Professor of Practice of Behavioral Economics | Academic Director of CEMS Master in International Management (MIM) Program @Cornell
I just blogged about corporate positions explicitly requiring blogging skills as part of a job description. WebProNews points me to news that CMT is on the ball with a Dukes of Hazzard blogger position, officially entitled "Vice President of Hazzard Institute".
My first two goldfish as a kid were called Starsky and Hutch. Does that count for anything?
Operations (whether manufacturing, service-oriented, etc.) is one of the most underrated subjects (I have at least two others) in MBA programs. Part of it has to do with that some aspects of operations use mathematics concepts like Little’s Law, statistical significance, queuing theory, etc.
But sometimes lack of enthusiasm for taking operations coursework has to do with how it is presold to students as opposed to how students feel after taking the course. Students generally love the lessons learned from MIT’s Beer Game. It is lesson that you can apparently now try online here.
For those more inclined to read about operations, bypass the mathematics, learn some of the main lessons, yet digest information in a popular, novel-style reading form, I highly recommend the book The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. The book does not need any endorsements as it has sold millions of copies. I characterize it as a "bridge book on business". It makes complex information accessible to the more general public and business readers. The potential for books on corporate blogging excite me in the same way (although grounding in solid business theory may not be as difficult for the blogging subject as it is for operations).
Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an area getting a lot of attention these days. According to Wikipedia, RSS is a group of "web-content distribution and republication (Web
syndication) protocols primarily used by news sites and weblogs (blogs)".
One key aspect of RSS technology is that one can both rapidly add and comb through information sources. People like Robert Scoble talk about how he can read 1000+ sources of info a day by subscribing to blogs, etc. via RSS in a newsreader.
Here’s a potential problem. The fable of the boiled frog goes like this according to Frogland:
"They say that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out right away to escape the danger.
But, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant,
and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling,
the frog will not become aware of the threat until it is too late.
The frog’s survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes."
Adding a subscription to a blog via RSS is like gradually raising the temperature of the water. We may all be frogs one day. Riddup!
P.S. This is a fairly common fable used in the management consulting industry to coerce client organizations to change, especially in more mature companies that do not use metrics to the extent one would like. See Brad Feld discussion on metrics here.
Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group
Steve Rubel has a good post that excerpts the HBR article that endorses business blogging as a breakthrough for 2005. Last year was the year of the blog. Perhaps 2005 or 2006 will be the year of the business blog. Mohan Sawhney, a well -renowned Kellogg professor of marketing, writes the HBR article. Here is the paragraph that grabbed me most:
"Marketers will naturally want their messages promoted on influential
blogs and protected from critical ones. But they will find it difficult
to navigate this complex blend of advertising, content, dialogue, and
public relations."
There are those that claim the blogosphere is nothing new and that this whole thing is just an extension of existing technologies. That’s more descriptive of the technology by itself and not prescriptive what should be done by businesses giving the changing social, communication, and business networking structures. PR firms and hired guns will likely emerge or develop additional competencies to navigate the new morass of knowledge and junk.
Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group
Ed Sim has a good post on knowing when to walk away from a deal. In his post he writes, "Having done enough deals, I am of the opinion that if it is extremely
one-sided and never makes economic sense, it is a recipe for disaster." What I also like is the tone of his writeup. Many of Ed’s posts are from the perspective of being involved and actively processing what’s going on in his venture portfolio companies.
Excellent post by Jeff Nolan on business development functions. More of a unique post in the blogosphere because the business development function is defined fuzzily (word?) across the industry as a whole in my mind. I agree with Jeff in the sense that this position is often troubled in tech start-ups. I would go further to say it is a position that is often troubled in many tech firms in general.
A book publisher approached me earlier this year to write a book on business and emerging technologies. Never thought of myself as being an author, but the opportunity showed up at the right time – my "spider-sense" told me that it was something that I should pursue further.
Things had been going well through final steps, but recently went South. Trying to do some legwork to see where things are at, but I suspect the deal is probably dead because of a combination of the market space and other factors (how’s that for leaving myself an open door!). More details to come for those following the blogging area. If you want to be included on an email list for updates of this thread, feel free to send me email at sshu@s4management.com (or you can just stay tuned). 😉
Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group
I left off my last post by asking why having an increased
number of choices works well at Starbucks, but seems to cause confusion when
buying jam. The difference often comes down to knowing our own preferences. For
everyday decisions with immediate feedback, like buying coffee, we are able to
establish our favorites relatively easily. And if the wrong choice is made, the
cost is low and we’ll only have to live with it for about an hour. Choosing the
wrong jam may stick with you a little longer – perhaps a month, depending on
how often you enjoy jam on toast. And consider really big decisions like where
to put your retirement savings – it’s a decision made rarely, with no immediate
feedback and very high stakes for choosing wrong. Too much choice can certainly
be overwhelming in such an environment.
Luckily, we can propose solutions for individuals
overwhelmed by choice. We can find ways to provide faster feedback so poor
choices can be corrected quickly. We can also help consumers deal with choice
by offering more information and assistance in discovering the relevant
attributes and tradeoffs, thus helping them discover their own preferences. Or
we can provide a hierarchy of choice, so that as a consumer’s preferences
become more refined over time, more customization becomes available to him. For
example, we can offer starter packs of a variety of small jam jars, or ask more
questions about when and where you eat jam, or devise rating scales that help
you better quantify your jam preferences. Although greater choice has the
downside of sometimes being overwhelming, it is a downside we can manage, and
the extra effort is often worth it.
But with all the focus on how overwhelming too much choice
can be, a different downside to unlimited choice and increased control has been
somewhat overlooked: the threat of temptation. (This also happens to be the
aspect of choice that I find most interesting.) Think again of the buffet
table. Once you overcome your initial surprise at just how much there is to
choose from and you begin loading your plate, you face a new problem: how to
know when to stop. It’s hard not to overeat with so many good options in front
of you! As a result, many weight-conscious individuals have devised personal
rules to constrain themselves, such as only a certain number of trips to the
buffet line per visit, or a certain number of buffet restaurant visits per
month, or even no visiting buffet restaurants at all.
It isn’t hard to think of lots of other self-control rules
that people impose on themselves to rein in the temptation that comes with
increased choice. Shoppers put budgets on how much they can spend during a trip
to the mall. They vow to visit only the store that carries the item they intend
to buy that day, without making any other stops. They only allow themselves to
buy tempting grocery product if they’re on sale or have a coupon. One of my
personal favorites – they vow to drink certain bottles of wine only on special
occasions. Unfortunately, although these rules work well to control
temptations, they can also make the consumer worse off overall. Untold bottles
of special wine have gone bad waiting for the special occasion that never
arrived.
So how do we, as marketers, find ways to help consumers deal with the increased temptations that come with increased choice? And is it even in our interest to do so? In my next post, I’ll talk about how companies who are aware of these self-control problems have found some creative ways to help consumers save themselves from their own bad behaviors.