Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Dark stores and coercive diplomacy

    I came across a couple of interesting terms recently: dark stores and coercive diplomacy.

    Dark stores

    Gartner for Marketing (formerly L2 Inc.) were talking about a new development at Amazon’s Whole Foods subsidiary. It was what Gartner called digital dark stores. The first one has been established in Industry City to serve much of Brooklyn, New York.

    Amazon themselves called it a ‘permanent online-only store‘ on their blog.

    So whats the difference between dark stores and the ‘last mile’ warehouses that Amazon uses for fulfilment in places like London?

    • Looking at the limited amount of photos available, this doesn’t feel warehouse-like. There wasn’t obvious automation in the pictures. Instead it feels like a supermarket that’s well stocked, but lacking price tags and shopper marketing accoutrements. Gartner describe it as ‘technically a grocery store’, which implies that there might be zoning or planning regulations that they might be working around
    • It is only for the Whole Foods brand; rather than fulfilling Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Now items

    This isn’t just an Amazon thing. Gartner points out that American supermarket brands Kroger and Giant Eagle have also embraced the order-only store model. More at Gartner for Marketing here.

    Coercive diplomacy

    The Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report on September 1, 2020 called The Chinese Communist Party’s coercive diplomacy. It was written by Fergus Hanson, Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie. Hanson, Currey and Beattie analysed ten years of Chinese government diplomacy. In there words:

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly deploying coercive diplomacy against foreign governments and companies. Coercive diplomacy isn’t well understood, and countries and companies have struggled to develop an effective toolkit to push back against and resist it.

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly deploying coercive diplomacy against foreign governments and companies. Coercive diplomacy isn’t well understood, and countries and companies have struggled to develop an effective toolkit to push back against and resist it.

    This report tracks the CCP’s use of coercive diplomacy over the past 10 years, recording 152 cases of coercive diplomacy affecting 27 countries as well as the European Union. The data shows that there’s been a sharp escalation in these tactics since 2018. The regions and countries that recorded the most instances of coercive diplomacy over the last decade include Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and East Asia.

    There seems to be an escalation of economic and non-economic measures deployed. Economic measures would include:

    • Trade sanctions – such as the recent ban on German pork products. This was rolled out just a few days in advance of a trade negotiation meeting between China and the European Union
    • Investment restrictions in strategic industries such as the ‘agreement‘ that Yahoo!, Softbank and Alibaba had over Alipay (which included what would now be Ant Group). Strategic industries like state security is notoriously (and deliberately) ill-defined in China
    • Tourism bans
    • Popular boycotts such as Korean corporate Lotte being driven out of China and the 2012 anti-Japan protests where the public smashed Japanese stores, attacked factories and burned Japanese cars

    Coercive pressure is also applied at below state level on businesses. It may also be applied on individuals, based on the data leak provided from Zhenhua Data seems to imply.

    Non economic measures include:

    • Arbitrary detention. The best example of this would be Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor detained as part of China’s dispute with Canada. Another example might be Australian citizen Karm Gilespie. China didn’t admit it had detained him for over six years, until they announced his death sentence in the summer
    • Restrictions on official travel
    • State-issued threats which are usually issued on a regular basis as part of wolf warrior diplomacy. (Wolf Warrior is a set of two films with a Chinese action hero, a la Rambo – but with less humour).

    Some of the imputus for coercive diplomacy might come from the Chinese Communist Party’s continued rancour over Qing dynasty-era unequal treaties. More China related content here and more on retailing here.

  • Chinese State Security + more things

    When Chinese State Security police knocked on ABC journalist Bill Birtles’ door, he realised he was no longer safe in China – ABC News – interesting how business and finance reporting has been hard for the past few years. Which is one of the reasons why scandals like Luckin Coffee happen. Chinese state security is incompatible with the kind of transparency needed for good business reporting. More on Luckin Coffee here.

    Mulan’s official Chinese poster advances a nationalist agenda — Quartz – tweaked its posters, fascinating run through he symbolism

    Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web – IEEE Spectrum – For a generation of French citizens, Minitel wasn’t about hardware, switches, or software. It was about the people they chatted with, the services they used, the games they played, and the advertisements for these services they saw in newspapers and on billboards. Many of the services that we associate with the Web had predecessors in Minitel. Before there was Peapod, there was 3615 TMK (Tele-Market), a service that enabled Parisians to order groceries for same-day delivery. Before there was Cortana or Siri, there were Claire and Sophie, services that provided personalized information using natural-language interfaces. Before there was Ticketmaster, there was Billetel. And before there was telebanking, there was Minitel banking

    Brand Equity May Be Auto Industry’s Biggest AI Risk | CLS Strategies – The AI Risk Index reflects a substantial gap between what is intended and what is perceived by critical stakeholders. The results are stark—especially in the context of substantial investment and many more years of public scrutiny as AI is improved—and reveal a growing crisis of trust. Though an average of 62% of Americans are familiar with companies in the transportation industry, only 35% have a positive opinion of them (compared to 43% for non-automotive manufacturing and 41% for retail companies) and only 37% trust them (compared to 44% for manufacturing and retail companies). Even more concerning is that the transportation companies most heavily involved in AI technology drive this sense of distrust, more so than traditional carmakers. That may explain why only three out of eight transportation companies analyzed during the third quarter of 2018 mentioned advancements in AI at all—indicating that auto companies are either communicating poorly or not communicating at all.

    Amazon’s profits, AWS and advertising — Benedict Evans – interesting analysis of where Amazon makes it’s money

    Strategic Management: Evaluation and Execution – Table of Contents – great book available in the creative commons

    BlackBerry Is Planning a Comeback. For Some, It Never Left | WIRED – a bit like me and Nokia feature phones LOL. On a more serious note you see this kind of loyalty on lots of diminished, but distinctive brands. SAAB would be the classic poster child

    2007 forever – The Magic iPod – resurrecting AplusD type mashup culture

    Facebook May Be Ordered to Change Data Practices in Europe | New York Times – Facebook is facing the prospect of not being able to move data about its European users to the United States, after European regulators raised concerns that such transfers do not adequately protect the information from American government surveillance. – this comes under the Irish data commissioner. More here – Facebook Fights Irish Privacy Watchdog’s Data-Transfer Curbs – Bloomberg 

    Human values: understanding psychological needs in a digital age – BBC R&D – really interesting work done by BBC Research and Development that could be applied to site and app design

    Douyin, China’s TikTok, permanently bans live-streamer who verbally harassed young women on the streets | South China Morning Post 

  • Full spectrum information ops + more

    Internet Observatory – New White Paper on China’s Full Spectrum Information Operations – China’s influence strategy on COVID-19 has involved a full spectrum of overt and covert tactics, which has included domestic censorship, English-language state media messaging bolstered by Facebook ads, and the use of fake accounts to influence conversations on Western social media platforms. English-language state media Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts, as well as Chinese diplomats and embassies, took part in an overt messaging effort to amplify the CCP’s preferred narratives on COVID-19. Covert state-sponsored activity leveraging fake Twitter accounts paralleled these efforts, praising the CCP’s pandemic response and criticizing the responses of other actors, such as the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. See also: Special Report: Australia faces down China in high-stakes strategy – Reuters 

    Huawei’s consumer chief says Harmony operating system will be rolled out on its smartphones in 2021 | South China Morning Post – security is an issue, and it doesn’t bode well that its all under a proprietary licence. Developers are an issue not only because of the installed base but the average revenue per user (ARPU). Points that are missing in this article

    Row over withdrawal treaty triggered law chief’s resignation | Financial Times – “Number 10 are doing this deliberately to pick a fight with the judiciary. They want to put the judges and Supreme Court on [the] wrong side of popular opinion. It’s a mistake to assume this is all about Brexit.” – reminds me of how Hong Kong is now being criticised for a defacto lack of separation in legislative and judicial powers brought in by China. It also affects the UK’s ‘gold standard’ contract law benefits

    FSI | Cyber | Internet Observatory – A US PR Firm Steps Into Contested Elections – interesting that they name the firm: CLS Strategies

    China Launches Initiative to Set Global Data-Security Rules – WSJ – playing to the global south. More on data privacy here.

    Australian correspondents Bill Birtles and Mike Smith pulled out of China after five-day diplomatic standoff over national security case – ABC News – no Australian journalists now in China

    Mediatel: Mediatel News: An age-old issue – Finally, note the profusion of industry 30 Under 30 awards (just Google it). Even actuaries have one. But don’t kill them. They’re vital. No, let’s have the 50 Over 50 awards, and 60 Over 60 (assuming you can find that many), or OAP Heroes of WPP

  • Science, Strategy and War by Frans P.B. Osinga

    Science, Strategy and War isn’t a book that would have normally made it on to my reading list, but we’re living in strange times. The book is an analysis of the history and strategic theory created over time by John Boyd.

    Boyd’s thinking led to the development of post-Vietnam, pre-stealth fighter aircraft that dominated the world’s skies. Boyd employed his experience and the insight that a ‘Swiss Army knife’ approach seldom provided an adequate design solution. A lesson that the US failed to learn when it created the F-35.

    Boyd was also responsible for creating the ideas that encouraged the US to move war into the IT space. Boyd’s thinking on strategy has shaped military thinking on tools, structure, integration and responsibility. What military-types call network-centric warfare. This seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technology, into a competitive advantage.

    We saw the potential of this thinking in the first Gulf War when sensors, missiles and satellite imagery changed the face of modern warfare. What was less appreciated at the time by commentators is that this form of warfare was uniquely aided by Iraq’s flat terrain; which aided remote sensors and wireless networks. But the network-centric aspect really came into its own with William Owens’ paper on the system-of-systems which was emerging as the military followed Boyd’s approach.

    Ok, whilst there is some crossover with technology concepts such as Kevin Kelly’s ‘mirrorworld‘; where AR knits together networked information with location this is all pretty arcane stuff.

    Boyd breaks out of military circles

    John Boyd is particularly famous for a model called OODA which has broken out from its military origins. Probably the most high profile fan at the moment is Dominic Cummings – the special advisor to Boris Johnson and political activist.

    Cummings has talked about Boyd in terms of disruption and marketing of his political messages – through getting inside their OODA loop.

    Boyd’s ideas have also been picked up by sports coaches and even litigation teams in the US.

    OODA

    OODA or observe–orient–decide–act, is often described as a ‘loop’ and shown that way. However this deceives the audience of its true nature. As Osinga correctly points out; observe and orient are continual flows of information that feed into the decide and act functions. Strategists talk about ‘getting inside the enemies OODA loop’; that is disrupting their intelligence, understanding of their situational awareness and ability to act.

    Osinga’s critique of Boyd

    In Science, Strategy and War, Osinga sets out to do achieve a number of things with regards John Boyd’s ideas.

    First of all Osinga provides context, by providing a history of Boyd’s career in military service and as a retired service member and academic. Osinga brings a great deal of understanding to this part of the book as he also served in an air force and is an academic.

    John Boyd Climbing out of F-86 Cockpit, circa 1953
    John Boyd standing up in the cockpit of the F-86 Sabre that he few during his military service.

    Secondly, he explains how Boyd developed and honed his ideas over time. Boyd’s OODA model was borne out of empirical experience as a combat pilot. It was first used to change fighter pilots about engaging with the enemy. Use of it then expanded to encompass bigger strategic outlooks.

    Boyd read widely and had a deep understanding fo scientific principles due to his engineering background. He applied meta analysis to the great strategies and military campaigns of history and the literature describing them. He drew on his understanding of science to try and provide analogies for the many areas of uncertainty in implementing a strategy. He drew on the social sciences and concepts like post-modernism.

    Whilst Boyd was technical; Science, Strategy and War makes it clear that he wasn’t technocratic in nature. Boyd was keenly aware of human factors including the different aspect of moral power. I think that this one of the least understood aspects of Boyd’s thinking.

    I don’t think that Osinga’s book is essential reading for marketing. It was never meant to be. Instead, it provides a good insight into how many of our thinkers operate only at the surface level without truly understanding the concepts they talk about. Boyd was not a surface player, he thought deeply about things and read widely. In that respect I think he can be an example to us all. Osinga did a really good job at bringing this to light in an accessible way.

    More on strategy here, more strategy related book reviews here.

  • Dual circulation strategy + more

    China’s inward-facing ‘dual circulation’ strategy leaves many wondering where domestic demand will come from | South China Morning Post – dual circulation faces an uphill struggle. some structural issues. Finances in China are designed to benefit the state and the uber rich. China’s Gini co-efficient shows an astonishing gap between rich and poor. COVID-19 has meant that Chinese consumers have even less money to spend. This means that the domestic demand aspect of the dual circulation strategy won’t work as desired. More on China here.

    Forget TikTok. China’s Powerhouse App Is WeChat. – The New York Times – It has even extended Beijing’s reach beyond its borders. When secret police issue threats abroad, they often do so on WeChat. When military researchers working undercover in the United States needed to talk to China’s embassies, they used WeChat, according to court documents. The party coordinates via WeChat with members studying overseas – I loved the descriptor of WeChat as a super filter bubble. I am continually surprised by how nationalistic Chinese friends have become over my nine years using WeChat

    Jaron Lanier Thinks Things May Have Gotten Better, or Facebook ‘Might Have Won Already’ – Slashdot – interesting takeouts from an interview with GQ. This wouldn’t have made GQ five years ago, which goes to show how online privacy has become more important to the general public

    The True Story of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore | Palladium Magazine 

    The User Always Loses | Hacker News – fascinating Silicon Valley discussion on user-hostile companies

    How Did the Internet Get So Bad? | The Nation – “Search strings used to be phrased like ingredients: ‘revolution AND french OR russian NOT american,’” McNeil writes. But in the past two decades, the language and tone of our search queries have become more baroque and confessional. “When I search for information now, I feel like I should add ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to every request. There is no way around it, talking to the Google search bar like a human generates more relevant results.” This feels anecdotally true; I’ve certainly gotten into the habit of phrasing my searches, as McNeil notes, along the lines of “‘how do i download a printer driver for mac’ rather than ‘download printer driver mac.’” – one of my biggest frustrations is the lack of depth that ‘human language’ search allows versus the previous use of boolean terms

    ‘Is PR structurally ageist? Sadly, I think it is’ – PR leaders respond to Mark Read’s comments on age | PR Week – when the realisation you’re old hits you in PR, you have six options. You can set up your own shop (if you haven’t already). You can go in-house for breadth. You can run an agency (or help someone run theirs). You can become a functional ‘guru’ (a strategist, for example). You can fully embrace freelance consulting. Or you can go full side hustle and open a gin still

    Apple Watch Podcasts App Found to Falsely Inflate Listener Numbers – MacRumors – interesting, I wonder if this will change as we go ‘post-smartphone’?

    TikTok ads have pushed scams about apps, diet pills, other products, report says – CNET – to be fair most of Facebook and Instagram ads sourced from Chinese merchants and drop-shippers are just as bad. Given the continued export focus of China’s dual circulation strategy I can’t see TikTok changing this at all

    SoftBank unmasked as ‘Nasdaq whale’ that stoked tech rally | Financial Times – this almost sounds like a desperate gambler

    The Big Tesla Hack: A hacker gained control over the entire fleet, but fortunately he’s a good guy – Electrek – but what happens if its the GRU, the MSS or North Korea who find the next hack?

    ‘The Man in the White Suit’: What Will We Do When We’ve Nothing to Make? — Jim Carroll’s Blog – Should science pursue innovation that improves people’s lives regardless of the impact it may have on industry and employment? How do we deal with the concentration of capital that results from such disruptive change? How do we accommodate the workers who have lost their jobs? What will we do when we’ve nothing to make?

    WePresent | Mong Tong are an ambient psychedelic group from Taipei – Taiwanese krautrock?

    Harrods’s bold new bet: Suburbia | Vogue Business – in Essex and Milton Keynes. Surprised at this, I would have thought branches in Singapore and Berlin would make more sense?

    Dive action hero: meet the new Rolex Submariner | Financial Times – still the cleanest design of dive watch. The 70-hour power reserve is impressive

    Hong Kong cardinal warns priests to ‘watch your language’ in homilies – Catholic Herald – The priest, who asked not to be named because of concerns he could be prosecuted under the National Security Law, told CNA on Tuesday that many local Catholics were dismayed by Cardinal Tong’s actions. “The youth of the Church is for democracy, they simply are,” he told CNA. “They are looking for leadership, and I doubt you would find any Catholic under 35 here who is not angry and does not see the chancery as siding with the people tear-gassing them in the streets.”

    A TALE OF TWO NIKE ADS: MARKETING’S UNHEALTHY OBSESSION WITH “INSPIRATION” – BBH Labs – Generally speaking, ordinary folks are just much more chilled out than marketers. They are far less preoccupied with their careers, their personal fitness, keeping up with technology and looking at social media. They look for good deals and use coupons and loyalty programs but they are less likely to consult “expert opinion” before a purchase. They are much more interested in books and literature than they are in business. They are unashamed about their love of television. In fact they just love to be entertained.

    ‘We May Be Losing The Race’ For AI With China: Bob Work – US defence establishment think that they may be losing the race for AI with China.