Showing posts with label Michael Dell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Dell. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2011

Google Nexus Prime On The Way

Which phone will be my first smartphone? Nexus Prime has as good a shot as any if it shows up fast enough. My first tablet will also be an Android, but only if it compares to the iPad in feel, and is super cheap. I am not paying 500 for a tablet. I paid 330 for my current laptop. And that is why the Chromebook is a fail for me right now: it is not cheap enough for me. Hello Michael, as in Michael Dell.



VentureBeat: Google’s first Android 4.0 phone may be Samsung’s Nexus Prime
MobileCrunch: New Details On Google's Next Nexus: Now Known As Nexus “Prime,” Built By Samsung
CNet: Is this buttonless phone the next Nexus handset?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Cathy Erway: My Kind Of Chef


Cathy Erway was featured on the FoodSpotting blog a few days ago. No, the FoodSpotting blog is not on my blogroll, not yet, although now I am thinking why not, but I must have pressed the like button enough times that the FoodSpotting Facebook page is often in my Facebook stream. So there was Cathy Erway.

FoodSpotting's Dish As Starting Point
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting

I remember exchanging a tweet or two with her over a year back. I was amazed to find her. The eating in concept is revolutionary, if you think about it.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

$1 Trillion In Savings

ceramic piggy bankImage via Wikipedia
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: save $1 trillion over the next decade.
When I read this headline I thought someone came up with an app that will help people lose weight, because if America could somehow go to its 1980 obesity levels - which was bad enough - America would save $1 trillion in health care costs. But no, these tech CEOs have something else on mind.

This headline also made me think that although Obama 08 did a great job of grassroots campaigning, it pretty much wrote the book on it, we are not there yet when it comes to grassroots governing where everybody is involved. Just like Dean 2004 was not there yet when it came to grassroots campaigning, Obama 08 is not there yet when it comes to grassroots governing.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: First off, the organization believes the federal government should consolidate its many data centers to reduce IT overhead.
No kidding.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: Secondly, the organization contends that the U.S. government should "streamline" its supply chain and make goods-and-service procurement more standardized.
Talk about business sense.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: $200 billion could be saved over the next 10 years by analyzing payments being disbursed through Medicare, federal grants, and tax refunds. ..... the government should rely on "electronic self-service" to save $50 billion; sell or auction off many of the "14,000 excess, and 55,000 underutilized buildings in the federal inventory" for a $150 billion savings; cut down on energy use to save $20 billion; and migrate to more shared services for another $50 billion in savings.
The best part of these suggestions might not be that they are totally doable, and they will save a ton of money, but that in implementing them the US federal government will become more transparent, more agile, in short a better government. I say let's go do it.

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Friday, August 14, 2009

It's Not Dell, It's The PC

Image representing Dell as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase

Dark Days at Dell BusinessWeek For company founder and Chairman Michael Dell and Chief Executive Kevin Rollins, this summer has been one mishap after another ....... its predicament may be intractable. Dell remained slavishly loyal to its core idea of ultra-efficient supply-chain management and direct sales to consumers, even as rivals have stepped up their game and markets have shifted to take away some of Dell's key advantages. Instead of adapting, critics say, Dell cut costs in ways that compromised customer service and, possibly, product quality. ........ "They're a one-trick pony. It was a great trick for over 10 years, but the rest of us have figured it out and Dell hasn't plowed any of its profits into creating a new trick." ....... [Dell's] culture only wants to talk about execution. ..... "Dell is not a fun place to work, and it's less fun now than it used to be." ....... Notebook PCs are becoming a far larger percentage of the market, but the Asian contract factories that make them for Dell also make them for other companies ...... a tightfisted approach to research and development stunts new-product innovation
Dell is not having a bad quarter or a bad year. Dell is a victim of a paradigm shift that is underway. The PC will stick around, but just like planet earth once, it will realize it is not the center of the universe. Dell was born and raised as a PC company. The chances of it doing well through the paradigm shift are slim at best.

Dell has been hit by a double whammy. One, the paradigm shift away from the PC that is underway. The netbook portends of things to come. Two, Dell has become the victim of its own success. It did well what it set out to do: churn out cheap PCs. But just like Microsoft is stuck with Windows, Dell is stuck with cheap PCs.

Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Cheap Laptops
Blog Carnival: Wimax
Blog Carnival: Internet For The Billions

Image representing Hewlett-Packard as depicted...Image via CrunchBase


The IC Vision: Sequencing The Components
David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase


Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Dell, HP, Apple
Michael Dell
PC
The WiMax Appeal
The $100 Computer
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

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Friday, June 05, 2009

All Books Need To Go Digital


Google Books: Primitive

The book industry is in the grips like the music industry used to be. Then Steve Jobs came along and said we are not a nation of crooks, it is not that people don't want to pay, they just like the idea of digital. Don't fight the technology.

Music is like movies, like books. Books and movies are like music. They are mindfood, and they beg to go digital, full-fledged.

All books ever written and to be written should go digital. That is what the technology asks for. That is the consumer wanting. But that does not have to mean money will not be made from books.

Digital is more efficient, cheaper, easier to move around. How is that bad for business? There are millions of in-copyright, but out-of-print books. Are you telling me the digital option is bad for them? Digital will bring them back to life. Digital will give them immortality.

Every book ever written has to be digitized. But I am also all about authors making money. How do you make money?

(1) Self Publish

Publish books like blogs. There are several good, free blogging platforms. And monetize. Run ads. This is not vanity publishing because if you don't get many readers, you don't make much money. Everyone can get published, but not everyone will get a mass readership. As an author I would rather get rejected by readers than by publishers. What about you? You go global without going on a book tour.

(2) Kindle/Google Publish

Find a digital publisher who will put forth digital only editions. So if the paper book had been out there for $29, the digital version will be sold for $9. But how much you make per book sold will not change. Why are you complaining? And you have a much larger potential audience. So you will likely sell more books.

(3) Monthly Subscription

What if I was made to pay $20 per month by a digital books vendor? Or what if there were a Netflix for books? You could pay per book, or for a certain price you could read as many books as you want. And then it would be the vendor's responsibility to pay the authors, give them their cuts.

(4) The Public Library Option

In-copyright books have been available for free at public libraries. There is no reason why they should not be available also digitally. Think of it as free marketing for your books. You do want buzz.

(5) Ads Inside Books

There are ads inside TV shows. Why can't there be ads inside books? You turn from page 25 to page 26, and boom, there is a full page ad that just paid for your first 25 pages of great reading material. This way digital books can be stand alone digital objects, they don't have to stay online and look like webpages.

Of the four options, I think the best one is the ad supported version. Go free, go global, go massive.

Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style
Android
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality
Apple's Mobile Space: Sizzling
The $100 Computer
Dell, HP, Apple

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Contents 2005-2008

Apple's Mobile Space: Sizzling
Vint Cerf, Abdul Kalam, Larry Ellison
Mind Blowing
Diller Country, Month 2
Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived
Silicon City
Nic Is Back
Open Coffee MeetUp: New Location
The Unfacebook
Money For Yahoo And Money For Google
Dell Memo
Entrepreneurs: Spikes
Bear Stearns: An Investment Bank
Web 5.0: Face Time
Search: Much Is Lacking
Enter The Titans: AMD Smacked By Intel
A Web 3.0 Manifesto
Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUp
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Dell, HP, Apple
Michael Dell
Larry Ellison
Google Books: Primitive
PC
Carly Fiorina: The Academy Awards Of Business: Photos
Carly Fiorina: "The Academy Awards Of Business"
Early Stage Venture Capital
Google Audio, Google Office
The Next Search Engine
Google Video
Google: Free, Wireless Internet Access, Pay Per View Video
Yahoo Phone, Google Office, Google Finance
Are You A Fonero?
Kosmix: Desi Pride
Email, Search, News
Memo To Bill Gates
xMax
Free Wireless Broadband, Reenergized Microsoft
Google's To Do List Keeps Growing
China, India And The World
In Defense Of Google Digitizing Books
Google's Corporate Transparency
Google And Languages
Vonage And WiMax
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
Wi-Mesh
Superfast Cable Broadband And The Rest Of The Daily Soup
Into the Nitty Gritty Of WiMax
The WiMax Appeal
Google Again
The $100 Computer
Google Video Has Hit The Docks
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano
Google And Browsers And More
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity
Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World
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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity


Maybe Jack McCambridge - never met - is not the microfinance messiah, but a visit to his blog yesterday helped me gel a thought. I must have a soft spot for white guys who end up in India: I am half Indian. I found his blog at the blogroll of Slice Of Grice a few days back.




I think of microfinance the way I think of software/hardware/connectivity, biotech, nanotech. I fantasize of a day when the world pours a trillion dollars into microfinance instead of pouring trillions into housing bubbles in rich countries like just happened.



Top tech entrepreneurs expect to make billions. People who will help the world pour a trillion dollars into microfinance should fall into that same category. The return from microfinance is twice as that from US treasury bonds, more. But China gave an American president almost a trillion to fight a wrong war instead.

The near transparency at all levels that IT will make possible will help that goal of major league microfinance. But ultimately it is for individuals to step up to the plate.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Dell, HP, Apple
The WiMax Appeal
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity



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Thursday, April 16, 2009

That StartUp Mentality (2)



Image representing Steve Jobs as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBase



  • Larry Ellison's first wife left him. During the counseling before the divorce, Ellison said he will make a million dollars if she stayed with him. The wife laughed. They were barely getting by. Ellison worked just enough to pay his share of bills, and not more. One day he went ahead and bought a boat, made a down payment. That sent the wife into therapy. At his peak his net worth was close to 50 billion.
  • His second wife would put on make up before going to sleep and spend the night face up. Logic? So she did not have to rush in the morning.
  • His third wife left him for a Harvard MBA. He wrote to a friend. "Congratulations on getting and staying married."
  • Michael Dell started his computer business in his college dorm. One day his parents called from the airport. We are here to see you. He managed to get all his stuff into his neighbor's bathroom just in time.
  • Einstein was thought of as a no good student at high school. He barely managed to pass the entrance exams to college. When he was working on the Theory of Relativity, people routinely described him as someone "lazy."
  • After Steve Wozniak designed the PC, he took the prototype to his bosses at HP. They were utterly uninterested. When Steve Jobs found out Wozniak had done that, he was enraged.
  • The two YouTube guys had been swiping credit cards not long before they got bought by Google for $1.5 billion.
  • The two Google guys early on wanted to be bought by Yahoo. Yahoo was uninterested in them. Yahoo could have had the Google search engine for a few tens of millions.
  • One of the two Google founders Sergei Brin would go on dates in 2000, and he noticed there never were second dates. Women did not return calls. He had a dot com that had never made a dime. That did not look sexy when dot coms were going down left and right. Larry Page jokes that was a big reason they went from doing search only to search and ads. Later it has become search, ads and apps.
  • Amitabh Bachchan is the most recognized face on the planet, he has ruled the Hindi film industry for about four decades now. I grew up watching him. I used to imitate his hairstyle. I am trying to do it again. In his late 20s, early 30s, he had a decent job in Calcutta. He had a company car, for one, a big deal for the India of the late 1960s. He quit that job and went to Mumbai to give acting a shot. His mother was not happy. He had to struggle for a few years. He had a few flops in a row. Then he got a huge hit, and he never looked back. He is an ultimate family man.
  • One day Sam Walton showed up in Manhattan at an investment bank. I want to take my company public, who do I talk to, he asked the receptionist. Although Walmart was in debt, the fundamentals of the company were strong. After the receptionist found out he was from Arkansas, she took him to see this lone soul from Arkansas who worked at that bank.
  • For the longest time after founding Walmart, Walton did not need college graduates. College graduates were over educated and often lacking in basic common sense for the kinds of tasks he had. Then the company grew, and the first string of college graduates started to apply for jobs. The founding team got suspicious.
  • Bill Gates said he imagined he was going to be a millionaire, even a multi-millionaire, but that he never imagined he was going to be a billionaire.
  • When Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, he went on a tour of Europe. He met families of his Oxford friends. They routinely suggested he should come back to their country as ambassador.
  • When Warren Buffett launched his company, he approached a neighbor, friend. College education is getting expensive these days, he said. If you were to invest 10K in my company, by the time your kids grow up and are ready for college, that investment should take care of their college expenses, he said. The friend refused to invest. That 10K today would have been worth 300 million.

  • From the book, Soft War, An Intimate Portrait Of Larry Ellison And Oracle by Matthew Symonds, with commentary by Larry Ellison, pages 337-38.



    Jimmy says, "I've talked this over with Larry several times, and there's a big difference of perception about this. I was at home with my parents when we got a call from Larry. My father had a long talk with him over the phone, and when he hung up, he said: 'Larry's in trouble. He wants to start a company, and he needs money.' At that time, he'd just become a judge and his salary had dropped dramatically from what he'd been making as a lawyer, but he said, 'I'm not going to say no to the kid.' He went into my sister's savings account and sent him $6,000. The feeling was, he's calling us for help and we'll do all we can for him." Ellison's version is indeed a little different: "I told them that Oracle would go public in about a year or so and that anything they invested in the stock now would increase by a factor of ten. Of course, at the time they honestly believed that they would never see any of their money ever again. In spite of that, they gave me the money. It was an act of kindness. And it turned out to be a pretty good investment too." *

    * LE writes: I was wrong about Oracle stock's increasing in value by a factor of ten; it increased by a factor of ten thousand.






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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Defining Web 4.0



Web 1.0

That was/is the static webpage. They are very much around. Offline you had posters and pamphlets. Online you had webpages. Same thing, different medium. (Google Books: Primitive)

Web 2.0

Facebook is the best example of a Web 2.0 application in many ways. (The Unfacebook) It is still a rectangle on a screen like Web 1.0, but it is dynamic, the content constantly changing, there are people involved, large numbers of people. The webpage is now dynamic. Google is a 2.0 company, (Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World) but it also has other elements. (Search: Much Is Lacking, The Next Search Engine) Email is a 2.0 application. (Email, Search, News)

Web 3.0

Web 2.0 is dynamic, but it is still 2D. Web 3.0 is 3D. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 focus on the software. Web 3.0 takes a holistic approach and tackles connectivity, hardware, and just enough software to get you online. Web 3.0 is only complete when all of humanity is online. (Apple's Mobile Space: Sizzling, Dell, HP, Apple, Google And Languages, Into the Nitty Gritty Of WiMax, Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity)

What I have is a 3.0 company. (IC)

A Web 3.0 Manifesto



Web 4.0

This is the most amorphous part right now in this system of classification, but I am going to call it Next Generation Software. I have no idea as to its shape, form or function. Massive collaboration software, massive input software. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 software, at the end of the day, treated you like individuals. Web 4.0 will be able to handle masses of people, both in creation and consumption.



Web 5.0



Web 5.0 is face time. This is where the circle becomes full. Because, face it, the internet is, at the end of the day, a communication tool. We try so hard to get people communicating, talking. We try to say, it is okay you are not in each other's immediate presence, you can still talk. That begs the question. What when people are in immediate presence? Starbucks repackaged coffee. You could accuse me of repackaging hello. But my point is Web 5.0 is supreme. Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0, they are all supposed to lead to Web 5.0. And Web 5.0 is not about technology at all. It is about basic human interaction. It is about meeting in person. Web 5.0 is the ultimate interactive experience. But the Web 5.0 that will sit on top of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 will be qualitatively different, very much so. Web 5.0 is not an argument against Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0. MeetUp is a rudimentary 5.0 company. It also has 2.0 elements. New York City is the ultimate Web 5.0 destination. This is the Amazon forest of humanity. People from every town on earth live here. That is why I have suggested it is poised to become the Silicon City. There is no better place on earth for 5.0, that's why. (Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds)

Web 5.0: Face Time








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Sunday, April 29, 2007

Dell Memo


This is nothing less than Michael Dell trying to reinvent his company. It is as if he were launching another startup. Making the Titanic do a 180 degree turn is not easy. And there will be plenty to watch.

If you are going to ditch the idea of direct selling, and if you are going to no longer try to keep inventory low, then that is Dell 2.0.

Dell is now going to be more like the other PC companies. That perhaps should have been coming, because other companies have become more like Dell and have brought the prices down substantially.



There is this synergistic competition going on. PC companies are busy eating into each others' turfs. But the new move is still for Dell to prove.

The real news might be the mention of the four BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the mention of the phrase "next billion." Those countries have much less in terms of internet penetration, and so ordering computers online is not exactly a concept. And if you are going to stock up stores with your machines, it is not exactly build to sell. The direct way has been to take the order and then build. Now you build and then go sell.

Michael Dell is a legendary entrepreneur. The CEO Rollins before him could not have made a move like this one. This is too unorthodox. He would have felt like he were undoing Dell. Can you imagine a Microsoft that is about to ditch Windows? In the late 90s, some Microsoft engineers actually did suggest to Gates that the browser instead of the operating system should be made the gateway to the computing experience. Gates suggested those engineers quit Microsoft and go join the Peace Corps.

Michael Dell's memorandum to Dell staff:

To: Dell Employees Worldwide

From: Michael & the Executive Leadership Team

Dell Confidential -- For Internal Use Only

One Dell, One Focus -- Simplifying IT for Our Customers

We met as a complete Executive Leadership Team for most of last week to discuss Dell's future. We left the week with a great deal of confidence about our plans for the next generation of Dell customers. Throughout our history we have worked as a team -- as One Dell -- and we have made quality PCs affordable. Now Dell plans to make information technology affordable for millions of customers around the world. We will do this by simplifying IT where others perpetuate complexity and innovating beyond hardware into solutions. This is one of the most exciting periods in our history but it requires all of us to stand together as One Dell to make profound changes and take well thought-out risks.

Here are some of the steps we will take to get there:

• Fix our Core Business to be competitive. The Direct Model has been a revolution, but is not a religion. We will continue to improve our business model, and go beyond it, to give our customers what they need. We will simplify our organization to make it easier to hear customers and respond to them. We've already streamlined our executive leadership structure. We need to streamline our management structure to speed decisions and remove bureaucracy. We're making improvements in pricing, product development and fulfillment, and customer experience. We reorganized the product group to more effectively listen to our customers and develop end-to-end customer solutions. We are now revisiting our entire design process to improve our speed-to-market and focus on what customers truly value. Our new Global Operations organization, led by Mike Cannon, is working to take our supply chain and manufacturing to the next level of efficiency and quality. This group is also partnering with the regions and the product group to pursue new manufacturing and distribution models to address the unique needs of our customers in all markets. More broadly, we plan to eliminate overlaps in our organization and activities to enable us to deliver even more value to our customers. We also need to improve sales productivity. These won't be merely exercises in cost-cutting. We will re-invest those resources in the customer solutions that will build Dell for the future.

• Re-ignite Growth in our Core Business to reach more customers. We are taking some concrete steps to get growth back into our core business. We released the EC280 in March for first-time computer users in China. We will open a new factory in Brazil in May and a new factory in India in July to be closer to those huge customer bases. In June, we'll launch our new Inspiron models with personalized color options and improved mobile broadband. We will launch products and services for small and medium business customers later this summer. And our new Dell Data Center Solutions Division is addressing the unique needs of hyper-scale data centers for customers whose business relies on enterprise computing solutions. We plan to take our improved cost structure to acquire new customers and sell existing customers more products and services. We are accelerating down the path to be a truly global company giving customers around the world the best products, the easiest solutions and most choices.

• Build For the Long term to provide more customer solutions. Ron Garriques' Global Consumer team is re-inventing how we address the evolving needs of our consumers around the world and the unique needs of the next billion consumers in the large and emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). With strong share position in markets such as Japan, the U.K. and Canada, now we are going to make a mark in the rest of the world. Ron and team are also tackling how Dell's consumer business should evolve in the long term in mature markets. Stay tuned for more here.

We are also embarking on a bold, long term initiative to radically simplify IT for our commercial customers. Simply put, the philosophy comes down to a set of core beliefs:

Information Technology shouldn't be as complex as it is.

• You should spend less on maintaining I/T and more on innovation.

• Every IT project should not require an army of consultants.

• Computing should have minimal environmental impact.

Superior information drives efficiency in your IT environment.

We are already taking steps to fulfill this vision, but we have a long way to go. For those of us who have worked for a while in this industry, we know our competitors drive complexity and needless cost into customers' environments. These so-called "service divisions" create a never-ending cycle of activity with unclear return on investment. We intend to break this cycle. We will build different kinds of services and offer key technologies that will help customers escape this complexity trap and unlock the true potential of technology. And, as we re-invent Dell to deliver on this promise for our customers, we will rely on Mark Jarvis, our new chief marketing officer, to ensure we properly position our new systems and solutions capabilities in the global marketplace.

We won't hesitate to use our company's assets to build or buy the capabilities and technologies we need to deliver on our initiatives. Our transformation will take time to accomplish. We need your help to identify how we can become more efficient and effective for our customers across all areas of our business. We want you to take action with your team and bring your ideas forward. On June 20, we'll launch the internal version of IdeaStorm called "Inside IdeaStorm" for employees so that you can tell us where you think we have opportunities to improve as a company and how we can streamline our work to eliminate low value activities. We will listen and we will respond.

This is a defining moment in our history and in our relationships with our customers. Just as we re-invented the way consumers and organizations buy hardware, we are going to re-invent the way the world gets access to IT. We are excited about what we will achieve for our customers as we make information technology more affordable for them and what that will enable them to do.

The future looks great for Dell and we are up to the challenges that we'll face on our journey -- challenges that will test, teach and ultimately strengthen us as a company and as a team -- as One Dell.

Thank you for transforming Dell with the customer in mind every day. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this on One Dell Way.
In The News

Dell Losing Its Religion, But The Devil Is In The Details
iT News The last time Dell entered the retail space, it was a move made out of "panic" that bombed because the company strayed from its core strength: so explained Dell in his book, Direct From Dell, which he wrote eight years ago as a guide to good business strategy. ....... Dell's three Golden Rules, "Never sell indirect." (The other two Dell Golden Rules are "disdain inventory" and "always listen to the customer.") ..... To make its way into the retail channel or commercial reseller channel this time, the company may need to re-think its second golden rule of disdaining inventory. As of last 3 November, Dell reported that it had five days of inventory. ...... To make a go of an indirect sales strategy, Dell may need to ensure that its pipeline has enough PCs, notebooks, peripherals and parts in stock so channel partners can keep their customers happy. To build that inventory may take an investment so large it could eat into the company's already-declining profits. ..... the difference between Dell and other companies is that while all companies make mistakes, Dell never makes the same mistake twice
HP on the rise Austin American-Statesman (subscription)
Hewlett-Packard comes back fighting Financial Times (subscription)
Strictly PC – the new king of IT Times Online Hewlett-Packard – the archetypal Silicon Valley company that recently overtook IBM to become the world’s biggest-selling technology company. ..... HP employs more than 150,000 people in 179 countries, and last year generated $94 billion (£47 billion) from selling computers, printers, cameras, consul-tancy, IT services and much else besides. ....... One of the central themes of Tough Choices is HP’s “dysfunc-tional” board, and the infighting among directors that went on for years before Fiorina’s sacking in February 2005......... HP – famously founded in a Palo Alto garage ...... the board was made up of people who were individually very good. As a group they struggled ....... HP has more than doubled in value, its shares rising from about $20 to $42. ...... HP almost doubled its operating profits last year, to $6.6 billion. ...... the $30-billion-a-year PC business. ..... Dell has stumbled, exposing the limitations of its direct-selling model ........ continuing fall in computer prices, which causes more damage to the manufacturers of cheaper, unbranded PCs. ...... HP invests about $4 billion in research and development. An old joke has it that most of the group’s investment in innovation is in creating expensive new printer cartridges ........ the continuing increase in the number of documents and photos people are printing, increasingly from the internet. ...... Hurd has spent more than $5 billion on acquisitions, the biggest of which was last year’s $4.5 billion purchase of Mercury Interactive, a company that sells quality-assurance and monitoring software. ....... The company estimates its technology is used by 1 billion people and claims it is addressing markets worth a total of $1,100 billion. ...... He tends to talk in broad generalisations. “We’ve got to develop innovative products,” he said at one point, “products that are well-designed and strongly featured, and get them to market with speed at the right price.”




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Monday, April 23, 2007

Entrepreneurs: Spikes




There are some entrepreneurs who end up super duper rich. There are many who end up doing quite well. There are numerous whose businesses do not see the light of day. These spikes are necessary. Entrepreneurs are indispensable to the market system. And markets are fundamental to democracy. No market, no democracy.

Over the long run, it is a progression for society at large. Society overall gets richer and richer over time, unless you are Zimbabwe under Mugabe. That genius has actually managed to create an ever shrinking economy. (Wash Mugabe Away With A Revolution)

It is for the democratic process to decide on the rules of the game. But within those rules, entrepreneurs are free, the best ones end up looking reckless. Much creativity is involved. Much risk taking is involved. Often much is at stake. But in the end, it is about creation. It is a progression.



In a well-oiled, functioning political system, the politicians are background noise to the entrepreneurs. There is strategic lobbying, sure. If you are leading the pack in your industry, maybe you know things. And the public servants need to hear. But other than that, the world of business is a galaxy all its own.

Entrepreneurs are almost a different species. The entrepreneur's worldview is different than that of the jobholder. Early stage entrepreneurship can also have some interesting stories to it.

A few hours back I registered my company: JyotiConnect Inc. I want to be a Spike. Godspeed.

In The News

HP and Dell slug it out in Second Life Brisbane Times
Book Review - Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the ...
Blogcritics.org How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company ...... founders' innovation in both new products and new ways of doing business created an environment in which customers wanted only HP products, employees reciprocated the loyalty HP showed to them, and future Silicon Valley generations tried -- and usually failed -- to follow in their footsteps. ......... for almost 50 years they partnered at the top of the organization they founded ...... the family atmosphere that came to be known as "the HP Way." ...... a roughly 10-page document that lays out a blueprint for entrepreneurial success. ....... meeting at Stanford, where Dave Packard was the tall, gregarious, can't-miss golden boy sports star and Bill Hewlett was a short, dyslexic, somewhat reserved sort still getting over his father's untimely death ...... shared interest in electronics ..... Hewlett and Packard baked HP instrument panels in Packard's oven and randomly priced their first product in such a way that it was impossible to make a profit ....... worked hard throughout HP's ascendancy to create a family atmosphere, and this is perhaps their greatest legacy ........ handing out bonus checks to employees based on Hewlett-Packard performance and having Friday "beer busts" to let off steam ...... flex time ..... avoiding mass layoffs by sacrificing revenue in favor of employees keeping their jobs ...... from that garage partnership to an incorporated small business to corporate behemoth so smoothly, always with an eye on profits, sentimental toward their employees but never sentimental toward products that no longer make the cut.
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