’t profit from steadily …

Ballmer to Yang: I Just Can’t Quit You

Two NYT journalists see Microsoft ‘needing a franchise’ as the software giant puts the moves on Yahoo all over again. Two weeks after walking away from takeover talks with Yahoo, …

Piracy and Revenue Optimization

A winning business model requires a unified and all-encompassing approach that goes far beyond how monies are collected and products or services are delivered. In an earlier article, I mentioned a long list of functional areas that must align around a winning business model, but neglected to include Legal. How the legal eagles affect business models is critical and deserves an article of its own. That’s right–even the legal team is part of a winning business model.

Software Platforms of the Future

A very important trend to watch in 2007 will be the ongoing efforts to separate the operating system from the platform (the APIs and user interface that an application interacts with).
Key players in this movement include Adobe’s Apollo and Microsoft WPF/E.

Multiplier Developer Ecosystems

In grade school, one of the key determinants of popularity on the playground was how quickly you were selected when the time came to choose up sides for basketball, baseball or soccer. In the same way, the developing business model for the next ten years depends hugely on which set of developer and ecosystem partners pick you.
However, unlike grade school, you might have more ability to influence this selection.