Podría decirse que es "Basic Research", hecha por "Normal People" :-)
¡Genial!
Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.
lunes, 31 de octubre de 2011
viernes, 28 de octubre de 2011
Kindle Fire at USD 199 (a la venta desde nov. 15 2011)
Aquí la home page de Amazon
Extracto desde el blog de GigaOm:
(Aquí la entrada completa)
"Just weeks after dismissing the Kindle Fire as a potential challenger to the iPad, J.P. Morgan is now upping its assessment of Amazon’s debut tablet, saying the device is expected to move 4.5 to 5 million units in the fourth quarter. Based on checks with supply chain vendors, J.P. Morgan’s hardware team reports production momentum for the Fire has is up sharply of late, suggesting that the device is seeing a lot of pre-order demand. Several vendors, including Foundry partners, have experienced rush orders in the last two to three weeks, J.P. Morgan said Monday in a research note.
J.P. Morgan Internet analyst Douglas Anmuth, who covers Amazon, is looking for 5 million units in the fourth quarter and expects to see multiple models in 2012, including 7 and 10-inch units and models with 3G radios in addition to Wi-Fi. The Kindle Fire goes on sale Nov. 15. [...]"
***
1. Puede argumentarse ampliamente que en este caso Amazon ha "seguido" a Apple y su iPad
2. Lo que sería una prueba del éxito del iPad
3. Pero también puede argumentarse que Apple con el iPad "siguió" al Kindle original (para mejorarlo)
4. Lo que sería una prueba del éxito del Kindle original
5. Puede afirmarse, más bien, que Apple y Amazon son dos grandes organizaciones innovadoras, que cuidan en extremo de sus clientes :-)
jueves, 27 de octubre de 2011
Pricing basics: "the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it"
Aquí la entrada completa desde el Ludwig von Mises Institute
Extracto:
"Book buyers have been used to hardback books being the most expensive, with softcover versions being priced much less, while e-book versions are cheaper still.
This pricing scheme comports with David Ricardo's doctrine that the value of consumption goods are determined by the "cost of production" or the labor theory of value. Obviously the production cost of a hardback book is greater than that for a paperback, with both of these far and away more expensive to produce than a Kindle or ePub version.
The costs of book preparation — formatting, editing, typesetting, indexing, marketing, and royalties — are incurred no matter what the book's version. However, with hard and softcover books, publishers must warehouse their inventory and there are costs associated with that. With e-books, as well as downloadable audio versions, no warehouse is required — just a hard drive somewhere.
But that's not the half of it. When Amazon or any bookseller runs through their inventory of a book in the physical form, they have to order and pay for more paper and ink to be constructed into the particular title so that orders can be filled. Replenishing inventory costs money. Not so for an e-book. Once the digital version has been created, it's good until the market doesn't accept it anymore.
So for those thinking David Ricardo had it right, expensive hardbacks and cheap e-books make all the sense in the world. But Austrians see the world differently. Consumers set prices based on their preferences. It doesn't matter what a book costs; what matters is what a reader will pay for it. Likewise, consumers in the Western world determine the prices — not by haggling — but by buying or not buying.
The illusion that costs of production determine price is created by the reality of financial viability. If you can't recover in proceeds what you have spent in production, you have to stop what you are doing or change the way you do it. If your profits are extremely high, you attract the competition to your endeavors, and then your prices have to fall. Over the long run, it's true, your marginal costs and marginal prices tend to equalize. What matters is the cause and effect: the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it.
Buying the hardback means paying for shipping and waiting for the book to arrive. The same goes for the paperback. Physical books require shelving and space, which is, again, an expense.
E-books offer immediate availability and thousands of books can be stored in a single thin, lightweight piece of machinery, not to mention the many other cool features e-readers offer."
Extracto:
"Book buyers have been used to hardback books being the most expensive, with softcover versions being priced much less, while e-book versions are cheaper still.
This pricing scheme comports with David Ricardo's doctrine that the value of consumption goods are determined by the "cost of production" or the labor theory of value. Obviously the production cost of a hardback book is greater than that for a paperback, with both of these far and away more expensive to produce than a Kindle or ePub version.
The costs of book preparation — formatting, editing, typesetting, indexing, marketing, and royalties — are incurred no matter what the book's version. However, with hard and softcover books, publishers must warehouse their inventory and there are costs associated with that. With e-books, as well as downloadable audio versions, no warehouse is required — just a hard drive somewhere.
But that's not the half of it. When Amazon or any bookseller runs through their inventory of a book in the physical form, they have to order and pay for more paper and ink to be constructed into the particular title so that orders can be filled. Replenishing inventory costs money. Not so for an e-book. Once the digital version has been created, it's good until the market doesn't accept it anymore.
So for those thinking David Ricardo had it right, expensive hardbacks and cheap e-books make all the sense in the world. But Austrians see the world differently. Consumers set prices based on their preferences. It doesn't matter what a book costs; what matters is what a reader will pay for it. Likewise, consumers in the Western world determine the prices — not by haggling — but by buying or not buying.
The illusion that costs of production determine price is created by the reality of financial viability. If you can't recover in proceeds what you have spent in production, you have to stop what you are doing or change the way you do it. If your profits are extremely high, you attract the competition to your endeavors, and then your prices have to fall. Over the long run, it's true, your marginal costs and marginal prices tend to equalize. What matters is the cause and effect: the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it.
Buying the hardback means paying for shipping and waiting for the book to arrive. The same goes for the paperback. Physical books require shelving and space, which is, again, an expense.
E-books offer immediate availability and thousands of books can be stored in a single thin, lightweight piece of machinery, not to mention the many other cool features e-readers offer."
martes, 25 de octubre de 2011
The biggest innovator soul: Steve Jobs
La entrada es de Innosight aquí
¿Qué hace de Steve Jobs (qepd) el más grande genio innovador de los últimos tiempos?
¿Cuál era su modo de acercarse a los problemas que plantea la innovación radical, para llegar a ser exitosa?
¿Qué legado nos queda a quienes procuramos que nuestros clientes lleguen a tanta satisfacción con el producto como a la que llevó Steve Jobs a los de Apple?
*****
Extracto introductorio:
"To mark the passing of one of the world’s all-time great innovators, some of the leaders of Innosight are reflecting on what Steve Jobs taught the world. He leaves as his legacy a set of lessons about innovation that will continue to inspire us for generations to come. These are just eight of the main takeaways from his remarkable career and life:
1. The zen of knowing what customers want without actually asking them
One of our favorite Steve Jobs quotes came as his answer to the question: What market research did you do that led to the iPad? “None,” he replied. “It's not the customer’s job to know what they want.”
Innosight co-founder and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that Steve Jobs helped teach us to shun focus group-type research and instead carefully observe what people are trying to do, not just functionally but socially and emotionally too. “His instinct was not to focus on the customer, but rather to focus his innovations on the job that the customer is trying to do.”
2. A passion for breakthrough experiences..."
lunes, 24 de octubre de 2011
Marketing and Sales
Aquí el artículo completo desde The Economist
El representante de ventas, el gerente de cuenta, el vendedor, ¡no ha muerto!
La venta personal desde siempre ha sido un componente vital del buen funcionamiento de la Distribución y de la Comunicación. Vitales éstos a su vez del buen marketing. Los medios electrónicos han amplificado su importancia. El buen vendedor sigue siendo apreciado en toda organización: esto es, aquel que es capaz de vencer los 4 No`s de camino hacia la transacción: No Trust ("no le creo, a su compañía"), No Need ("no necesito, su producto"), No Help ("ya lo tengo, y me funciona mejor que el suyo"), No Hurry ("tal vez sí, pero hoy no")
*****
Extracto introductorio:
"WÜRTH, a German family firm, makes the most basic products imaginable: screws, nuts and bolts. No need for fancy salesmanship here, you might think. In fact, Würth has 30,000 sales reps. It calls them its “beating heart” and strokes them deftly: when one performs exceptionally, the firm writes to congratulate his wife.
Reports of the death of the salesman have circulated since the first dotcom boom. Consumers are doing their own research. Businesses are opting for automated purchasing and reverse auctions where all that matters is price. Online comparisons, ratings and other unbiased information have made the tough task of selling tougher still. Customers have become warier of being sold to. Drug firms used to hire ex-cheerleaders to sway doctors into prescribing their pills. But doctors (many of whom are female these days) have grown less swayable. About a third of them are now considered “hard to see” by the drugs industry."
El representante de ventas, el gerente de cuenta, el vendedor, ¡no ha muerto!
La venta personal desde siempre ha sido un componente vital del buen funcionamiento de la Distribución y de la Comunicación. Vitales éstos a su vez del buen marketing. Los medios electrónicos han amplificado su importancia. El buen vendedor sigue siendo apreciado en toda organización: esto es, aquel que es capaz de vencer los 4 No`s de camino hacia la transacción: No Trust ("no le creo, a su compañía"), No Need ("no necesito, su producto"), No Help ("ya lo tengo, y me funciona mejor que el suyo"), No Hurry ("tal vez sí, pero hoy no")
*****
Extracto introductorio:
"WÜRTH, a German family firm, makes the most basic products imaginable: screws, nuts and bolts. No need for fancy salesmanship here, you might think. In fact, Würth has 30,000 sales reps. It calls them its “beating heart” and strokes them deftly: when one performs exceptionally, the firm writes to congratulate his wife.
Reports of the death of the salesman have circulated since the first dotcom boom. Consumers are doing their own research. Businesses are opting for automated purchasing and reverse auctions where all that matters is price. Online comparisons, ratings and other unbiased information have made the tough task of selling tougher still. Customers have become warier of being sold to. Drug firms used to hire ex-cheerleaders to sway doctors into prescribing their pills. But doctors (many of whom are female these days) have grown less swayable. About a third of them are now considered “hard to see” by the drugs industry."
viernes, 21 de octubre de 2011
Creative thinking and Doodling&Sketching
"Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension -- and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we're caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen."
"A doodle is an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes. Stereotypical examples of doodling are found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class. Other common examples of doodling are produced during long telephone conversations if a pen and paper are available.
Popular kinds of doodles include cartoon versions of teachers or companions in a school, famous TV or comic characters, invented fictional beings, landscapes, geometric shapes and patterns, textures, banners with legends, and animations made by drawing a scene sequence in various pages of a book or notebook."
jueves, 20 de octubre de 2011
viernes, 14 de octubre de 2011
Zemoga
Aquí su sitio web
"About Zemoga
Zemoga is an award-winning digital innovation firm that specializes in the creation of meaningful and engaging interactive experiences and applications. Zemoga empowers customers with groundbreaking solutions through a model that provides efficiencies at every level.
HOW WE WORK
Zemoga distinguishes itself from other digital agencies through our dedication to a highly effective and project-proven development methodology. At the heart of this process is our utilization of the "Scrum" methodology. Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on delivering the highest business value in the shortest time. It lets us (and our clients) rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual working software or code on a frequent (usually bi-weekly) basis. Business objectives set the priorities and our teams self-organize to determine the best way of delivering the highest priority features. At the end of these small development cycles (called "Sprints") anyone can see real working software and decide to release it or enhance it for another sprint. It's a dynamic way of working that involves our clients at every stage of project development and ensures "no surprises" when the final product is delivered."
jueves, 13 de octubre de 2011
"Discovery" innovation
Aquí su sitio Web
¿De qué se trata?
"Who we are
We are a leading financial services institution founded on the principles of consumer engagement and wellness. Our approach to financial products is highly differentiated and involves integrating our entire product range with our science-based wellness programme, Vitality. The integration with Vitality has enabled us to improve our competitive position by offering unique products with better benefits and at a lower price than our competitors."
Ejemplo:
"What is VitalityDrive™?
VitalityDrive™: the better you drive, the higher your status, the greater your rewards.
VitalityDrive™ is Discovery Insure’s incentive-based driver programme that gives you access to valuable rewards. The programme uses DQ-Track™, the latest automotive telematics technology, to develop a scientific measure of your driver behaviour, your Driver Quotient (or “DQ”).
Your DQ encapsulates the key measures of driver intelligence. VitalityDrive™ measures your DQ based on the number of points you earn. The more DQ Points you earn, the higher your DQ."
"What are the benefits of VitalityDrive™?
Engage in VitalityDrive™ to receive up to 40% fuel rewards and other valuable benefits for driving well
Advanced telematics measure your Driver Quotient
Fuel rewards on your monthly fuel spend
Boosted Vitality and DiscoveryCard rewards
State-of-the-art vehicle and passenger safety features"
La promesa en dos renglones:
"Welcome to Vitality
Through Vitality, Discovery's wellness programme, you can access a wide range of tools and partners to help you get healthier. And the more you do to know your health and improve it, the more Vitality rewards you."
¿De qué se trata?
"Who we are
We are a leading financial services institution founded on the principles of consumer engagement and wellness. Our approach to financial products is highly differentiated and involves integrating our entire product range with our science-based wellness programme, Vitality. The integration with Vitality has enabled us to improve our competitive position by offering unique products with better benefits and at a lower price than our competitors."
Ejemplo:
"What is VitalityDrive™?
VitalityDrive™: the better you drive, the higher your status, the greater your rewards.
VitalityDrive™ is Discovery Insure’s incentive-based driver programme that gives you access to valuable rewards. The programme uses DQ-Track™, the latest automotive telematics technology, to develop a scientific measure of your driver behaviour, your Driver Quotient (or “DQ”).
Your DQ encapsulates the key measures of driver intelligence. VitalityDrive™ measures your DQ based on the number of points you earn. The more DQ Points you earn, the higher your DQ."
"What are the benefits of VitalityDrive™?
Engage in VitalityDrive™ to receive up to 40% fuel rewards and other valuable benefits for driving well
Advanced telematics measure your Driver Quotient
Fuel rewards on your monthly fuel spend
Boosted Vitality and DiscoveryCard rewards
State-of-the-art vehicle and passenger safety features"
La promesa en dos renglones:
"Welcome to Vitality
Through Vitality, Discovery's wellness programme, you can access a wide range of tools and partners to help you get healthier. And the more you do to know your health and improve it, the more Vitality rewards you."
miércoles, 12 de octubre de 2011
La lección más sencilla, dicha en palabras sencillas, por el sencillo empresario que nadie imagina
"No existe más que un jefe: EL CLIENTE. Él puede despedir a todos los empleados de esta almacén. Desde el gerente hasta el portero. Con sólo gastar su dinero en otro almacén."
jueves, 6 de octubre de 2011
"Marketing as manipulation"
Aquí la columna desde The Economist (Schumpeter)
Extracto introductorio:
"VANCE PACKARD was the Malcolm Gladwell of his day, a journalist with a gift for explaining business to the general public. But in his 1957 classic “The Hidden Persuaders”, he out-Gladwelled Gladwell. The book not only had a perfect title. It also revealed for the first time the psychological tricks that the advertising industry used to make Americans want stuff, instantly transforming the image of America’s advertising executives from glamorous Mad Men into servants of Mephistopheles.
“Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy” is an attempt to write a modern version of “The Hidden Persuaders”. Martin Lindstrom cannot write as elegantly as Packard, as his chapter titles (eg, “Buy it, get laid”) make clear. But as a marketing veteran who lists McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble and Microsoft among his former clients, he knows the industry well. It is far more sophisticated than it was in the 1950s, and just as cynical."
*****
Sin duda la "manipulación" es posible:
- Si ud. no tiene nada más que hacer que darse a ella
- Si su cabecita nunca aprendió a pensar por sí misma
- Si para ud. "tener" es más importante que "ser"
Así, en verdad, no hay de que preocuparse; pero sólo si así :-)
Extracto introductorio:
"VANCE PACKARD was the Malcolm Gladwell of his day, a journalist with a gift for explaining business to the general public. But in his 1957 classic “The Hidden Persuaders”, he out-Gladwelled Gladwell. The book not only had a perfect title. It also revealed for the first time the psychological tricks that the advertising industry used to make Americans want stuff, instantly transforming the image of America’s advertising executives from glamorous Mad Men into servants of Mephistopheles.
“Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy” is an attempt to write a modern version of “The Hidden Persuaders”. Martin Lindstrom cannot write as elegantly as Packard, as his chapter titles (eg, “Buy it, get laid”) make clear. But as a marketing veteran who lists McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble and Microsoft among his former clients, he knows the industry well. It is far more sophisticated than it was in the 1950s, and just as cynical."
*****
Sin duda la "manipulación" es posible:
- Si ud. no tiene nada más que hacer que darse a ella
- Si su cabecita nunca aprendió a pensar por sí misma
- Si para ud. "tener" es más importante que "ser"
Así, en verdad, no hay de que preocuparse; pero sólo si así :-)
miércoles, 5 de octubre de 2011
Schumpeter de The Economist sobre Clayton Christensen e Innovación
Aquí
Extracto introductorio:
"INNOVATION is today’s equivalent of the Holy Grail. Rich-world governments see it as a way of staving off stagnation. Poor governments see it as a way of speeding up growth. And businesspeople everywhere see it as the key to survival.
Which makes Clay Christensen the closest thing we have to Sir Galahad. Fourteen years ago Mr Christensen, a knight of the Harvard Business School, revolutionised the study of the subject with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, a book that popularised the term “disruptive innovation”. This month he publishes a new study, “The Innovator’s DNA”, co-written with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, which tries to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. How do they go about their business? How do they differ from regular suits? And what can companies learn from their mental habits?"
*****
So?
La innnovatividad, ¿resulta del genio o de habilidades enseñables-aprendibles?
La pregunta por supuesto no es ésta. Más bien, no olvidemos que, todo lo que podamos aprender de los innovadores y sus obras, nos acerca un poco más a la "esencia" de la innovación y sus misterios :-)
Extracto introductorio:
"INNOVATION is today’s equivalent of the Holy Grail. Rich-world governments see it as a way of staving off stagnation. Poor governments see it as a way of speeding up growth. And businesspeople everywhere see it as the key to survival.
Which makes Clay Christensen the closest thing we have to Sir Galahad. Fourteen years ago Mr Christensen, a knight of the Harvard Business School, revolutionised the study of the subject with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, a book that popularised the term “disruptive innovation”. This month he publishes a new study, “The Innovator’s DNA”, co-written with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, which tries to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. How do they go about their business? How do they differ from regular suits? And what can companies learn from their mental habits?"
*****
So?
La innnovatividad, ¿resulta del genio o de habilidades enseñables-aprendibles?
La pregunta por supuesto no es ésta. Más bien, no olvidemos que, todo lo que podamos aprender de los innovadores y sus obras, nos acerca un poco más a la "esencia" de la innovación y sus misterios :-)
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