Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • China Inc. – The 800-pound dragon in the room

    The New York Times has a great review of China Inc. by Ted C. Fishman which highlights the growing economic might of China. Some interesting facts and figures featured in the review of the book include:

    • From 1982 through 2002, the United States economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent. China’s economy grew at an annual rate of 9.5 percent,
    • In 2003 China bought 7 percent of the world’s oil, a quarter of its aluminum and steel, almost a third of its iron ore and coal, and 40 percent of its cement.
    • China makes 40 percent of all furniture sold in the United States
    • China has 3,000 Christmas-decoration factories which exported more than $900 million tree trimmings and plastic Santas in the first 10 months of 2003.
    • China still only makes one-twentieth of everything produced in the world
    • China can rely on a vast low-wage army, working for an average of 40 cents an hour, that can turn out consumer goods of every description
    • American and Japanese companies spend $1 billion to $2 billion to develop a new car
    • New super-cities like Shenzhen, a fishing town of 70,000 20 years ago that now has 7 million people, making it larger than Los Angeles or Paris, swelled by migrants from the countryside looking for a better life in the city
    • Up to 300 million Chinese have migrated from the country to the city over the past 20 years
    • The Asian Brown Cloud, a wind-borne industrial smog that originates on China’s east coast, can be seen in California as it rides the jet stream
    • China has seven of the world’s ten most polluted cities


    The book also provides some insights into the differences between the rise of China and Japan. Unlike Japan, China Inc. is driven by local enterprises rather than the central analysis and planning carried out by Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) [now known as the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry] to find key markets to conquer. There is a certain irony in the socialist state using the brutal darwinism of the marketplace in a way that Adam Smith would have appreciated.

    Current reading at chez Renaissance Chambara:

     

  • Running Money by Andy Kessler

    Andy Kessler’s Running Money, Hedge Fund Honchos, Monster Markets And My Hunt For The Big Score is a well written set of memoirs from a technology fund manager. Together with his partner-in-crime Fred Kittler, Kessler managed to survive the highs and lows of the technology industry in the late 1990’s, he tells the story in a very articulate way that is as powerful as Robert X Cringely’s book Accidential Empires. The expansion of the tech sector is told using the industrial revolution as an analogy.

    One of the first things portrayed in Running Money (and other books) is that the tech sector actually revolves around a relatively small group of people. In addition to writing his memoirs Kessler tries to make sense of it all and proves very illuminating to readers. In this respect it is far better than The New New Thing by Michael Lewis.

    Post-industrial, IP-driven economy

    The book looks beyond the technology sector to put a positive spin on the huge US deficit. Running Money explains that America is now an IP economy and assumes that the developing world will follow on behind as a wave sweeps across national borders moving the economic status through hunter gatherer, agriculture/extractive, industrial, service and intellectual property economies. In some respects the US with its IP economy is following Europe; what is the Swiss banking system, LVMH’s luxury brands and the continents big pharmaceutical firms if not part of an IP ecosystem?

    Conclusion

    I would recommend anybody to read Kessler’s book. I thought I would end however on some of the differences in viewpoint I have with his writing. Where some of Kessler’s writing differs from my own perspective is when he outlines his analysis of the current state of affairs and some of his future vision:

    • Kessler considers markets to be a perfect instrument in the long term; which I am not convinced about at all. Think the great depression, the S&L debacle of the 1980s for instance, markets can break and require occasional interference
    • The neat model of China being an industrial workshop for US intellectual property is simplistic. China is fast moving into building its own brands from mobile handsets to luxury watches (the first Chinese astronaut went into space with a relative expensive Chinese brand of chronograph. China and India has a huge film industry. It isn’t only China either, Japan is now a source of numerous fashion trends, hot movies in Korea have their scripts optioned by Hollywood, some of the best advertising creative teams come from South America and India)
    • Kessler talks about the entertainment industry as being part of this US IP powerhouse but this fails to see the many flaws and mismanagment in the music, media and film industries that make Worldcom seem well managed. The RIAA and MPAA have hid behind piracy to hide a deeper malaise highlighted in Michael Wolf’s Autumn of the Moguls
    • Kessler doesn’t talk about what the inevitable post-intellectual property economy looks like

    More book reviews here.

  • Six Days by Jeremy Bowen

    I recently finished reading Six Days – How the 1967 war shaped the Middle East by Jeremy Bowen. Bowen is a famous BBC journalist who seems to have researched the book well and writes in an easy-to-read style. Bowen was in the region at the time and has supplemented his experience with later research.

    I decided to read the book as I was curious to read more about the Six-Day War. The war had been  an important event in Moshe Dayan’s autobiography. If you have the chance, Dayan’s autobiography Story of My Life is a great read for a counterpoint to Bowen.

    Bias

    In Six Days Bowen tells a story that no one involved will be happy with and covers the shooting and sinking of the USS Liberty in such a way that it prods your mind to search for answers.

    The book is as much about the failings of the surrounding Arab states and the Soviet Union as it is about Israeli aggression, though Bowen’s telling of the story leans heavily in favour of the Arabs. So long as you are aware of this slant its fine. His work doesn’t editorialise that much about it.

    Mosh Dayan

    Dayan was painted in the book as a political opportunist, at the expense of illustrating his now legendary pragmatism. I found the internal strife and prejudices between different groups of the Israelis very interesting, particularly the way the Zionists born in Israel looked down on the Jews from the diaspora who had survived world war two as being weak.

    In conclusion

    I would recommend that anyone interested should read this book. The Six Day War was an event that shaped the modern Middle East as we know it. I would also recommend that you do not rely exclusively on Bowen’s version of events and interpretation of events. Its a complex issue and you need to read multiple viewpoints. Bowen’s book is a good first start in your reading about the war. More book reviews here.

  • The Hacienda must be built

    The Hacienda (or Fac51) was one of the most famous and influential clubs of all time, together with London nights like Shoom, Spectrum and Solaris it catapulted house music (at the time, the sound of black and gay Chicago into worldwide exposure). The Hac influenced and was influenced by the Ibizan scene. Even prior to house, the club innovated; hosting the first UK performance by Madonna in the early 1980s. The club was a work of love by designer Peter Saville, Rob Gretton who managed New Order and Tony Wilson TV newsreader and founder of Factory Records. The name itself came from a passage in arty situationist manifesto by Ivan Chtcheglov that culminated in the passage:

    And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the Haçienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old alamanac. Now that’s finished. You’ll never see the Hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The Hacienda must be built.

    Famous art galleries and authors houses get preserved and saved. However night clubs don’t get this reward: The Cavern where the Beatles played is a car park, The Warehouse in Chicago has disappeared, The Wigan Casino and Twisted Wheel hubs of the northern soul scene have been redeveloped, The Wag Club which hosted new music throughout the 1980s from the new romantics to Bomb the Bass is part of a tacky mock Irish pub chain on the edge of London’s Chinatown.

     The Hacienda was demolished in 1997 and auctioned off piece by piece, the site is now a block of overpriced yuppie apartments.Despite the desecration committed by property developers, its cultural mark still lives on.

    This can be seen in the popular Steve Coogan film 24 Hour Party People, the ‘classics chart’ of Graeme Park hosted at Hard To Find Records online and London event promoters Get Loaded. More related posts here.

  • Microsoft Longhorn

    Microsoft Longhorn – As you may have seen over the past few days parts of the American media seem to think that the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system is turning into a bigger disaster than the war against terror. They’re wrong for two reasons:

    – The war against terror is majorly messed up because of poor leadership which has betrayed the countless men and women who have been serving their countries selflessly

    – Even in the unlikely event of Microsoft going bankrupt in the morning and the business and associated ‘intellectual’ properties disappearing into a puff of smoke (I sooo wish it were true), there are numerous viable alternatives from pirate Windows software (nice price, shame about the code), GNU/Linux, various flavours of Unix (Solaris, Openware, Mac OS X, netBSD, FreeBSD etc)

    Let’s put Microsoft Longhorn into perspective:

    – Whine number one – its late, duh show me an IT project that isn’t late, or over budget. Ever heard the one about the sales man who walks into a client, promises them the earth and then gives the programming team three weeks to build it and is then surprised when it doesn’t deliver. Microsoft is bigger than everyone else so does things like this on a bigger scale.

    – Whine number two – it won’t do what you promise, you’ve cut out all the good bits. Ok, I’m going to let you into an IT industry dirty secret, marketing people lie. They believe what they tell you when they have told you it, but they lie. I know they lie, because I’ve taken their lies and written them in an easy to understand format for journalists to write about. Journalists propagate those lies because they provide content that readers pretend to glance over whilst really checking out the job adverts and feeling aggrieved at the money they are paid. The content is a trojan horse to get those job adverts into their workplace because there are too many more interesting things to do in their own time. Everyone benefits from the ecosystem

    – Whine number three – its an omen of doom, Trey (William Gates III to those of us who know him well) has taken his eye off the ball and Monkey Boy Balmer has royally fcuked up, this would not have happened with Bill in charge. This one needs to be broken down into sections.

    First of all, Steve Balmer has done a good job fighting against the rabid autistic children that make up most of his employees, bringing it successfully through a shedload of antitrust lawsuits and helping put a more sympathetic government in the White House.

    Remember, Bill Gates’ video testimony helped with the finding of fact against the company in the first place and condemned Microsoft in the court of public opinion.

    Secondly, when Gates was in the hot seat the company made some shocking errors:

    • Microsoft Bob – don’t know about it? That’s because it bombed
    • The Road Ahead (first edition) – ghost writers had to tear this apart and rewrite it replacing up to 30 per cent of the content, Gates had dismissed the Internet and missed the boat. They spent hundreds of millions before they caught back up
    • Cairo – during the development of Windows’95, Microsoft spent a lot of money developing some wicked cool technologies that improved searching for data on a computer amongst other things. Cairo was designed to unify the DOS and NT based products on one state-of-the-art platform (this unification happened much later with Windows XP). Along the way a lot of cool stuff got culled, the market got an inferior product which sold despite being launched with a Rolling Stones live performance of ‘Start me up’. Windows’95 went on to be a technological wasteland and an unprecendented commerical success. Cairo still makes Microsoft Longhorn look good

    Thirdly it takes more than Microsoft Longhorn, a few penguins and unruly autistic children to take down the house of Microsoft. Why? Because thousands of IT people want to follow each other like lemmings rather than looking at alternatives that may provide their business with competitive advantage? The real compelling reason why Microsoft should not be scared of Microsoft Longhorn – politico-economics. Below is a quote taken from the I, Cringely column of August 14, 2003:

    Why aren’t Apple Macintosh computers more popular in large mainstream organizations? Whatever the gigahertz numbers say, Macintoshes are comparable in performance to Windows or Linux machines. Whatever the conventional wisdom or the Microsoft marketing message, Macs aren’t dramatically more expensive to buy and on a Total Cost of Ownership basis they are probably cheaper. Nobody would argue that Macs are harder to use. Clearly, they are easier to use, especially on a network. So what’s the problem? Why do Macs seem to exist only in media outfits? Apple is clearly wondering the same thing because the company recently surveyed owners of their xServe 1U boxes asking what Apple could do to make them more attractive? For those who own xServes, they are darned attractive — small, powerful, energy-efficient, easy to configure and manage, and offering dramatic savings for applications like streaming. Yet, Apple appears to be having a terrible time selling the things.

    I used to think it came down to nerd ego. Macs were easy to use, so they didn’t get the respect of nerds who measured their testosterone levels by how fluently they could navigate a command line interface. Now, I think differently. Now, I think Macs threaten the livelihood of IT staff. If you recommend purchasing a computer that requires only half the support of the machine it is replacing, aren’t you putting your job in danger? Exactly.

    Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department’s job.

    Now another question: Why are Linux computers gaining in popularity with large organizations while Macs, which are based after all on BSD Unix, aren’t? While there is certainly a lot to be said for Linux in competition with various flavors of Windows (Linux is faster, more memory-efficient, more secure, has more sources of supply, supports many more simultaneous users per box in a server environment, and is clearly cheaper to buy), the advantage over Macintosh computers is less clear.

    Again, it comes down to the IT Department Full Employment Act. Adopting Linux allows organizations to increase their IT efficiency without requiring the IT department to increase it’s efficiency. It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged.

    I am not claiming that every organization should throw out its PCs and replace them with Macs, but the numbers are pretty clear, and the fact that more Macs don’t make it into server racks has to be based on something, and I think that something is CIO self-interest.

    Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that.

    I didn’t come up with this very smart idea, it came from a reader. That same reader made the point that every part of an organization ought to be concerned with improving the bottom line, which is to say with being more productive. Yet IT typically doesn’t work that way.

    All you aspiring ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch’s out there, you have an ideal target to squeeze for efficiency get liquidating staff and taking technological change out of the hands of the IT director (better still fire his ass and buy the mortgage on his property for peanuts). Before you ask, outsourcing just ships the problem out of the country but not out of your life.