Net Neutrality, Are We Losing the Battle?
I was working on some more research on business model innovation the other day and as I thought about the role of the Internet in business model disruptions over the past 15+ years, I couldn’t keep my mind from wondering back to something that has troubled me for the past couple of weeks, the proposed […]
Amazon Rock Solid, Netflix Still Struggling With Customer Satisfaction
The latest results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index for retail and e-commerce show Amazon with a solid lead in customer satisfaction in both Internet retailing and across the entire department, discount and specialty retailer chain categories. Their score of 85 on the ACSI Index puts them ahead of Nordstrom (84), Target (81) and Kohl’s […]
Wall St. Leaves Money on Table for Subscription Companies
Look, we know the old truism that if you don’t have customers and profits you don’t have a business, you have a hobby. But could we please get a little balance on the profit idea? Emerging companies typically don’t declare profits because they use excess cash to fuel growth. Anything left over is plowed back […]
The CEO is the Most Confident Man in the Company
I heard somewhere that one definition the Navy has of a ship’s captain is that he is, “the most confident man on the ship.” A CEO could be similarly defined. Why confidence as the defining quality for these leadership roles? It’s because these roles will ultimately have to deal with leadership in the absence of […]
Facebook’s Growing Web Platform
If you want to find something, anything on the web, you "google" it…I mean how ubiquitous has a company become when it’s name becomes the verb for a common activity? Now I realize there are other search options, but according…
When Smart People Double Down on #FAIL
I awoke this morning to an email from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings saying he was sorry… although it wasn’t entirely clear if he was sorry for losing half of his market cap in the last year (shareholder) or sorry for the crappy streaming catalog and losing Starz while implementing a price increase (customer). It became […]
Sony’s IP Disaster and Amazon’s Cloud Crash — Rough Times Ahead for Hosted Solutions and Data?
It’s been a challenging few weeks for those dependent on the cloud, despite the continued stratospheric valuations of some companies embracing virtual deployment and network business models. Even though we’re not as likely to be i…
Private cloud discredited, part 2
I wrote part 1 of this post last October, highlighting a Microsoft white paper that convincingly established the economic case for multi-tenant, public clouds over single-enterprise, private infrastructures. Part 2 would wait, I wrote then, for “the other shoe still waiting to drop … a complete rebuttal of all the arguments over security, reliability and […]
Quick Thoughts on A/B Testing for Boostrappers
First thing is, if you’re not A/B testing, you’re missing out. It’s an absolutely essential tool for marketers. It’s completely free and easy too, thanks to tools like Google’s Website Optimizer. Second thing: most of what you test will fail! Yeah, pretty crazy, huh? It’s true. I keep an agile backlog (fancy way of saying […]
Monday’s Musings: Reflections On Obama And The False Hope For A Tech Halo
President Obama’s Visit Reflects The Importance Of Silicon Valley To The US Economy By now everyone’s seen and re-seen the photo showing the tech-centric dinner at John Doerr’s house in Woodside, CA on February 17th, 2011 (see Figure 1). With a guest list that included most of the “Captains of the Tech Industry” it would […]
