Published on
July 31, 2006 in
Reading.
Interesting discussion from Maister on how all of the onion layers of modern working can and should interlink. Is my project / team / office / country / client / boss / industry / specialism the focus of my effort? I can’t do all of them, as there are just too many meetings in the day given all of the interactions between the groups.
I wonder how this would play in central government, where the direct customer contact is more limited. For local government, I can see that very similar rules hold for commercial organisations.
Published on
July 31, 2006 in
Reading.
Must read summary on why the collapse of the Doha round of world trade talks is a disaster. There appears to be a definite shift in attitude to climate change in the public’s mind, which may well lead to a change in politicians’ attitudes. So the question is this: How to bring about the same situation in trade? It is far less interesting / cute than polar bears falling of shrinking ice caps.
Published on
July 31, 2006 in
Reading.
Interesting thoughts on the future of marketing from John Hagel. He describes three forces which are combining to change the approach to customers:
- It’s about attention, not shelf space
- Costs of production and distribution are declining
- Customer acquisition and retention is getting more expensive
These all make it tricky to do traditional marketing (Intercept, Inhibit, Isolate) and presage a shift to collaboration (Attract, Assist, Affiliate). Hagel calls for Return on Attention (on both sides) and Return on Information measures to track progress in this new world. Key point: there is a substantial marketing change programme required to deliver marketeers to this next phase. I don’t see anyone out there doing it.
[More from Maister on individual marketing through blogs and related items.]
Published on
July 31, 2006 in
IT.
The first hard drive is 50 years old. It weighed a ton, was the size of two large fridges, cost $250k/year to lease, held 5Mb of data and had 50 24-inch disks. What made it special? Random access to data rather than sequential read from tapes.
Published on
July 31, 2006 in
Reading.
There’s some useful stuff on this blog “Personal Development for Smart People”, but the tone of it puts my teeth on edge like scratching blackboards.
Published on
July 31, 2006 in
Science.
I’ve just read about the most recent update from the Parexel / TeGenero clinical trials that went wrong (Elephant men). The four people who were hardest hit appear to have lost a large chunk of their immune system. Translation: they’ll die, pretty quickly, but on no set schedule. Horrific. Who will take the £2000 vs your life bet?
Published on
July 28, 2006 in
Reading.
Looks like the game’s up for the long tail. 80/20 is becoming 70/30, maybe. But Amazon makes 75% of sales from 100,000 items (that’s 2.7% of its stock). So looks like my earlier thoughts were on track. The question now is whether the “mid” items take too much effort to farm vs a hits only business.
Published on
July 28, 2006 in
Reading.
So I’d never heard of khums, an Islamic tax system separate to zakat (which I had heard of). (Lots of good stuff in opendemocracy, by the way.) The article argues that cutting off funding through Lebanon will not cut off funding for Hizbollah, as they could be funded through khums. Well worth reading the longer article on khums. I find this mix of religion, scriptural analysis and economics terribly hard to read; I guess believers must find our economic papers soulless and heartless in a similar way.
Published on
July 28, 2006 in
Reading.
Genius album title. Thanks Jonza.
Published on
July 27, 2006 in
Reading.
Interesting empirical approach to hiring (I guess you have to do this in large organisations. Summary: always hire above the curve, if posible. I can also see the “no hiring manager” piece working, but wonder if the “fit” between manager and new hire doesn’t potentially suffer. I’ve always found that the last interviews in a series tend to be about fit and selling of the company, rather than the technical skills of the hire. Again, this is for more generalist consulting, not for specific technical competencies.