Maand: oktober 2008

4 onverwachte schokken

Leestijd: < 1 minuut

Een interessant stuk van Harvard Business Publishing over onverwachte schokken. Het geeft 4 voorbeelden.
“1. Back in 1988, media mogul Rupert Murdoch paid $3 billion to acquire TV Guide. A few days, ago, after passing through the hands of several owners, TV Guide was sold to private investors for the price of $1. That’s right. . . investors bought the whole company for less than the price of a single issue!
 2. After 68 consecutive quarters (that’s 17 years) of profitability, Southwest Airlines finally posted a money-losing quarter in the period ending September 30. The problem? Fuel prices were declining too quickly! As a result, Southwest had to write down the value of the fuel-hedging contracts that had served it so well for so many years. Sometimes being smarter than everyone else actually costs you money. 3. General Motors now has a stock-market value of $3.5 billion–just a bit more than what TV Guide was worth 20 years ago. GM also has $20 billion of cash on its balance sheet. What does it say about GM’s future when you can spend $3.5 billion to buy a pile of cash worth $20 billion–and GM can’t find an investor willing to take a stake?
 Lees verder Bron: Harvard Business Publishing

De toekomst is dichterbij dan je denkt

Leestijd: < 1 minuut

Seth Godin:Items in the future are closer than they appear. If you’re going across town, you’re very specific: “188 Fifth Avenue, on the east side of the street please.” On the other hand, when you go on vacation, you tell people, “I’m going to Paris,” not “we’re going to 8 rue du Cherche-Midi.” And if you’re going even farther than that, you skip the city and country altogether and just say, “we’re going to Africa.” One day, Richard Branson will take you all the way to Mars–all you get is the name of the planet. This makes sense, of course. We don’t need to know which crater you’re going to, just that it’s far away. Marketers spend a lot of time describing a future and making it real. The more general you are in describing it, the farther away people imagine it is. “We’re going to launch a new product next year” sounds a lot more distant than handing someone a prototype and saying, “this launches on January 3rd at 2 pm at CES.” Short version: If you want people to embrace your version of the future, talk about it like it’s right around the corner, not on another planet.Bron: Seth Godin