SmartBiz RSS FEED June 26th, 2007
It's important to select an email service provider that will enable your business to optimize this vital marketing and sales channel while complying with CAN SPAM and other laws.Jobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 26th, 2007
Summary account executive, strategies, sales Job Description: Account Executive / Sales Executive Consultant for Information Technology Industry. - LOCATION: YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO - CONTRACT: 4 - 6 MONTHS Potential for extension and additionalJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Forensic Managers and Partners Multiple IMMEDIATE openings at a variety of levels Qualified Candidates will be contacted IMMEDIATELY. We represent major firms with locations in all major cities. We are looking for experienced prJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Forensic Managers and Partners Multiple IMMEDIATE openings at a variety of levels Qualified Candidates will be contacted IMMEDIATELY. We represent major firms with locations in all major cities. We are looking for experienced prJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Business Valuation Professionals Our clients provide services involved in formal valuation and fairness opinions for compliance and/or regulatory purposes and less formal valuation estimates for strategic purposes in the contextJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Business Valuation Professionals Our clients provide services involved in formal valuation and fairness opinions for compliance and/or regulatory purposes and less formal valuation estimates for strategic purposes in the contextJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Supply Chain/Manugistics Specialists Progressive boutique firm is seeking strong Supply Chain professionals that are veterans of the industry who have hands-on configuration experience implementing Manugistics Software ApplicatiJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Supply Chain/Manugistics Specialists Progressive boutique firm is seeking strong Supply Chain professionals that are veterans of the industry who have hands-on configuration experience implementing Manugistics Software ApplicatiJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
See yourself as a part of this rising boutique firm and allow your past experiences and stellar abilities add to this growing practice. Our client is a professional services firm working with middle market and large corporations. You willJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
See yourself as a part of this rising boutique firm and allow your past experiences and stellar abilities add to this growing practice. Our client is a professional services firm working with middle market and large corporations. You willtjpet@aol.com June 25th, 2007
As many-most of you well know, I'm no fan (understatement) of "built to last." I do not see longevity as an achievement of note. (Yup, I'm an Orioles fan, but Cal Ripken's "iron man" record is pale by comparison with, say, Ted Williams' "last .400 hitter" achievement, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, or Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA.) My mantra is clear: "Built to rock the world" rules! Google may well be on the scrapheap just a dozen years from now—but it has surely "rocked the world" in a way that will indeed be remembered in biz history headlines 50 or 150 years from now. To be sure, if you "keep on rockin' the world," I'm delighted if you last—think, at the moment, Apple. But longevity for longevity's sake??
But, perversely, this Post is about "built to last" in a traditional and admiring way. We're burying about a mile of power line on our VT farm. Though the pros (electricians, excavators) are in charge, our 1985 John Deere 2350 with 245 bucket loader time and again has been indispensable—and at age 22 it's as perky as ever. Sure there's been a replacement part or two along the way, but the solidity and durability of the machine rolls on like the Mississippi.
And its superb design—Deere's longtime hallmark, so unexpected in "farm machinery"—makes it a work of art as well as a piece of work.
Hats waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off to John Deere!
Design, speaking of which, may be "in" right now and correctly so (and I do, I admit, crow for having "gotten there" 20 years ago), but it ain't easy, especially the "usability" part. I have bought two coffeemakers of late, a Cuisinart and a Krupps, and the design in both cases stinks up the kitchen—in particular, the Krupps pot pours poorly and the water-loading process in the Cuisinart is a bad joke. Reminds me to "stick with Braun." Also reminds me of the difficulty of getting so-called little things right, such as pouring effectiveness of a pot or, God knows, the quality and durability and usability of zippers!
(More "hoorays" re design and durability—I'm doing a lot of brutal brush clearing at the moment, and I am in love with my work-hiking boots, bought for our New Zealand trek 4 months ago. They come from Jack Wolfskin, a German company, I believe—at any rate I bought them in and hauled them home from Frankfurt.)
Posted by Tom Peters | Comments?tjpet@aol.com June 25th, 2007
Partially the "built to last" bit (and my deep philosophical problems therewith) is on my mind because I'm immersed in a biography of Joseph Schumpeter. (Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, by Thomas McCraw.) For decades Schumpeter played, to his chagrin while alive, second fiddle to JM Keynes. In a penetrating review of the book, the noted economist Robert Solow convincingly argues that the first violinist now has rather clearly turned out to have been Schumpeter.
In short, Schumpeter, in a long life devoted to one idea, squarely and contentiously placed the entrepreneur way ahead of the pack when it comes to the engine of economic growth: "Without innovation, no entrepreneurs; without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns and no capitalist propulsion. The atmosphere of industrial revolutions—of 'progress'—is the only one in which capitalism can survive." (Note the plural of revolution—i.e., "revolutions.")
This was radical stuff in 1911, when Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development arrived—and remains so today. We can work like hell to get the money supply "right" and to salvage the Mercks and GMs, but make no mistake that our future depends on the occasional but consistent provision of Googles and Genentechs and a string of future Googles or Genentechs bubbling in Palo Alto or Cambridge or another of those precious couple of dozen zipcodes which drive our future economic—and thence political—power.
Schumpeter also believed in "my world" (and Peter Drucker's!!!)—which also set him way apart from economists past and present alike. As Solow says, "He was explicit that, while technological innovation was in the long run the most important function of the entrepreneur, organizational innovation in governance, finance and management was comparable in significance." Thus the advantage that accrued to, say, Dell's supply chain organizational-management approach (abetted, indeed, by new technology) is as decisive to progress (at the moment—which is the point!) as is Amgen's latest FDA-approved compound.
All hail the entrepreneur, in search of what Schumpeter in economist-ese calls "temporary monopoly profits," and the revolutions-creative destruction said entrepreneur repeatedly leaves in his wake ... until that moment when he in turn is relegated to the scrapheap.
The king is dead.
God save the king.
tjpet@aol.com June 25th, 2007
I've enjoyed The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity, by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder. It is a marvelous tour d'horizon of the many experiments underway and funded in areas such as energy efficiency and pollution reduction. The "content" is enlightening, but the "context" even more so. That is, "intractable" problems effectively are embraced and ameliorated—often in surprisingly short order—only when the Giant called "market forces" is awakened. The economic tipping point has arguably been reached—and the likes of the Silicon Valley V.C.s are moving in for the "cleantech" kill-killing. Will there be a burst bubble that wipes out the bank accounts of thousands? Of course! And like Web 2.0 today, it inevitably will be followed by more experimentation of new flavors—and doubtless more burst bubbles. But the race is on, and progress, I confidently predict, will be astonishing in the next 5, 10, 20 years.
(All hail Joseph Schumpeter redux.)
Posted by Tom Peters | Comments?tjpet@aol.com June 25th, 2007
"High Intelligence Can Hurt A Person's Ability To Lead"—Wall Street Journal (0619.07)
The underlying discussion comes from the wonderful (I'm a regular reader) Blog of U.S. judge Richard Posner and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker. Among other things, Posner writes, the super-smart don't know "when to defer to the superior knowledge of more experienced but less mentally agile subordinates." I'm well disposed to this as I have observed it time and again—especially in my McKinsey days.
Here are a couple of related quotes from my Master slide deck:
"Intelligent people can always come up with intelligent reasons to do nothing."—Scott Simon
"Andrew Higgins, who built landing craft in WWII, refused to hire graduates of engineering schools. He believed that they only teach you what you can't do in engineering school. He started off with 20 employees, and by the middle of the war had 30,000 working for him. He turned out 20,000 landing craft. D.D. Eisenhower told me, 'Andrew Higgins won the war for us. He did it without engineers.'"—Historian Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company
Posted by Tom Peters | Comments?Jobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Consulting - Pharmaceutical The Brooks Group (Brooksconsulting.com) has a unique opportunity for an experienced implementation consultant with pharma experience. Brooks is one of the fastest growing cJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Ajilon Consulting is a premier provider of information technology (IT) business solutions. With over 50 offices in North America and 12,000 employees worldwide, Ajilon Consulting is aJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Ajilon Consulting is a premier provider of information technology (IT) business solutions. With over 50 offices in North America and 12,000 employees worldwide, Ajilon Consulting is aJobster.com: Latest jobs matching: consulting June 25th, 2007
Ajilon Consulting is an international IT consulting firm with offices worldwide. We have over 6,000 consultants in over 80 cities in the United States, as well as in Canada, the Unite