Thursday, January 20, 2005

Boing Boing: Sony: DRM cost us the Walkman Posted here Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 6:56:47 PM     we forget to take into account thecosts of internal competition. Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights... High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division. ********

	Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Tom Peters narrow vision. Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 3:15:52 PM     Business people often just put together the pieces that lead to a conclusion. Tom Peters TOM PETERS - HARD TRUTHS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION I met Tom Peters some 20 years ago, when we were both panelists at an industry conference. His enthusiasm and motivating style were infectious. He gave me a personal copy of his first book, "In search of Excellence" which turned out to be a best-seller, and catapulted him into the top ranks of motivational speakers, gurus of greatness, champions of change. With all the recent noise about globalization and the migration of manufacturing to China and software to India, Tom Peters has come up with some "Hard Truths". I am summarizing some of them here. Please read them all (weblink below). Tom Peters' hard truths: 1. "Off-shoring" will continue; the tide cannot be reversed. 2. Service jobs are a bigger issue than manufacturing jobs, by an order of magnitude. 3. The automation of business processes is as big a contributor to job shrinkage as off-shoring. 4. We are in the middle of a productivity burst which happens every hundred years' (or so). This is good for us - in the long haul. 5. Job churn is normal and necessary: The more the better - in the long haul. 6. Americans' "unearned wage advantage" (Born in the U.S.A.) could be erased, permanently. 7. The impact of the wholesale entry of 2.5 billion people (China & India) into the global economy is unpredictable. It will bring big challenges and amazing opportunities. 8. Free trade works. Period. It makes the world a safer place - in the long haul. The process is not pretty at times. 9. Big Companies are off-shoring/automating almost exclusively in pursuit of efficiency and increased shareholder value. This is not new news. 10. Big companies do not create jobs, and historically have not created jobs. Big companies are not built to last; they are built to decline. http://www.tompeters.com/toms_world/observations.asp "In the long haul" and no discussion of the outer trends, such as concentration of wealth and power. Note that "productivity" means producing the same with fewer people as well as producing more with the same number. Increased productivity benefits go mostly to owners, some to consumers, and none to workers. A wise manager looks at both the short haul and the long haul. ********

	Monday, October 20, 2003

Women are a better fit to the economy - consequences? Posted here Monday, October 20, 2003 at 10:29:47 AM     The complexities..   Women have overtaken men at every level of education in developed countries around the world. And girls are now more confident of getting better-paid, professional jobs than their flagging male counterparts. International education figures, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show a consistent picture, across cultures and continents, of women achieving better results than men. The OECD survey is a detailed comparison of education achievement and spending in 43 developed countries. The success of girls is a complete reversal of what would have been expected a generation ago, said Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis at the OECD's education directorate. And he says that the 1990s have seen a remarkable change in women's expectations and achievements. The survey found that in almost every developed country, 15-year-old girls are more confident than boys about getting high-income jobs. For example, in the United Kingdom, 63% of girls expect to have "white collar, high-skilled" jobs by the time they are 30, compared to only 51% of boys. Comment: one issue, the downgrading of non whitecollar jobs. that is, real production. Women, taken away from children, are good employee careerists. men, taken away from soil and tools, make good bureaucrats. And we see that on balance women are better group leaders and organizational players than men. Consequences? Is it good for women? good for men? Good for children? Good for future humanity? ********

	Sunday, October 19, 2003

Columbia accident report Posted here Sunday, October 19, 2003 at 3:30:15 PM     This is important. A satement on why NASA managment failed. Sound familiar? Back in February, the space shuttle Columbia came in for a landing. It would pass over Northern California, so I was outside in the early dawn to watch it go overhead. But Palo Alto was cloudy that day. I came in and a few minutes, the radio news reported that the space shuttle had been lost during re-entry. All seven astronauts died. An accident review board, the CAIB, was created and they released their report a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I read the CAIB report. Here are a few notes and a summary of the report, along with links to the report. The day after takeoff, NASA engineers were reviewing the various videos of the takeoff. They noticed that a piece of foam hit the shuttle's wing. This started a discussion among NASA engineers as to whether the foam had caused damage. They estimated the foam was traveling at about 500 miles per hour when it struck the wing. However, NASA management had a tight schedule for a number of missions. There was no time for delays. In previous takeoffs, pieces of foam had hit the shuttles and nothing had happened, so management, who weren't engineers, concluded there was no need to look into this. NASA engineers, using personal contacts, asked the US military and intelligence agencies to use their spy satellites to look at the shuttle's wing. There were three separate attempts to ask for spy photos and each time, NASA management found out about these requests and ordered the military NOT to look at the shuttle. Managers warned the engineers to follow procedures. If the NASA engineers had gotten the images, they would have seen the hole, the astronauts could have stayed in the space station, another shuttle (Atlantis) could be sent up, and the astronauts could return on the second shuttle. At page 140 in the CAIB report, there is a description of these actions and decisions, with a list of three requests for images at p. 166 and a list of eight missed opportunities at p. 167, with a summary at p. 170. At p. 177, the CAIB looks into NASA's decision-making process. The piece of foam stuck the wing, creating a hole in the wing's leading edge. During re-entry, superheated air entered through the hole, melted the wing's aluminum internal structure, and the wing collapsed and fell off the shuttle as it was moving at 12,000 miles per hour. NASA managers, with their demand to stick to the schedule, their refusal to listen to the engineers, and using threats of reprimands against engineers who spoke up, caused the loss of the shuttle and the deaths of the astronauts. In the early 80s, the shuttle Challenger took off in cold weather. The Challenger accident review showed that engineers warned NASA before launch that the O-rings might fail and they asked for a launch delay. NASA managers overrode the engineers and went ahead with the launch. Challenger exploded and all seven astronauts were killed (summary of the Challenger event at p. 199-200.) From the CAIB's summary: ".NASA's management system is unsafe to manage the shuttle system." In contrast, the US Navy has a decision system that actively seeks minority or dissenting opinions. If there are no dissenting opinions, the officers are obligated to actively look for dissenting opinions. At NASA, the opposite was done: management suppressed dissent and did not seek it out. The CAIB report should be read by anyone who works in large organizations. It uncovers the blindness in organizational decision making, shows how this occurs, and how this can be remedied. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB at www.caib.us) 248-page report is at www.caib.us/news/report/default.html (PDF, 10 MB file). I suggest that you fetch this file; the CAIB website will close in early 2004. yrs, andreas www.andreas.com ********

	Thursday, October 09, 2003

Review of The Naked Corporation Posted here Thursday, October 09, 2003 at 9:59:04 AM     DON TAPSCOTT ON THE 'AGE OF TRANSPARENCY' Review from In their new book "The Naked Corporation," technology gurus Don Tapscott and David Ticoll say that a new "age of transparency" will revolutionize business. (The book' has received the enthusiastic endorsement of industry leaders such as Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who has called the book "brilliant," and Cisco chief CEO and President John Chambers, who says that the two authors "show how trust--powered by broad corporate transparency--isn't just about ethics, it is about success.") Tapscott and Ticoll write: "If the bursting of the Internet bubble and the scandals of 2002 have told us anything, it is that the days of opacity in business are over. Thanks to the Internet, whistleblowers, aggressive news media, customers, trading partners, shareholders, and community activists are gaining unprecedented access to information regarding corporate behavior, operations, and performance‹from financial data, employee grievances, and internal memos, to environmental disasters, product weaknesses, international protests, scandals and policies. Corporations are essentially becoming naked and 'if you¹re going to be naked, you¹d better be buff.'" ("The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business," Free Press)  review from http://www.newsscan.com/, ********