It’s funny, the story really doesn’t address the question with a well defined answer but it doesn’t really matter. The beauty of the story is the amount of hustle by the Korean-Americans & internationally minded Korean nationals trying to reconquer the old-school Chaebol powered Korea.
If it means sleeping on a futon next to your desk for a year to win then so be it. I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Bakers and chaebol in South Korea: Let them eat cake | The Economist
This in a nutshell defines Korea’s chaebol problem.
— The Rev. Charles Williams II of Detroit’s King Solomon Baptist church
Pete Hoekstra Ad Draws More Criticism, Called ‘Really, Really Dumb’
Pretty much dead on.
And a new era begins. The publicly traded social networking company.
IBM is at an entirely different level than what people would assume. Totally closer to an Apple or Amazon than a Microsoft or Yahoo.
4 reasons:
This column is a glimpse of the thinking behind some of the major steps I.B.M. has taken under Mr. Palmisano’s leadership, based on two recent interviews with him.
He says his guiding framework boils down to four questions:
• “Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”
• “Why would somebody work for you?”
• “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”
• “And why would somebody invest their money with you?”
…
The four questions, he explains, were a way to focus thinking and prod the company beyond its comfort zone and to make I.B.M. pre-eminent again. He presented the four-question framework to the company’s top 300 managers at a meeting in early 2003 in Boca Raton, Fla.
“This needs to be our mission and goal, to make I.B.M. a great company,” he said, according to executives who attended the gathering.
THE pursuit of excellence in those four dimensions shaped the strategy. To focus on doing unique work, with its higher profits, meant getting out of low-margin businesses that were fading. I.B.M.’s long-range technology assessment in 2002 concluded that the personal computer business would no longer present much opportunity for innovation, at least not in the corporate market.
Pretty much ego, hubris, vanity, hype & the lack of imagination.
It occurs to me at the beginning of 2012 that the most obvious business decisions in 2011 are the decisions that needed the most scrutiny and thoughtful analysis. Coming up with a disruptive web product or a business idea can’t be obvious nor can it be simple; they should be both brutally ridiculed and as Fred Wilson notes, mocked and misunderstood.
My lesson from 2011 is the obvious products and ideas that are praised for their simplicity are stripped of their disruptive quality that only the unknown can offer. And when building a disruptive product or idea, the unknown is far more limitless than what is known.
Going forward, this framework sounds like an excellent litmus test to make the most disruptive and challenging ideas come to life. There is something that should be uncomfortable about building the obvious to everyone idea because it truly indicates that the upside is nil.
BRIC for Mobile. Worth Billions of $. Calling it now: (via A VC: Where To Find Your Future Customers/Users)
The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes
A nice goal for everyone in 2012.
The Economist’s Special Report on Games. Read the whole thing but here are some why you should read it highlights:
