Slashdot Mirror
Likely Success of Internet-Related Business Models?
guess-for-success asks: "In Lester Thurow's latest book, published by HarperBusiness Books (Fall 2003), Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, there is a chapter which discusses the beginning of new industries. During this time, several business models are introduced and only a few will survive. Looking at the PC industry, Commodore was the industry leader in the 1980's, but ultimately failed and went bankrupt in 1994. Successful business models such as Dell were not introduced until years after the industry began.
I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed? Which companies will rise to the top? Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?"
"You can find out more about Lester Thurow here. He is a professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT. He has three New York Times best selling books to his credit and consults widely around the globe."
This is essentially Frodo meets Oregon Trail, right? Instead of your son getting dyssentry, Frodo gets knifed in the shoulder. Instead of breaking a wagon axle, you get consumed by Barrow-wights. Instead of meeting friendly travellers, you meet ring-wraiths.
Who have installed "mysql errors" instead of our
dimunutive hero, the hobbit Frodo. Not even the mighty
"Slashdot Effect" could stop them! Sauron will
recover the one ring and we are all doomed!
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
*Already* this site is /.'ed beyond usability. It's too much. Slashdot needs to provide a local cache of pages it links to, for all non-major league sites. To not do so is irresponsible - and makes the point of posting the links at all pretty much moot.
Wow, nothing captures the grandeur and rich detail of a 1000+ page epic like 128 colors, 160x200 resolution rendered by a graphics chip running at 1.19 MHz. The screenshots transport me back to 1986 when I first read the book.
google cache of /. linked site (old):
E :w ww.atariage.com/
o ur ney.html
w :w ww.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/journey.html +%22lord+of+the+rings%22+atari+game&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5qsLqbqhik
Doing a google search I found the game on another site (with a screen shot):
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/j
and the cache:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wpuA4XgOLV
Perhaps Slashdot should expand it's horizons as a place to get news and chat about current trends to something a bit more ambitious. Since many websites due either to incorrect configuration, bad design, or lack of bandwidth, seem to crash or not survive being Slashdotted. Perhaps is the time to start giving out Slashdot Awards. Those who survive being Slashdotted should have a placard on their website saying "We have been Slashdot Harddened."
Okay, lesson learned. Stay as far away from Slashdot as possible if you want your poor server to live longer than 30 seconds once an article has been posted to the front page. :) Here are some links to the images on the server that will bypass MySQL, so you can at least see them:
:)
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2
Screenshot #3
Screenshot #4
Screenshot #5
Screenshot #6
Screenshot #7
Prototype Cartridge
Prototype Box
Binary Image
Here's a MySLQ-free writeup we did, although many of the lnks internal to AtariAge won't work right now.
Information about 2600 Lord of the Rings
Enjoy!
Well, I don't know much about this vaporware Atari 2600 LotR game, but a lot of other games based on Tolkiens world has been made. ;)
... which reminds me: Mudconnecter has a list of some MUDs based on Tolkien's books. Of those, Elendor MUSH is probably the best one. I remember playing it some years ago...
Check out this neat site. It has all the info you need about computer-based Tolkien games. LotR for Super NES is probably the only one I've tried so far, and it didn't quite meet my expectations
Oh, and didn't someone announce a MMORPG a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it
Ahhh, google wins again:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games
Lots of LOTR games! Apple II, C64, Atari 400 and ST, Amiga, Acorn, etc...
-nate
A program called "Bored of The Rings" was produced for the BBC, Spectrum and Amstrad home computers many moons ago by Tolkien Games. These days it can be downloaded for emulators from here.
:v)
Oh, they did the real Tolkien Trilogy too, which can be downloaded separately via links from here. I just prefered the spoof.
Vik
Here's what I know about the game:
This game was programmed by Parker Bros a long time ago, and was pretty much finished (I'm not sure what (if anything) they left out... it looks finished to me). However, there are two parties that apparently own the rights to the LOTR stuff, and there were problems getting the liscensing rights and other legal mumbo jumbo. As a result, the game couldn't be released because the two sides couldn't come to terms on things.
As for what to do in the game, the other goons at AtariAge and I have figured out this much:
1. You have to get to Rivendell, the city at the top of the map. To do this, you basically run up and to the left. When you find the path, follow it. It's much faster. If you need to look at your map, duck into the forest (or a town) and press the button.
2. You can pick up other party members along the way. I'm not sure exactly where they all are, but one is for sure in the city on the left.
3. The birds don't seem to do anything (we haven't figured that part out yet), and the only way we know of to get the horseman off your back is to dodge into the forest. He won't follow you. As for turning white when you press the button? I have no idea what that does either.
4. Eventually, if you get far enough along the path, you'll come to a river (It's flashing for some reason). There's a bridge across it if you look for it.
By the way, AtariAge is back up... sort of. You can view the LOTR article and associated material, and you can get to the forums... but everything else is offline until their MySQL server is put back online.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Using a local cache would require Slashdot to serve vastly more data than it does now.
Serving lots of data to a large audience costs a lot of money. Linking to a site doesn't. It's that simple. Slashdot wants to save a buck.
However, one hit from Slashdot can eliminate a small site's readers for the rest of the month, if they have monthly traffic limits. Or worse. It is irresponsible to link to a small site this way.
What I don't understand is why Slashdot just doesn't start a policy of linking the actual site AND its Google cache. Let the readers choose. If Google complains, work something out with them. Some sites would kill for this kind of traffic. Use it as an asset. And stop killing the little guys.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I used to work with a fellow who was in Parker Bros. during the Atari heyday and even into the PC gaming arena for a short while. What he says makes a lot of sense and it does lead me to believe it to be true...
For each new game that came out, four were actually made. The reason for this was that it cost $250,000 to produce a game and about $3-4M to actually market and sell the damn thing. Thus, it was crucial that they picked winners. Looking at the type of games that Parker Bros. was coming out with, you can easily see how these games were not destined to be classics... The loss of developing 3 losers for every winner was covered in the returns made on the one game that was released. While it may still sound like a weird way to do it, the return on investment proved it to be the correct thing to do. They were able to release new games on a regular basis without worrying about a single game bogging down their cycle.
Note for those who dispute development costs: The ratio of marketing costs to development costs still holds true for a lot of development that happens today for a variety of different products. A dozen cubicals of programmers is a lot cheaper than TV spots, magazine ads, distribution, packaging, art work, product placement in stores, etc...
So we can see how it was entirely possible for a LOTR game to not be selected because by comparison to the other games coming out at the time, it sucked. How could such a classic suck? As someone mentioned earlier... How exactly are you going to get a 1,000 page book filled with rich imagery into a 4k cart running on a 2600? The people who would buy such a game (LOTR fans) would have held it up to a higher expectation and been disapointed. The rest of the world would have said "Lord of the who?" and ignored it. And *click*... There goes $4M down the drain...
Here are some screenshots:
- lotr1.png
- lotr2.png
- lotr3.png
-jfedorTrusted computing is the next big thing in the PC industry. Get in or be left begin in the dust, wondering why all your competitors are making mad cash while you barely keep your family afloat.
I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, but keeping your eyes closed while the industry is wooshing by you isn't quite economically sound behavior.
Mod me down, I have plenty of karma to burn.
You do one thing (in their case) and you do it well. Then you use that one thing to make money.
The Internet-Enabled Remote Bitchslap(patent pending) will be the biggest thing EVAR!
Oh yeah, and an addition to CallerID called CallerIQ.
Do a lot of things well.
Over the last 20 years I have been running a small bespoke software company, currently the larger players suck as IBM and Russian companys are really putting the squeeze on us.
We really had to tighten our belts, I am not proud of this but I had to let a couple of my guys go and I replaced them with some Indians with H1-B visas. It is not very patriotic I know but they are hardworking and pleasant.
Just last week I asked them if there was much talent in India, they were very confident that Indian programmers were very compitent. I told them to go over there find some offices get some interviews going and I would meet them in a month. You see the only way I can compete with the big players and the Europeans is to relocate my business and my family to India.
Oh well the weather is nice, I will post updates in my journal, friend me if you are interested.
In good times advertising will do well obviously, but in bad times, people will want to advertise for bankruptcy lawyers, credit consolidation, etc.
Already many succesful internet-only advertising firms have become profitable after many have failed. The smarter firms have figured out how to make a buck.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
boo.com was the biggest failure ever, in the 1st dot com era. However, they were right. However, they were just too early, with too little feeling/touch for the hardware reality at the time. Java sucked then, as it does to a large extent today.
;)
(Will they never learn?
Sens moral? Do what hardware can do for you today, not when you release; the masses don't have the latest and greatest.
Do you live in Soviet Russia?
Get in or be left in the dust? You mean follow suit like all the other dotcoms did in the late 90's?
Gold rushes without stopping to evaluate the true ROI rarely yield results. Better off buying lottery tickets w/ next week's payroll.
Roku is the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.
The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames--most importantly, working 12" LCD panels.
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drives--you put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.
Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these things--but what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.
With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.
There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Lots of old equipment ready to be used in new and exciting ways.
We need a new economic system that doesn't exploit people and the environment like capitalism.
Capitalism has caused too much damage already.
Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process.
Really, most internet businesses are just innovations, taking a new technology and using it to replace or suppliment an existing medium. The problem with most internet businesses in the dot com era was they didn't understand this and/or fell into the trap of "This is compeltely different" and it wasn't.
Now the internet has helped reduce cost in industries like mail order because it is possible to reach billons with one site unlike say a traditional catalog that would have to be mailed out which costs a lot of money in print and postage. However, there is no secert method to business models. Its still breaks down to: provide a product or service to fulfill a need. Do it well, keep down costs, and hopefully make a profit.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
- Amazon: Found a need for an online bookstore where there was none, and capitalized on it...
- Fedex: Found a need for overnight delivery service where there was little, and capitalized on it...
- Cisco: Regarded as the highest quality maker (tho some may contest but the reputation is there) of networking equipment, realizes the need for the best hardware for the best systems...
- Ford Motor (my pick): Recognized a need for cheap automobiles and capitalized on it...
Now the negatives:- Commodore: Entered an industry well penetrated by apple, IBM, Tandy (back then) and company and tried to play along, didn't make it....
- Webvan (my personal pick): Tried to make it in an online grocery world where profits are slim and competition in related industry (traditional grocery) is fierce.
See a pattern here?In short, to launch a successful business, you need to have a core competency in mind, that is an idea that is:
- Rare
- Unique
- Hard to duplicate
- Hard to substitute
If you have that, and all the other elements of a proper business (good management, proper quality, good promotion, etc) fall together, I should see no reason why a business couldn't succeed. I'll defend this against any reply or email to the contrary.Anyways there's my 2 cents from a person who just graduated with a Bachelors in business, I'd love intelligent replies from people who think otherwise, thanks!
...in bed
You need a solid plan, a solid product, and a company that can be successfully run by idiots (because sooner or later it will be). And you can't discount the role of serendipity -- for it was she that made successes out of the unlikeliest things. Take chopsticks, for example; who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports! Or the success of the Post-It note: once thought to be entirely useless outside of the labs in which it was developed, it created a whole new 'need' in society for these notes that could be attached to things without paperclips.
At the end of the day, sometimes you just can't predict what'll be wildly successful and what will fall by the wayside. But I think if you find something unique and stick with it you've got a good shot.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
+5 Insightful
Ordering online has some problems, mostly shipping delay and price.
I've found sites like newegg.com to be good because of FAST shipping and low price. In some cases on newegg, shipping is free.
I think the best way to stay in online business is to popularize the name, use lower-than-average prices (especially to combat shipping cost) and to be exceptionally reliable.
It also seems like computer hardware works well on some levels because it's generally harder to get good hardware. I usually don't see "good" motherboards at stores or AMD Athlons (except for some cases, like Best Buy), and in those few cases where I do it is usually overpriced.
If you think you can run a small online business with prices equal to what normal, drive-to stores sell you're kidding yourself, especially when you factor in shipping costs. Unless, of course, what you sell is ultra-speciality stuff you normally can't find.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Did they really sell that many units?
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
They don't even list trollkore. trollkore must suck really bad.
Being a FedEx employee I think it's obvious which one I hope will survive.
However, massive restructuring will have to occur if this is to happen. Sure we are a market leader in margins and, as a cargo airline we have a good record of adapting new technologies, but we're still running on a heirarchy reminiscent of the generation that brought us Fred Smith. Reworking our buildings from warehouses to more dynamically creativity-inspiring circular buildings would be a decent start. We work on a hub concept. We need more creativity and flexibility in on-road route planning, more power taken from beaurocrats in Memphis who really don't get a good picture of on-road day to day activity other than pages full of numbers at the end of the day and share that power in the form of actual couriers and managers being able to make more broad decisions based on their locality. We have our own form of standards. The point is that practices that work in an inner city (which spawns the greatest density of deliveries and pickups) are completely wrong for people out in the country who may have ten to twenty stops a day.
And I'm not saying this as a courier. I'm an administrator, but I think it's very important to put more faith in our frontline employees. Unfortunately not all of the higher-ups share that point of view.
Dotcom ventures, all negative late-nineties stigma aside, are still in the realm of providing virtual services. Even if those are for real products, people will STILL want to feel like they're interacting with other people. Make it too impersonal, and you'll ultimately lose touch with your customers (and their reality). It'll be interesting to see what "they" do to reverse the trend.
Not to mention there will, in the forseable future, be a consistent and even increasing demand for companies like FedEx. As more people migrate to do their shopping online, they'll need companies like us to deliver the goods.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Commodore went out of business because the people running the company were corrupt and stealing from it - ask any Amiga fan ;)
The internet is just a thing , you know? If you have a product/content people want, they will buy it.
Everytime there is a earth shattering technology that represents "the future", money floods into the market, companies are born in droves and then the implosion comes.
After that the new golden age begins with the survivors. Amazon and eBay are the cornerstones of the industry.
It's happened previous times in the American economy with car companies being the best example. There were several in it's "bubble" period, much like there were scores of internet companies during the tech bubble.
I think the infrastructure related companies (Cisco, FedEx, etc etc) will no doubt be a stable viable business model. There will always be a demand for more and higher quality infrastructure.
On the other hand, the dotcoms that lived past the bubble are doing quite well, so if one has the 'nads and a good idea, a whole lot of money can be made, but it's a risky affair. Niche interests can be a way to success, but if it's too obscure, it won't go anywhere.
In general, the companies that are most likely to have the most success are going to those who either are very friendly to their customers and investors and provide a truly superior service or those who are utterly ruthless.
Unfortunately, Trusted Computing (or whatever the acronym du jour is) will probably be a humongous cash cow for the big businesses, so in terms of money, that's a viable business model too, as despcable as it may be.
Eat the rich.
"Bespoke" in couture refers to an item of clothing custom made to you - hence a "bespoke" suit, etc.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The art of war is governed by three constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
These are: (1) Start internet related business; (2) ???; (3) Profit!!!!.
What about Dell and Walmart. They don't do anything
rare, unique, hard to duplicate or hard to substitute but they are huge successes. Why?
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
The Slashdot subscription model will undoubtedly rise to the top, generating billions of dollars for CowboyNeal and his comrades.
Simple, Porn.
Wow, you read the textbooks.
I guess Wendy's, Toyota, AMD, and all the other me too companies should not have bothered. Too bad they didn't know better.
...with Tubgirl also very successful
It's all about how the internet is used.
I'd like to see a car before I would buy it!
But that doesn't mean I don't want to shop around for prices, specs, etc about that class of car before hand.
Mail Order Companies can do well on the internet, since they already have much of the business infrastructure in place. Generally so can specialist shops or companies in niche markets that wouldn't survive with a store alone can also improve their business and reach a much wider audience.
But over all it is the customer service that makes a good business model. Having to fill in my name and address every time I want to place an order with the same company can really put you off placing a second order.
The reason Amazon and eBay are doing so well is because there websites are well designed, feature rich yet also easy to use. The tailored content is a nice touch too. ^_^
Traditional Business can use the internet to provide some form of secondary service.
For example FedEx can have parcel tracking which saves me calling up a helpline number and reading off a tracking number that I could copy and paste from an e-mail.
FedEx is mentioned in the original question. I thought it was interesting that they just bought Kinkos (the copy company, not the clown) for 2.4 gigabucks.
It would be easy for FedEx to sit on its laurels and continue to scrape more bucks out of the traditional shipping market. This purchase, while risky, shows that they've got management that can think outside the box. Granted, UPS is a step ahead with their UPS Store locations (formerly Mail Boxes Etc.). But as several articles have already pointed out (see Google News), FedEx may now be positioned to remain relevant even if the traditional "send a document for $10 bucks" business model goes away.
Back to the poster's original question, "which internet business models they believe are going to succeed?" If I knew, I would be rich, but it's clear that the winners will be those with the smarts to extend their "business models" like the FedEx example -- as opposed to either too-slow companies like Commodore (Atari, too), or all-you-can-eat monsters like Tyco.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This is either an attempt to be funny, or it is one of the most disturbing things I have heard in a while.
[Network Programming:Adult Swim::Waterfall Development:Agile Development]
And, should anybody be curious, I suspect that a truly lucrative niche can be hollowed out in the small business world if someone would only write a drop-in replacement for the Peachtree accounting package. Small businesses already have to pay for the service; if they can save a couple hundred bucks on the software, they'll do it, and you'll get Peachtree's business while they do it.
But what do I know?
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Dell and Walmart are ruthless corporations.
I've ran a small computer repair shop since the early nineties, and let me tell you, when you have a small client base, business models and management techniques don't matter in the face of just providing a good service to the customer.
Hmm, seems like providing better customer service than your competitors would qualify as a business model or even a management technique, but what do I know?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Not Necessarily. Sometimes, unless there's a natural monopoly like ebay, you can duplicate an existing business model with some success too. There's usually a copycat phenomenon that works too. Just don't be the last one on board. the PC world is a perfect example of that copycat business model that works too. Find a way to do what your competitors do for cheaper. Look at Wal-Mart as a perfect example of that.
we're looking for mom&pop et AL to make a big comeback?
no longer is the 'little man' subject to the greed/fear/ego based whims (too much is never enough?) of a handful of life0cidal megalomaniacal corepirate nazi felon execrable.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... 'invest' in yOUR community. the rewards are immeasurable. the light bringers grant us unlimited newclear power, almost as a by-product of the planet/population rescue initiative.
wait 'til you see all the space opening up as unprecedented evile continues to experience disempowerment. it's all in the manuals.
Advertising, market penetration, competitive pricing and attrition.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
especially in the prostitution business - which isn't bricks and mortar, but rather tricks on corners...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
business models and management techniques don't matter in the face of just providing a good service to the customer. Bending over backwards when you can and personifying your business helps more than any advertising ever could, in my opinion.
That *is* a business model.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Folks don't want to waste time looking for the best deal - that's why Amazon and Ebay have done so well (Wal-mart too for that matter). However, I think with both companies expanding into the same territory, one will eventually fall, although it will take a while. Probably amazon.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
What business model is "right" changes. One business model may be the right thing to do initially, but, down the road, a slightly different (or a radically different) business model may become the right one. The companies that survive are the ones that can successfully change their business model as the situation changes.
For example, take GE. Initial business was build lightbulbs and things involving electricity (motors and such). If GE had only continued to build lightbulbs and electrical motors, it probably wouldn't exist or would be this little niche player. But, instead, GE now into almost everything under the sun including financial services (still mostly around power/device related, its core business).
Amazon.com is proof that click and mortar works.
No, they're not. Amazon has no offline book stores, so they are not "click and mortar". BN.com, BestBuy.com, even ToysRUs.com (powered by Amazon, interestingly enough) are click and mortar stores, and aren't doing nearly as well as the pure dot-com, Amazon. So if anything, Amazon proves click and mortar *doesn't* work.
See how much clearer things are when you understand what the hell you're talking about?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Ownership models will definitely have to be different. Anyone notable who denies this is a corporate shill or ignorant of the times. This means trust metrics will have to significantly evolve beyond the "all or nothing" premise. For example, instead of single shot, shrinkwrap licensing a different kind of licensing which gives due if not always equal consideration to both suppliers and demanders.
It's the demand economy, stupid!
I don't see that Dell's business model is any different than Gateway's and Gateway seems to be in steep decline. Dell is just the flavor of the month and can lose it all when the new flavor hits the Internet.
Anyone care to go back through PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Awards for PC's for the last 15 years and see how many of the companies are still in the business of making PC's?
If you want to know if Dell will survive then you must ask if they can downsize without going bankrupt.
Trusted computing may become very important in the business and commercial areas, but I think there is a demonstrated interest in having a place for anonymous cowards to speak.
There is a reason that the first successful commercial internet ventures were porn sites.
I'm going out on a limb and predicting that internet music is going to bury the traditional recoring companies. I think that the RIAA hatred has reached critical mass, and it's just a matter of time until the traditional providers will start seeing a permanent drop in sales.
One quarter profit, $48 million and how many quarters at a loss? Get real.
... Dell and Walmart. They don't do anything
rare, unique, hard to duplicate or hard to substitute...
Au contraire.
Both companies are extremely adept at taking cost out of their respective supply chains. Consequently they are profitable at price points their competitors cannot easily match.
...in bed
You forgot "We're through the looking glass, people!".
Advertising is what keeps AOL afloat (at least for the time being). Not word of mouth. Microsoft dominates for any number of reasons, but none of them are customer loyaltyor good community relations (though to his credit, Bill does give plenty to charity).
I'm not saying that you can't make money with your method. Apple managed to stay around during the late '90s, prior to Jobs's return, largely due to fanatical customer loyalty, from all accounts. But Apple is now on the way back up (perhaps, though they aren't exactly profitable yet, if I remember right) because they've managed to expand their customer base by good, expensive advertising.
Consumers aren't exactly rational. It's cheaper for Dell to advertise how good their tech support is than actually improve it. It's cheaper for Apple to advertise how amazing their PowerBooks are than, say, bring the price within range of Intel laptops (not that I don't covet a nice 12" AlBook). You can get business through word of mouth. But you get ahead through sound business practices and aggressive marketing.
True dot coms have the 'advantage' of not having to maintain much 'real' stuff other then inventory and network. Whereas infrastrucure (not my word) companies have a larger amount of overhead because they actually have to make or do something (Amazon doesn't make or do anything, it just resells stuff). The true dot com model is quite vulnerable to competition, it doesn't take much to eat away at market share of a dot.com although competing toe to toe with amazon would take a huge investment upfront, its not impossible. Infrastrucure plays are a bit safer since they actually have something 'real' that can't be easily or legaly duplicated, although Huawei has tried.
So for 'real' items infrastructure plays will dominate and continue to dominate. For retail or consumer items, mainly commodity items, true dot.coms can't be touched due to their lower overhead. Both will have their place, but with more and more items becoming commodity items I think that true dot.coms will come out on top in the mid-term.
My humble (not well researched and possibly wrong) opinion.
-Lord Shadow
you can bet your highly mortgaged .asp it will, with or without yOUR help.
Fraud is the only internet business model.
How much do you want to bet that Howard Deans "tens of thousands of small contributions" is funnelled money?
The *only* innovation in the Internet is the lack of oversight. E-Bay is basically just what other countries call the black market: not everybody on e-bay is fencing stolen goods but everybody fencing stolen goods is on E-Bay. Of *course* they make lots of money: at best it's an unregulated market.
We are basically developing a "leisure privileged class" like Britain used to have. The American Revolution is over.
I'd argue both Dell and Walmart are hard to duplicate, because they charge much lower prices than their competitors. If anyone could afford to slash prices as much as either of those companies have, they wouldn't be in the positions they are today.
Sometimes you don't have to have a brand new business idea to win, you just have to implement an old one better than anyone else has.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
...in bed
How much of the worlds misery ISN'T because of greedy capitalists and corporations?
My guess would be the vast majority:
Utter Misery:
Somalia. ( Lack of Property Rights )
Ethiopia. ( Lack of Property Rights )
Zaire. ( Lack of Property Rights )
Haiti. ( Lack of Property Rights )
Cuba. ( Lack of Property Rights )
Starvation:
USSR, 1917-1987, 63 Million+ ( Communism )
China, 1923-1987, 38 Million+ ( Communism )
Genocide:
Germany, 1933-1945, 21 Million+ ( National Socialism )
Companies that have a business that Microsoft approves of will succeed. Companies that have a business that Microsoft disapproves of will fail.
Commodore failed because Microsoft wanted it dead. Dell succeeded (suck-seeded?) because Mikey Dell wore out the knees of his pants for Billy-boy. Monopolies get to pick the winners and losers. That's the way it works in the laissez-faire world.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
I'm speaking only of creative content, but I believe the a voluntary compensation method (i.e., tipping) is the only model that will compensate creative artists (without worrying about the problems of piracy, drm, etc).
I've cited this here already several times, but I wrote an essay for sharethemusicday.com that describes why a voluntary compensation model would work.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Take chopsticks, for example; who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports!
Chopsticks have been found in the tombs of Chinese emperors who ruled thousands of years ago. How exactly do you explain that, if they weren't even invented until 200 years ago?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
yahoo, excite and hotbot were called search engines?
And Amazon sold books, and did it well?
Then somebody said "Portals" and they became "portals".
Then somebody said "Auction" and they all followed e-bay.
Then somebody said "e-commerce" and they all started selling everything.
And books became Amazon's sideline to their patents on everything but the color of money. And their site became a Navigational Nightmare(TM) (patent pending).
Now everybody wants to be a search engine again.
The reason Google is succesful is because it does it gives people the information they want, and stays the hell out of their way.
They write software on demand for specific purposes and people,
Virtual computing and bladed servers like Egenera's Blade Frame (www.egenera.com) are going to be huge. Both are Billion dollar industries. Egenera, which runs on Linux and I believe even has a blade ported to windows, has a far superior product and has a 2 year lead on the competition...
PS
I believe Ken Zolot of MIT help creat this company.
-Acester
Amazon grows because it partners (only English lets you make a verb out of a noun, or modify one type of word into another easily. That's why it's the most flexible and most important language in the world) with its customers to create a service that is more valuable than the retailing alone.
By allowing its customers to contribute on-line feedback about its products (that is, people can upload their opinions about the books that they have bought; positive or negative), Amazon has created the model internet business. Customers work with Amazon to deliver better product and service to other customers.
It helps that Amazon is big enough now that it doesn't have to worry about Betelsman sueing it out of existance every time someone writes a less-than-positive book review. Compare that the dasmo (Dumb-As-Shit MOtherf---ers) Anti-virus company that included a clause in it EULA that prohibited anyone from saying anything less-than-positive about the product in any public forum (including a web site with ten hits in a year).
Generally internet companies take the first step to success when they have the epiphany that their customers are all smarter than they are. But since that happens to so few companies, internet successes remain few and far between.
Thank you,
There is a reason that The Book Of Four Rings and The Art Of War are recommended reading for any entrepeneur: the fundamentals never change.
.
I believe the first title you're referring to is Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings
Dan
It should be intlndw@gofairtrade.net
They invoke a business model that applies to established markets not emerging markets. In a word they are efficient. In three words, they are good, fast, and cheap.
They sell to the masses and therefore gain economies of scale with their suppliers, support, sales channels, etc. The volumes and their leverage enables them to sell at lower margins.
If the consumer PC market was still highly customized, Dell's model would probably fail. If Walmart sold items that weren't commodities and required customized sales or support - their model would fail.
Amazon.com is definetly the business model to follow. In the past 5 years they have been experiencing true booms in business.
I'll agree that Amazon.com is a business model to follow, if you don't mind a model like this:
1. Get open-ended financing
2. Sell everything at a loss
3. ???
4. Profit!
Now, I'm obviously not an expert, but my Googling only finds a couple of quarters where Amazon turned a profit, and the latest news is that the company's losses were almost $40 million over the last 9 months -- and that was considered a Good Thing because it was a 75% drop in losses.
When I was in Junior Achievement, they told us that successful companies made "larger profits," not "smaller losses." Amazon may not be going anywhere anytime soon, but treading water (even if you're the size of a battleship) hardly seems like a "success".
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"Basically, what I'm saying is, is that I believe customer service is still the most important aspect, so the company that succeeds in this arena will come out on top."
This is SO true - and is a great example of what is so great about free market capitalism.
The darker side of that is - when a company gets to be the size of a Dell or an HP, and it's seen as more profitable, since there's so little competition, to instead, loot their market. Which is what Dell is doing.
That's why, politically, we've got to keep our eye on when free market politics crosses the line and becomes anarcho-capitalism, and reign that shit in.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Favor the bold.
Another great book for starting your own bidness: You Need to Be A Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business
I just like the book...no vested interest involved. We need more entreprenuers and less paycheck earners to keep this economy going!
Yup, yup, yup and yup respectively :-) props to my friend sheetrock for sticking up for me as well, those elements mentioned up above can be used as elements to the core competency just as well as anything else.
...in bed
yahoo, excite and hotbot were called search engines? And Amazon sold books, and did it well? Then somebody said "Portals" and they became "portals". Then somebody said "Auction" and they all followed e-bay. Then somebody said "e-commerce" and they all started selling everything. And books became Amazon's sideline to their patents on everything but the color of money. And their site became a Navigational Nightmare(TM) (patent pending). Now everybody wants to be a search engine again. The reason Google is succesful is because it does it gives people the information they want, and stays the hell out of their way.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
AOL
Google
Yahoo
Amazon
Ebay
All these stories are in the past, as in they achieved success more than one year back
Last year's story is/was iTunes Music Store. The challenge this year will be whether it will die against WalMart / Microsoft or will be able to hold its own. In terms of concept, simplicity, bundling (using the market force of iPod) etc., I think it has a tremendous edge and chances are slightly better than even that it will outperform others.
I think the next bubble will again be content -- Video/Movies on Demand, either over cable or internet, and this might give rise to a new name outside the traditional studios. Apple again has a chance given their history of building cool products, but has not demonstrated anything yet. The other side of content -- weblogs -- will mature too, but I think that will probably be dominated by Google/Microsoft rather than a newcomer.
Ok, do not penalize me for listing AOL...I think it was a tremendously successful company a few years back, despite what slashdot might think about it.
you must be kidding? robbIE's knot won of 'them'? we thought it came from all the phonIE monIE they priNTed up?
has anywon herd the rumours about the won-eyed girl standing up/.no-showing (either won eye gas), for gnu year's eve 'dates' with several hundred thousand lonely hobbyists/paid members of the robbIE's gnu dating service?
'business' modelling doesn't get much crueler than that, we hope?
as for fuddles, have you knot herd? the daze of phonIE corepirate nazi softwar gangsters is WANing into coolapps/the abyss/fuderoll prisms? probully knot?
Companies that have actual products or some sort of valid real world presence seem to fare the best. Didn't we already see that with the dotcom bubble?
I believe especially since the growth and popularity OSS & Linux that the service and support industry might also be a strong growth sector.
The trouble is while support may be worth a periodic and ongoing payment scheme other things like "webservices" or ASPs may not. Do you really want to rent or pay a license for your next office suite? I'm even a tad suspicious of things like banner ads but I'm rather clueless in the marketing end anyway so what the f___.
Also it looks like to me that even though on the surface things are becoming more distributed (as some of my marketing drone friends have preached to me). I suspect that things are actually beginning to merge (fewer content providers, fewer ISPs, fewer media outlets etc) and get bigger. So maybe there's a trend there as well.
jmho... of course...
Cheers,
E.
"Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process."
Actually - that's only a small part of it.
The REAL economic factor going on with eBay, once we get over the gee-whiz factor of the Internet and it's ability to touch such a wide market, while targeting small, specific interests - it's all about the shipping. Fed Ex and UPS are the REAL winners with the eBay and Amazon story.
And since with Fed Ex and UPS, the profit all depends on Energy input for their trucks and planes - the REAL winners are the oil companies. Any wonder why we were all exited about this cool new internet thing back in the 90's - and all of a sudden, starting with Hugo Chavez, it became "all about the oil"?
That's why. You don't sell SHIT on the internet without oil to fuel transport. Unless you're talking about Intellectual Property. You can sell that too. As long as you have enough draconian unconstitutional laws to support that. It's either that or oil.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Too much modern business seems based on the idea of selling to only a defined percentage of the market and writing off everyone else, as well as focusing on short term gains over the long term.
By this measurement, DVD players are one of the most successful consumer products ever introduced.
But are they really "successful"? How are you measuring that? Because 60 million of them sold?
Imagine if when DVD machines were first sold, they had taken advantage of the technical ability to do so and included no region encoding, no DRM, and allowed recording backup copies just as easily as VCRs do. They probably would have sold SIX HUNDRED MILLION units in the same time frame, instead of just 60 million.
So, if you look at the DVD product in a vacuum, it is easy to say, that is a "successful" product. But if you compare them with what DVD machines might have been if only the DMCA and all the other shackles were taken off the product, you can see that the DVD machine has been a complete failure next to what might have been...
And you can apply these lessons to dozens of products in the modern age.
EBay, Google and Yahoo are more obviously and sustainably profitable.
Utter Misery:
Somalia. ( Lack of Property Rights )
I thought Somalia was at one point heralded as the dreamland of libertarianism. You know, no centralized government, everything belongs to the strongest faction that can lay a claim to it, no outside economical interference, in fact no laws at all to hinder "progress". By no stretch of imagination is it communism or even socialism.
Too bad all that together forms total anarchy.
you said "penetration"
I don't see how Fed Ex and Dell, Cisco and eBay are very different. It could be argued that they they are brick vs web companies but the fact remains that all are breakthrough comapnies that were based on fundamnetally different ideas. It doesn't matter that their origin is from a web based orientation.
Using airplanes to deliver packages sounds normal and trivial today but remember, FedEx shipped thousands of empty boxes around for two weeks because they had to know that their infastructure worked. That's no different than Amazon's early year 1-2 growth stages when they shipped out books. Or when they were building huge warehouses all over the country. Personaly, a dot-com business model never scared me if its business plan could acuratelly (and sanely) forecast a profit. Amazon got around to it eventually (they hedged huge bets, some say they're lucky) and eBay's model is so good its being argued its almost untouchable.
As the web stores mature, I imagine that the web companies will evolve with the market to meet the new market demands (maybe cellular, maybe something else) to stay alive. Fed-Ex just bought Kinkos to stay competitive to UPS' Package Store and Cisco eats up small firms at a rate of 10 a year; all this only further points that successful companies will have to constantlly stay competitive. But to me, it doesn't seem to matter what the platform is (the web-dotcom firms are an unnecessary label).
"I think that internet thing is gonna take off!"
I applaud you for your wisdom and the following is not a slam on you.
Why is it that in today's business world we label idiots like Darl Mc Bride and other CEO's as "industry leaders" or "examples of what leaderships should be" when they take the customer and ream them up the arse as hard as they can, whenever they can, yet the real business men and women have the attitude like the above poster, who seem to have scruples and are interested in doing a good job.
Why do we as a country reward assholes and ingrates by giving them job's a CEO's CTO's and CFO's or worse yet, electing them to government offices and ignore the real business professionals?
Customer service is #1.. without your customer you are absolutely nothing. Yet today's big business trend to to piss on your customer at every chance... from retail to banking (espically banking!) to services, to everything....
why?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Amazon by the way is trying to shed its "mortar" rapidly as it realizes it cannot hope to compete against huge retailers like Walmart or bottom-feeders like Overstock in the long term. They are trying to go the route of search (A9, a Froogle competitor) and store hosting (to compete with Ebay and Yahoo Store). We'll see if it works.
I'd hesitate before drawing on Ford as an example of a successful business model.
Capital-intensive, non-existent margins, and bleeding money all come to mind with any Detroit manufacturer...
In fact, the only division that is profitable in Ford is the car loan financing division. They don't make money from cars...
the problem is that your business model won't scale, and therefore, the VC, investment bankers and senior management hifliers won't be beating a path to your door...on second thought, that's exactly where most tech startups go wrong, so carry on then, you're doing great!;>
This is why Amazon cannot win long term doing drop-shipping against Walmart. And it isn't all just operations - Walmart uses its size to get better prices from suppliers...prices suppliers balk at offering to any other retailer.
Uhm. How did Asia of ancient times eat noodles without chopsticks...?
Forks are an Italian invention - Marco Polo brought noodles back so they could develop spaghetti, but forgot the necessary eating utensils....
Ebay's success came more from taking the want ad to a much larger scale, than from their method of transactions.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Well as of lately (post 1970) I'd agree on that, but back in the days of yore (think 1920's) what I said would apply.
So I retract the statement using Ford as a success in a present tense anyways (unless someone would care to challenge yet again).
...in bed
I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed?
It's an interesting question but we need to know exactly what the business model entails. Is it PURELY Internet? If this was the case, I would say Google has a good model. They managed to stand above when there were a huge number of search engines available for users. They managed to find the righ mix of algorithm coding, marketing, and selling adwords.
Same goes with eBay. Remember when there were a few different auction sites available to users? Yet eBay managed to differentiate themselves and move to prosperity.
When we define "Internet business" though, do we mean only "Internet"? No brick-and-mortar ties at all? Meaning we exclude entities such as Dell?
I think the basic formula for a successful Internet business has these following traits:
1) Be the first to gain as much market share as possible. This includes Amazon, eBay, iTunes. In eBay and Amazon's case, they gobbled up the share and let the other's die out. iTunes happened to do it by providing the most viable and easy to use music download service. Others are finally getting on the bandwagon but have to play catch up with them now.
2) Differentiate yourself. When you can stand out from the crowd, people use you. Dozens of booksellers, everyone uses Amazon because of their mix of ratings, price, one-click buying, etc. Google differentiated themselves in the beginning when they claimed to have indexed over 1 million pages. iTunes by being amazingly easy to use and by getting major labels to jump on board.
3) Ease of use. Google is damn easy. Amazon is easy. eBay is easy. iTunes is easy. Sure you can use other services, but Amazon has spent a lot of time, money, and research on ways to make their user experience easy and enjoyable.
4) Act like a normal business. Gone are the days of getting $4.4 billion for an idea with no real business sense. If you want to have a successful BUSINESS model, act like a business.
I'm sure there are more, but these four basic rules will be seen in all successful Internet businesses.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Commodore: Entered an industry well penetrated by apple, IBM, Tandy (back then) and company and tried to play along, didn't make it....
sorry but commodore Business Macines were in the mix BEFORE apple was even a thought and Tandy was anything but a leather company.
Commodore was a HUGE player.
So if anything, Amazon proves click and mortar *doesn't* work.
Amazon lost 149 million last year. Conversely, ToysRUs made 229 million. ToysRUs.com may not have made money, but it is apparently part of a business strategy that is functional. Indigo books made money last year (well, a bit anyways). Barnes & Noble made money last year ($100 million - not too shabby).
Anyways, I just find it entertaining that Amazon is being trotted out as a success in comparison with companies that are actually making money.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Litigation. Obviously.
You are correct that none of these is unique, but when you put them all altogether you get a very successful company.
Commodore: Entered an industry well penetrated by apple, IBM, Tandy (back then) and company and tried to play along, didn't make it....
Amiga will be back, damn it, and then you will all be sorry!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
religion
family
disease
death...
good luck getting rid of any of 'em;>
You can do a lot worse than total anarchy, but it is worth noting that Somalia sucked long before the government got thrown out of power.
I've owned three companies, so I'm no master of the art of building businesses. What I can tell you from my experience is The "Business Model" rarely is responsible for success or failure. Blaming failure on "the model" is about as accurate as say, blaming the OS for a complile time error in your code. Reality is there are very few business models. Here are some examples:
* Comodity service, periodic (annuity) style bill.
* Distributor
* Reseller (buy, markup, market, resell)
* Service - flat fee (I'll do that website for $50K)
* Service - hourly rate (I'll bill you $150/hr)
The top causes of business failure are well documented. If memory serves correctly here are five top business killers:
* Undercapitalization - Not enough jack, jack.
* Demand Over/Under estimation - Build it they don't come... or too many crash your party
* Fraud & Embezzlement - Where did the money go?
* Cost overruns - 50% of the budget on furniture? Eghad!
* Poor sales - We're a ____ company. Our product is 733t. We don't need to sell anything.
Most of these mistakes are fairly easy to make and usually gang rape the business owner - as in you are undercapitalized because you underestimated the demand, cant produce enough widgets to fill orders and are experiencing legal expenses because you overpromised and underdelivered.
-- $G
You generally have two choices in business, have the best offering of product or service or be the cheapest. Note that if you were formerly doing this and stop, you can survive for a long period of time, but you are slowly failing. There isn't a whole lot of middle ground. Rolex, BMW, Apple and speakeasy all offer better products or service than their competitors. Dell figured out how to make computers more effeciently (mostly on the component purchasing side of things) and Walmart found better ways to predict daily demand for products, than other retailers. These innovations allowed them each to lower their costs, cut prices while still making more money than their competitors. It has been very difficult for competitors to replicate the things that caused the low cost success, in Dell's case becasue HP depends on it's retailers and resellers, so they can't sell a computer and then order the parts and begin manufacture.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I don't know what works but I know what doesn't work.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
As someone who works for a service dept. maintaining turnkey systems for hospitals, many of which involve Dell hardware, I can unequivocally state that Dell does *not* have good support. That may once have been the case, but it is no longer true; they are currently vastly inferior to Compaq/HP, even when you consider the degrading in support that I have noticed since the merger.
Dell's success came entirely from optimizing supply chains, while at the same time providing a great deal of flexibility in system customization at order time. Once they got to a certain size, they could start using economies of scale to save money, getting fat price breaks from OEM vendors by dangling juicy parts contracts in front of their noses.
In general, I think companies like Dell or Walmart have only extended their market dominance through ruthless tactics. You can't really do that until *after* you've become the dominant force in a market sector. When you're a small fry with nothing more than a clever business idea, you don't have the power or influence to be ruthless. Ruthless can help you stay on top, but it won't really get you there all by itself.
Dell is the worlds best and most efficient logistics company, it's barely a computer company.
The skill competiting with them would be getting your suppliers to do the work, and you manage to survive (and prosper) on razor thin margins.
Ewan
I'm sure it's been said, but there's always people willing to pay for premium adult content. The company I work at (NationalNet) makes it's money off of hosting primarily adult sites (although the company cut it's teeth and started off as porn sites like everyone else). Now we have two full datacenters in the fiber alley of Atlanta and are doing about three mid-size acquisitions a year.
This is a year of growth and expansion for hosts with solid businesses.
Hammer of Truth
I bought an Atari ST system at about the same time that I bought my first IBM PC system, both in 1989. Before that I used the Commodore 64 for about four years.
After about two weeks of playing around with the Atari ST, I realized that I had 'thrown away' a huge amount of money on a computer that was practically worthless. Fortunately I was able to sell it for no loss to someone on the Atari corporate BBS system that had a different opinion.
Eventually I was able to get low-cost development tools for MSDOS and learn to program and become a productive member of society. The fact that my first PC program tools were 'pirate' copies were of no consequence to anyone because (pay attention - this is important!) the amount of benefit that I contibuted to society with these programs was far greater than the loss to society that resulted from my not paying for them.
What drove Commodore and Atari out of the PC business was that they were not able to provide a platform for focusing and multipling the productivity of their users. I once traded a pirate copy of a spreadsheet program for a pirated copy of a schematic capture program. [I used the spreadsheet once (to model the currents and voltages of a pair of transistors) and the other person had no idea of what a schematic capture program was used for.] No one ever did this with Amiga or Ataris.
Without widespread program sharing, whether pirate or not, the hardware platform will always quickly die. I'm amazed that Apple is still around (I assume that Apple is also amazed that people who think like me are still around also).
Thank you,
Amazon is partners with borders, the B&M store. When you buy a book on amazon you can pick it up in the store instead of waiting for it to be shipped.
Amazon has partnered with lots of brick and mortars, toysRus, target, office depot, and if you go to borders'(brick and mortar bookstore) website, it turns into amazon.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Wise and aggressive spectrum management techniques and initiatives, efficient cost control, and complete market penetration will be key to accomplishing this goal. And the company or companies that can do it fastest with the mostest will be able to print their own money.
The smart investors are already trying to figure out how to craft the next Wal-Mart business model when it comes to broadband connectivity.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
maybe the poster is a creationist...
"What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity"
If you want to make a decent living for yourself and your family, don't pay any attention when some self-important academic tries to tell you "what you must do".
In the 70's, 80's and early 90's, we had a proprietary unix system which we sold to a customer that was about 80% of their business system. This system wasn't too flexible but it was the defacto business model for centralized order and business transaction processing. We had to provide the user everything from the hardware to the network to the software. It was a turnkey solution for the most part but it wasn't as flexible in providing revenue streams.
In the mid 90's we developed a windows application solution. Now we provide the application CD and tell them the requirements (SQL server, windows network, recommended hardware requirements). Everything except our software is a commodity on their network now and so we extract ourselves from the costs of having to work on buying it. We allow the customer to pick their own or they can pay our consultants to help them out. We negotiate contracts for how much an hour they would have to pay for consulting. Everything is driven by consulting, custom work, training, services. Our software is the only hard good we produce any more, and its questionable if you want to call that a hard good these days. In fact we aren't worried too much about piracy, because our main source of income is the customer paying on the contracts we sign for purchasing the software (which requires a huge amount of setup) and for supporting the software, which is a percentage of their initial purchase contract.
Expertise is never a commodity and as companies find a way to make hardware construction cheaper, people move to providing quality by just having a bunch of knowledgable people sitting around who know how to provide some kind of technological help (read: billable consulting, not tech support) to a specific market space.
I also see the tech support outsource trend swinging back to the US a bit as US companies demand better quality of support. Between the cookie cutter, script reading mentality of overseas operations and some unintelligible accents, customers, especially businesses, will demand a change. They already are.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I conceive of cyberspace in a fashion where there are at least 3 independent time frames, and there is constant interaction between the physical and abstract. A schematic showing the conception is here
From here we can now see different levels in which economic activity can be generated.
The business model that will encourage the movement of data and information across the physical and above mentioned levels, about the physical and above mentioned levels, and allow the data and information being generated to be easily created and managed, will be soundly based. In addition if the business model allows the data and information to be transformed into knowledge and action, it will have a sustainable competitive advantage.
I have more about the cyberspace model here . It is an old article but lays down the visualization.
More about the data & info & knowldege & action relationship is described over here. Sorry but it is in MS word format (about 35 KB). Don't have the tools to convert it with me right now ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
though they aren't exactly profitable yet, if I remember right
I disagree.
See this article on Yahoo.
There is also this
SiO2
Things that scale effectiveness by bodies or trucks or physical widgets are less clearcut -- they are extensions of the old models with new efficiency, e.g, Amazon.
This is why peer to peer is so seductive a technology. Everyone knows it offers the payback of the network effect. But it hasn't found a profitable usage model yet.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
When I say local networks, I mean last-mile solutions. Of course, some of the technologies involve longer distances than that -- up to the last 22,500 miles if you happen to own a geosynchronous bird. There will be opportunities outside of the areas served by the big players -- telcos and cable companies. This is a business where there are significant economies of scale, so small guys will have to win on the basis of superior service. Wireless technology is probably important, since wired solutions are CAPITAL-INTENSIVE, and will generally require permission from local regulatory agencies. Building the devices used in such networks doesn't seem like a particularly profitable business -- if there's a significant market, there's going to be lots of competition and the profit margins are probably quite thin.
There are opportunities to make money if you can provide some form of compelling content. I've always thought there were opportunities in almost any small city with a university. There are dozens/hundreds of music majors with performance requirements -- can you create and distribute a library of performances? Can you design and implement a multimedia tutoring system that connects students and tutors? Can you make deals with the local last-mile providers so your servers are close to the end user, rather than having to trust the Internet for performance and/or reliability?
I agree, the old rules apply, but will today's industry leaders be around tomorrow?
For now, Amazon is the etailor to compete with...but for how long? Will Walmart.com or other powerful retailers be able to own this market or will Amazon remain at the top of the list?
It's interesting to think of what pitfalls the current leaders may run into.
I run a small business also, and while great customer service helps me obtain lots of repeat business, I find it does very little to attract new customers. Even though I offer a referral discount, most of my new customers come from old fashioned advertising-- bulk mail.
I also bend over backwards when dealing with customers, but that's because I'm desperate to keep them. But if your on the scale of a company like amazon, or microsoft, losing the bad and annoying customers won't affect your bottom line a significant amount, so customer service is more about giving customers a fair resolution.
Some of these giants on the other hand, do not even do that and just depend on advertising to keep attracting new customers for the ones that leave. While in a ideal world you would think this business method is bound to fail, in the real world it seems to work very well. ISP's, cell phone companies seems to employ this tactic often.
Just my 2cents.
Ya know, food, clothing, shelter, books, lamps, toys, etc.
Property.
People aren't interested in an internet economy. They're interested in stuff. If you can find a way to use the internet as a leg up supplying stuff to customers, well, there ya go.
But anyone who thinks of the internet as a way to get people to just send them money isn't going to go anyplace.
People are also interested in certain services, like having their pool cleaned and the oil in their car changed. Ain't gonna happen over the internet at all. Real reality trumps virtual reality every time. That physics stuff is a bitch.
There will be some niche markets, but there's a catch. They're short term. If you're willing up front to realize this, get in, make some money, get out, invest it elsewhere in "stuff" you'll do ok. Most tradtional businesses have trouble thinking like this. It's entrepreneur territory.
Doesn't mean a corporation won't see the limitation of the model, come in, stomp your guts, then abandon the market though.
As always, be careful out there.
KFG
I wholeheartedly agree with you here. People went apeshit a few years ago in the dot com craze and thew money into companies that had no true business model. Where are those companies today? Gone. Yet the companies that had an actual business model and just used the Internet as their new source of distribution continued to survive and even prosper when other business (Internet and brick-and-mortar alike) were floundering.
The key word here is "business". If you plan on running a business and using the Internet, don't forget to follow sound business principles. The Internet is just another tool for you to use, like catalogs, phone centers, retail locations, kiosks, etc.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Several billion in the bank are a nice boost to profitability. The interest was enough to keep them profitable through several bad years (not terrible ones, but what would be small losses are tidy profits).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
reading through the posts all I see are "dot-com bubble this.." and "dot-com bubble that"..
dude.. face it, there never was a "bubble" it was called "you got screwed over by some savy businessmen who have now moved on" and sitting around lamenting that fact is just plain sad.
The real businesses that had actual products made it through that time and the guys who didn't, are gone and in my eye "good riddance to them"
The next "bubble" that you guys are going to sit around and babble about for years will be wifi and all the wireless products that are being sold like crazy now.
Business has not changed since it started.. the premise is simple.. I have something you want, you give me something I want, we swap. Money just happens to be a symbol, it is still barter and trade just with symbols.
Take that idea and look at your "bubble" and figure out why your company didn't make it.
I stayed at the same salary and even increased my salary throughout this time you guys are complaining about because I helped build an online company that is solid an sells products and services there is a need for.
(sorry about this rant but I am so sick of these dotcommers who were once working at a fast food joint until some place in SF decided to pay them 80k/year to have a title with the word "guru" in it and now they are complaining about not having those jobs again and can't get over it..)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
There aren't going to be any big surprises. If I had to name a few obvious things that can be expected to happen, they would be the following:
I think that pop-corn bubble is about to burst. Home cinema's and DVD's are fighting back box-office theatre income as we speak, and legal filesharing and DVD writers are only going to accelerate this process. The debate on whether this is legal will probably either boost or break the infant online media shops.
The developments in digital photocam segments are important enough for somebody to throw in the next crazy idea and make a business out of it.
Airliners, travell agencies and booking offices will increasingly feel a need to merge their services and data.
Over the last 5 years, consolidation has been the keyword for market players. I see cable/DSL/wireless networking and cell phone operators further continuing on that road, possibly even with content or media giants.
Online gaming will probably be the biggest selling online service at the end of 2004.
I also think spam/virus fighting services and/or products are going to sell hotter than ever.
I see smaller ventures growing into maturity, by building on existing frameworks by Sun, Microsoft and Mono and making a successfull business out of small and medium internet services. This is more a hope than a well funded consideraion, but I do see the potential in those technologies. The only problem is that they need a good focussed target product to bring out the beauty.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
...to screw you over and take away your rights and freedoms in ways that give dictators wet dreams. TC wants to control what people see, whether they can print or save it, listen to it or watch it, and where they can do so.
Science is built (at least in part) on the concept of reproducibility - people can generate results and ideas previously seen by others and thus verify their truthfulness. This filters into how a free society works - people gather information, and others attempt to verify it and act on that which is verified. With TC, and the differential permissions it allows, one cannot necessarily verify information collected by others, thus disabling individuals from distinguishing between truthful information and lies. (By disabling the ability to transmit content, it isolates those who have the information and judgement to distinguish fact from lie from others while allowing them to be found.)
TC will likely be difficult to hack. If it can be hacked, it dies. If it can't be hacked, it gives a lot of power to people in high places who have already shown that they can't be trusted. Giving a lot of power to the untrustworthy (and even if they could be trusted, with that kind of power, they won't be trustworthy for long) so that I can pay to watch movies and play music on my computer (or pay for whatever else someone wants to sell me) doesn't seem like a good deal to me, but I guess the TC people are big believers in Barnum.
All your rights are belong to us. And you even get to pay for the privilege.
As someone else put it before, TC says "We don't trust you. You have no choice but to trust us."
But who do I pitch them to?
My prior ideas in 1991 were:
Online auction site
Online personals site
Instant messaging
MMORPGS
All my ideas became vastly successful, but without any ways of forming a buisness, someone else cashed em in. Its sorta torturing to see the avenues, but not being allowed to drive on them.
God spoke to me
What you are describing is not quite libertarianism. For it to qualify, there would have to be some system to enforce contracts and preserve private property rights. Without a legislature and a court system, that cannot happen. What we see in places like Somalia is coercion and force used to resolve private disputes, which is the antithesis of a libertarian (IMO) point of view.
Pure any "-ism" can never work anyway, whether it's Libertarianism, Communism et al, as you're never going to get a country full of people to agree on the best way to run it. Better, IMHO, to have the representative system as in most countries, where people get to have a say periodically and elect those whom they think will most effectively cary out their wishes.
If customer service was most important, Microsoft and McDonalds, must just be huge exceptions.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Well, it's hard to be unique and not rare...
Intellectuals! Liberals! Peacemongers! IDIOTS!!!
Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process.
Actually, Ebay is not about replacing traditional auctions. Ebay is about replacing traditional classified ads.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There are many bookstore websites and many auction websites. You named two businesses, not business models. Those two happened to do it first, at the right time, with the right money.
This is one fatal flaw of jackass tech-dumb investors. "Well hell Joe-Bob, online auctions work! So lets build an auction site!!"
...just like SCO.
Industry leaders are not measured by how nice their smile is. A ceo is elected to his position to give the company vision, and to get work done. You may not see it, but great CEOs do a lot of work, and ussually have to get their hands dirty. Business is war, and wars aren't fought by nice guys.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I'll make recordings of my music available on the Web, people will share them, and I'll get...nothing.
Replicating a crummy business on-line won't be enough. The successful companies will be those that harness new technology in ways that make the customer experience more pleasant.
If three or four businesses will sell me a widget on-line, I'll stick with the one that can offer three features.
Response by real live people. When I have a question I do not want to waste ten minutes trying to find contact information on a website. I don't want to use webforms that try to tell you that you can only have "approved" topics. Instead I want an e-mail link that goes to a real live human being.
It's not that I mind an automated response, but it should show some relationship to my e-mail. Some companies can do that well, but many cannot. If my e-mail tells you that I've already tried the solution on your website, the I do not want an automated response telling to check your website before calling.
Especially one that says "DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL".
I want your website to have truthful information about what is in stock. I cannot imagine why any retailer would buy an on-line sales system that didn't also track inventory. I don't order anything that is on back order, and if your website can't tell me if it's in stock, I just go away.
Finally, a successful Internet business model is one that recognizes that on the 'Net business is global. I am astonished by the number of companies who seem to have no interest on the bulk of the human population that lives outside of the U.S. In particular those who seem to have not noticed the 30 million potential customers in Canada.
Your on-line business model should plan from the beginning to handle currencies, shipping, and languages from all over the globe. To do otherwise is to cut yourself off from some very large markets.
Your company may be located in Peoria, but people from all over the globe can access your website. Why wouldn't you want to sell to them??
Three Squirrels
Darl McBride - President, CEO
I'll quote:
In other words, he is good at talking people into giving him money to fund his projects. People who read Slashdot probably don't believe this, but I will bet that he is slick to the "right" people.
So, the reason why he is considered an industry leader is because people believe him when he says, "I'm an industry leader." Confidence men work the same way. Did you ever read the life story of Carlo Ponzi? Here it is The Life of Carlo Ponzi. A lot of people have heard of Ponzi shcemes, but most people don't realize that at one time Carlo Ponzi was considered, you guessed it, a business leader:
Who knows, in the future we may call something, "A McBride scheme."All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Actually, that is only one business model. Loosely stated from my operations management book:
1. When a new idea is found, the initial companies need to move in fast and get name recognition. Sponsoring events, Charity work, etc. is the Advertising medium used here.
2. Once a demand for a product has been started, companies need to provide quality, which they can charge more for. Word-of-Mouth is the advertising media here.
3. Once the market has developed enough customers, companies need to provide low price products. Advertising sales works here.
4. Once all 3 are fulfilled, a company needs to dominate via saturation and economies-of-scale. Word-of-mouth and advertising sales work here.
The examples for department stores are:
1 is Sears, Gimbels, Macy's etc...
2 is Nordstroms, Nieman-Marcus, etc...
3 is KMart, etc...
4 is Walmart.
Eventually, there is only room for stores that fit 1, 2 and 4. In terms of internet firms, if I am buying on impulse I'll go with Amazon or Travelocity, because those companies are the first I think of. There are plenty of firms that will sell things for cheaper prices, and I'll use Google to search for them if I don't like the price I found initially. But I don't know of any companies that started on the Internet that have a wonderful service or quality reputation where I would shop which would fulfill 2. And as of 4, I don't know of any company that I would trust to always have the product I want.
Ultimately what the Internet has provided us is communication beyond the wildest dreams of telephpony, wired or not.
/. - Started as News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters - even our beloved(hated) /. is an aggregation - a community for those who (sometimes) have no community. Without an aggregator like /. how would nerds from around the world find one another to discus important topics of the day?
A look at the big winners:
* e-Bay - Started as a way to buy and sell collectibles - now an aggregation of small vendors and casual shoppers selling 1.7 million items a DAY!
* Amazon - Started as an on-line book store with the content of your local shop - now an aggregation of just about any book in (and sometimes out of) print and available to you in a few days (or for pickup at Borders).
* Google - An index of all this Internet stuff - now an index with so much info that it has made itself a household word.
*
* iTunes Music Store - the next great aggregator - they have found a way to BROWSE music and sell it legally. A creative mix of low-tech product, high-tech delivery, on-line shopping, and off-line use (iPod).
So yeah Dell can make a few bucks on a commodity product, but the real winners are the ones who make a new market space by putting people in touch with the products or information that is more valuebale to them than what's in their wallets.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Apple is successful now because of their aggressive marketing. They were unsuccessful (relatively) because they has poor marketing, poor economics (Macs are expensive compared to PCs), and poor penetration. They tried to make just another biege box and got their heads handed to them, because they couldn't compete with the manufacturing and distributing efficiency of the likes of Dell.
Now, they've figured out that they can get away with charging more for their products if they distinguish them. Apple laptops have longer battery life, run a cutting-edge OS (in my ever-so-humble opinion, OS9 and prior suck), and perhaps most importantly set the standard for cool. They are the epitome of high-end laptops. And it's that which allows them to get away with charging so much, offering something that isn't particularly compatible with everyone else's machine, etc. It works. I'm about to get one of those PowerBooks, I think :P
You mention genocide and Germany, but you should also count its Axis partner, Italy (fascism):
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism
as it is a merge of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini
That's not my sig. This is.
Starvation:
USSR, 1917-1987, 63 Million+ ( Communism )
People are still pretty badly off in parts of the Ex-Soviet union. I guess you haven't heard of the winter blackouts in Rusian cities caused by people stealing electrical infrastructure wire to sell as scrap metal.
Ok when you are looking at losses and profits, your really not getting the whole picture. I smart company never makes profit, unless it worries about it's stock going up. The less profit you make the less taxes you pay. Amazon has a lot of assumed costs, that aren't necessarilly real, these include depreciation and some other things that are set as standards by the IRS. For instance I buy a machine for 200,000$ the IRS says it depreciates at 40,000$ a year. Whichi means that for five years I have to right off a depreciation of 40,000 dollars, keeps my taxes down, but to the bottom line it looks like a cost, I didn't actually spend 40,000 dollars, that is just the assumed cost of replacing said item. It will be fully depreciated in 5 years even though I may not replace it for 10 years, do you see what I mean? Trust me amazon is doing very well.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
This is question I've wrestled with for a long time.
I think it boils down to one thing: people just don't care.
Corporations grow so large that instead of long term gain in mind (making the customer happy), they try to find each and every way to improve the bottom line.
Minimize inputs: employee pay, design/research time, manufacturing/testing time, customer support.
Maximize income: lots of marketing (IMAGE is everything), high prices, lots of control over the end-product after it's left the shelf.
You get bombarded with ads to buy crappy products, made by overworked and underpaid people, and as an added bonus get to fuss with control measures that make it difficult to switch to a competing brand. Cellphones sound familiar? CDs?
And everyone eats it up because they don't care. Capitalism works if the consumer is interested in looking out for himself, but these days most folks are completely happy to give everyone their money and say "Take care of me." This is why nobody sells a product anymore, they sell a "solution."
Politics is the same. Nobody takes a vested interest in taking control of their lives and exercising their own power. People contract with the cellphone company that promises them the best service, pay loads of money and then get reamed and the same is true with politicians. People elect politicians who promise to take care of them, happily turn over 20%+ of every penny made and most end up hating the government.
Nobody cares. Society has no problem giving up every dime if someone promises to take care of them -- but it's rare that anyone is held accountable.
I'll end this with a favorite quote of mine:
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." [Samuel Adams]
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I am not sure if this was analyzed in detail in the book. But in my opinion, True Global Market in Information Based Services is going to dramatically alter the world. We are just beginning to see that in the outsourcing phenomenon. By 2020, a lot of traditional services where only information is exchanged and not much of physical (material) objects are involved, you can get the services from ANY corner of the world. Just imagine: services like legal, medical, education, accounting, politics, business etc., being provided from all corners of earth!
This is going to change the whole notion of nation-state upside down. It is happening on a micro scale in internet based shopping affecting state taxes. Imagine what will happen to employment and taxes when you can get most of your services from overseas without ANY regulation or taxation. Governments are in for a shock in the future as they see their powers slip away.
Look at three industries - Music, Movies, and Newsprint
People have been conditioned to pay for music and for movies, and stores iTunes Music Store have made a model for selling music and no doubt one day movies will be sold the same way.
If one could do the same for news content - actually make money off content, not advertising revenues, for print articles - a model where you may like a particular writer just like a singer or actress, and then buy their work - pay for reading their creative copy - it would be a break in the industry that people are trying to crack with micro payments, etc.
The difference with my idea and micropayments is that it is a more significant commitment - a few dollars, not fractions of a cent, and you own the articles they write for the period of time your payment covers. It isn't a subscription where you loose the right to access the info you used to have access to, and it isn't micropayments where you have to make a buying decision EVERY TIME you want to see content.
Anyway, that's the idea - pay for text copy content. Go figure it out and make a few bucks.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
spam.
Oh come on, you were thinking it too...
But what about cash flow?
Unique/rare products alone won't bring success. The way the business markets and sells those products--aka, "business model"--is what separates the wheat from the chaff.
That said, having a new or proprietary product certainly gives you a competitive advantage.
Don't get me started on patents. $50,000 minimum to obtain a patent, and $1MM minimum* to defend it in court? So much for gov't helping small businesses.
* Have talked to several lawfirms to confirm these prices
And to take a fun peek at the winners of the next revolution...
At some point in the not-too-distant future it will cost less energy and time to molecularly disassemble/reassemble all that SHIT locally, rather than physically shipping it globally via FedEx/UPS/USPS. The REAL winners there would be... me, with my self-manufactured solar panels and my 99.9999% recycled atoms, and the open-source designers of the shared blueprints for all the SHIT I eat/wear/use/etc.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Is population control
Actually, you should have added that excessive use of energy requires oil - if you are in the United States, which has a real problem with the concept of nuclear energy. And the Internet has increased that a whole lot, since most consumers of the services now have a computer and monitor.
Heck, my cousin and aunt now use the internet all the time, and they were technophobes before the mid 90's...
The First Commandment of Business: There Is No Such Thing As Lasting Global Prosperity
Just curious about your sig... are you saying there should not be limits on freedom?
The speed limit and every law on the books are limits on freedom.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
Obviously you are not the proud owner of a CueCat.
Help fight continental drift.
Lester Thurow is the guy who said Japan and their government directed industries will own the world in the 21st century and that the US needed to have the government organize and direct all the industries. " A number of American economists, including Lester Thurow of MIT, insisted that we also needed Japan-style "industrial policy" to guide U.S. manufacturers. "
And McDonald's paid dearly for their poor customer service in 2001 and 2002. Everytime I walked in one (which wasn't often in the last few years) I was generally greeted with apathy and sometimes outright disgust from employees who didn't really wan't to be there and didn't care how you felt at all. Remember the huge revenue losses posted by McDonald's not too long ago?
Not long after their financial troubles surfaced you could notice a stark chage in employee attitudes when you went in. I am now generally greeted by Thank Yous and Have a nice days. McDonald's is one of the few Mega-corps that managed to spot their error before it runined them.
Chasqui:
Okay, that's a very fair statement. I do think it IS safe to assume that if DVD machines excluded region encoding and these other consumer-unfriendly features, they would have sold some number more than they did. At least you and I would have bought one, right?
But you're right that it assumes too much to assume that someone who doesn't like "features" like region encoding would choose not to actually buy such a machine. You and I are in that minority, but there is probably no way to judge just how large that group is. 600 million was probably an overstatement. As you said, you (and I) are "probably" in a tiny minority.
But maybe not - just about everyone I know has stuck with VCRs and not moved to DVDs, because for them, VCRs work better. For example, I have a large family. Out of several siblings, only one family has moved to DVD from VCRs. And as to my wife's siblings, none of them has gone DVD. And, as to her parents and mine, none of them have, either. So with all the spouses involved etc., just in my family alone, never mind my friends, we've got upwards of 20 people saying "no" to DVDs, and only 2 people (one couple) saying "yes."
I know I can't extrapolate from just my personal experience, but I'm not sure you're right that it's a minority who have disavowed DVDs because they're not friendly to consumers. Since the alternative was never presented, who's to know how many DVD machines would have sold had they been made with consumer interests in mind instead of with DRM etc in mind?
But for the sake of argument, let's say you're right, and DVD purchases would not be appreciably higher had they been introduced without all of those unfriendly "features" which disgust consumers (region encoding; DRM; etc). It still comes back to the question of what does it mean to "succeed", right?
Is a business "succeeding" if consumers purchase a product reluctantly, grumbling that it could be so much better but for stupid decisions like DMCA and DRM, etc? The Microsoft model is a good example. Yes, their software resides on almost all PCs and as such could be called "successful, right"? But look at how many people hate the software, hate the company, hate many of the consumer-unfriendly "features" of the software, and have, and will, jump ship to something different just as soon as it appears. I would argue that creating angry customers who swallow all of your consumer-unfriendliness only because they feel they have to is not, in the long term, a successful business model. But for many businesses, so long as they're making SOME money, NOW, they just don't care.
Nothing has really changed in terms of building a successful business, IMHO. Providing a product/service that your customers want to buy at a price they are prepared to pay and keeping them happy will increase your chances of success. Of course, there's more to it than that, but in effect that's it.
A book I found very useful is "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, which covers why some companies fall apart and some succeed. It came down to good leadership, top quality people, understanding of core business, discipline and facing the hard realities. Worth a read for anyone involved in private enterprise.
BN.com referring to barnes and Noble, is hosted by amazon. They created and host the site. Their was an article in reuters about it, plus my management 350 teacher used to talk about it all the time senior year.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Service(and ethics) cost money.
"The Masses" haven't resorted to boycotting people for lack of either nearly enough yet.
You don't sell SHIT on the internet without oil to fuel transport.
You're only considering a small part of the journey that materials go through: moving from the retailer to the end buyer. There has always been shipping involved in the economy: raw materials are shipped to manufacturers; finished goods are shipped to distributors; distributors ship to retailers.
If anything, buying by internet would reduce the amount of oil needed, because that one UPS truck driving around your neighborhood once a day replaces hundreds of individual car trips made to pick up one or two items.
HP/Compaq != good service.
HP used to have very nice service - if Compaq ever did, it was definitely before dot.com.
I've only had good experiences with IBM's, Siemens' and Toshiba's product, support and service.
Generally I don't see that Dell is cheap either - you can pick up just as nice desktops or laptops from other vendors if you want. This also stems from Dell's wish to get into the reseller channel (I think they give between 5 and 10% commission for the resellers they deal with). Thus prices have to go up in order to keep business viable.
For all of the above I'm thinking about desktop/laptop support - nothing about servers. Generally they all have better support for servers and corporate support is also almost always better then home user support.
To become a business that succeeds over the long haul, you need to become difficult to replicate for some reason. Fundamentally there are only a few ways to stand out, and not all of these are necessarily viable strategies for a given market:
Companies that undoubtedly have a defensible position include:
Companies that are iffier:
From the link:
This warning applies to no one more than Americans-the richest, most successful, largest and most powerful players and the ultimate insiders in the construction of the global economy. In terms of military and economic power no nation has ever loomed larger in human history. Imperial Rome dominated a large region around the Mediterranean Sea. America dominates the globe. American views will be central in the shaping of globalization, but the structure of globalization is also one of the factors that will limit the arbitrary use of America's enormous power vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Multinational companies, and the planet's Plutocracy is not American or Canadian or British or Korean or anything else. This band of ultra-mega rich are citizens of the globe. It just happens that this moment in the planets history (last 500 years) North America (USA) has seen the growth of large population on a previously sparsly populated land. This place the USA finds itself in is not manifest destiny, but happenstance of history. When the time is convenient, these people will abandon the USA to doom when it means keeping themselves at their present level of ultra-privilage.
An America playing in a global economy is very different and much better from the perspective of the rest of the world than an America engaging in a contest for one-country bilateral national economic dominance.
Who says? The author is assuming to know what the rest of the World's Leaders want. In fact, the architects of the Global Market are *not* democractic governments, but the MutliNational corporations themselves. They set the agenda (buy influence with lobbyists), they attend the summits, write and finance the development of the Deals themselves. To say that any nation's government *wants* Globalization is untrue -- its happening because The Plutocrats can finance its creation.
An America trading with the rest of the world, investing in the rest of the world, transferring technology to the rest of the world, and educating many from the rest of the world is far better for both those inside and outside of America than is an America that retreats into its traditional isolation.
This is the bit that threw me off the most. To suggest that the USA has *EVER* been a "traditional isolationist" is flately wrong. The *reality* is been fighting wars abroad for most of its existence.... Wars of Empire. This author is actually confusing the jingoist Apple-Pie mythos of "America" with the god-damned reality. Wondering about the USA's foreign-policy history vis-a-vie this rumoured isolationism? He should start by reading Zinn and Chomsky (a fellow MITer for christ's sake)
This imbalance of economic and military power between the United States and the rest of the world has arisen because of decisions made in Japan and Europe. Japan simply does not play the geopolitical military game. Kosovo is not its concern. It looks only at Asia and even there lets the United States deal with China and North Korea. The European Union has a population big enough and the economic resources large enough to create a modern military force equal to that of the United States. Yet with the end of the Cold War and any immediate military threat to itself, it has decided not to spend its economic resources on military activities. It is inwardly focused on the peaceful effort of building an integrated Europe. *****Large military budgets are seen as irrelevant to the success of failure of European integration because if there are military problems in Yugoslavia, the United States will be there.***** What happens in North Korea is of little interest to Europe and there is no willingness to be engaged in dealing with North Korea, since Europe is confident that America will keep such dangers under control and out of its neighborhood. America outspends the rest of NATO militarily by more than a 2 to 1 ratio. What looks sensible if one is heavily armed lo
How much would the rediculous farmer subsidies increase with open source food on the market? and more importantly, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
While you do have a point about luck, you're info on chopsticks is so wrong it's funny. From EverythingChopsticks.com:
"For those really interested in chopsticks visit the Kuaizi Museum in Shanghai. The museum has collected over 1,000 pairs of chopsticks. The oldest pair is from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 AD)."
From chinavista.com:
"When the Chinese began to use chopsticks as an eating instrument is anybody's guess. They were first mentioned in writing in Liji (The Book of rites), a work compiled some 2,000 years ago, but certainly they had their initial form in the twigs which the primitive Chinese must have used to pick up a roast after they began to use fire."
And finally from About.com:
"The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table." (Confucius)
While I don't share Confucius' abhorrence at the mere thought of a man in the kitchen, his dislike of knives is more understandable. Confucius equated knives with acts of aggression, which went against his non-violent teachings. Some experts credit Confucius' influence with the widespread adoption of chopsticks throughout China. Scholarship had triumphed over the warrior lifestyle.
Chopsticks were in use by the Shang dynasty (1766 BC - 1122 BC). In fact, the first chopsticks may have been twigs used to spear a roast cooked over an open fire. The enduring popularity of chopsticks may actually be linked to Chinese cooking methods - before stir-frying the food is cut into tiny pieces, making them easy to manipulate with a chopstick."
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Check out this guy's posts. 'nuff said
The thing about Amazon is that they haven't sat on their laurels. Digitizing whole books and making them searchable is invaluable and basically mimicks that old ability to browse books.
I worry though that we'll end up with these large super-conglomerates who hold whole market segments, somewhat like Microsoft achieved in computers in the 90's. The only real competitor to Amazon for books is Barnes and Nobel, but Amazon's really beating them in many ways.
The article is Here. This is plagerism in the highest sense and the biggest sham of a post I have ever seen. If you're going to advertise for some sketchy digital picture frame company at least have the decency to make up a new pitch.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Now, I'm obviously not an expert, but my Googling only finds a couple of quarters where Amazon turned a profit, and the latest news is that the company's losses were almost $40 million over the last 9 months
You need to be a bit careful assessing profitability in companies like Amazon that are growing very quickly. For example, it could very well be that Amazon had a positive profit margin on every product sold in the last 9 months, and yet would still show a $40 million loss. (I'm not saying that was the case, this is just for illustration.)
The cause of this paradox is that they have cash tied up in inventory, and when they grow, this inventory typically needs to grow too (unless their cleverness lets them avoid it). This inventory increase is money that they've paid to their suppliers that they haven't yet recouped from customers, so it shows up as a loss in their SEC filings.
Earnings statements are most useful for assessing static businesses, not businesses that are growing very quickly.
bollox
cks
Please do a little googling before your post you predjudice.
Cheers,
R.
Maybe you live in interesting times
The quote is with regard to freedom of speech. Bush didn't like a parody website. link.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
The premise that numerous business models must be attempted to find a successful one is valid.
However, success is relative. To say that businesses that fail eventually did not achieve success for a period of time is not correct. Commodore succeeded for a time and then failed. The same is true for Montgomery Ward. The period of success may differ by 100+ years, but in each case, there was value delivered to the industry, the individuals employed, the community that benefited in taxes and cash flow, etc.
Successful models may be found and then abandoned by misguided managers, or the model may fail when market forces change. The perpetually successful business may change their model numerous times and fluctuate wildly in value while surviving decades. The failure may have a good model and no market changes, but simply fails to execute.
I would also argue that in some sense WalMart is a failure because it acts as an economic leach, and removes value from the communities served. Yet, any stockholder would be thrilled with its "success."
Finally, there are those businesses that are identified as failures often, such as Apple, who survive, thrive and drive the industry... but have lost market share in the process. By any other standard they are successful. In fact, most businesses are partial failures in some sense of the word.
How long will it be before Dell's business model fails, or Dell's business fails despite a successful model?
Newegg.com (computer components) has an awesome reputation for fast shipping and excellent service, and gets a 9.82 at resellerratings.com. (by comparison, Amazon gets a 5.51).
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Netflix or Greencine. These are examples of a business model (video rentals) adapted to suit the technology (internet). I dont know what their earnings are but I thought it was a cool idea when I heard of it, and I like it even more since I've been using it.
I use phrases like "darn good" and "rootin' tootin'", but only when there's a darn good, rootin tootin' reason!
Commodore: Entered an industry well penetrated by apple, IBM, Tandy (back then) and company and tried to play along, didn't make it...
Huh? Commodore was one of the pioneers of the "non-hobbyist" PC (i.e. computers that you didn't ahve to build by hand). And they had the best-selling single computer model of all time in the C64 (a record which has not been broken to this day, though that's a bit specious because PC models are so diverse and customized these days). They certainly didn't have a problem getting into the market; hell, they helped create it. But then they lost direction after the C64, with too many different models (C128, C16, the B-series, SuperPET, Amiga, etc.) and spread themselves too thin.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Commodore was in the PC business before IBM. You're forgetting the PET and the C-64, long before the Amiga (which they bought rather than developed in-house).
Commodore's demise was a result of tactical stupidity, not long-range trends or strategic business models. Quite simply, they ran out of cash, and they ran out of cash because they ran out of currently-selling inventory while trying instead to produce and sell a new (and unpopular) product. No cash flow, no company. Lesson for the business majors: don't stop producing the things your customers are actually paying for.
Most companies you choose one of a number of fixed models - with Dell, you can pick and mix options.
I mean you have an idea, know it will work, but what do you do?
God spoke to me
If you want to get customers, keep customers, and get good word-of-mouth advertising(as well as make a lot of money), then you will want to make sure you take care of your customers.For example, there is tons of companies that sell music equipment, like guitars, but I've found that very few have decent prices or good service/warrenties. I only go with http://www.samedaymusic.com/ or http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ because they have great warrenties and service. Or, with Totally Awesome computers, they have stupid advertisments but good warrenties and service. That's pretty much the only reason they are ahead of the other companies that sell and repair computers.
It will take time to build up business and to start making big profits, but in the end you'll end up on top!!!
Starbucks grew tremendously while spending peanuts on advertising and relying on word of mouth. Zima Beverage Co spent oodles on ads but word of mouth kept it from being a hit.
Razzmatazz can't make up for an inferior product. If it could, I'd be typing this on a PCjr and drinking New Coke. OS X, iMac, iPod, iMovie, et al. are the keys to Apple's success - advertising is tangential.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
The companies that tend to do well in the long term are companies like IBM that can make money out of their product (very important) and keep reinventing themselves as the market changes.
Amazon is fine - they are a book shop, and they make money out of selling books. There are other book shops around, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Borders, Blackwells, etc etc etc. It's quite a stable market. I don't really consider Amazon to be a tech company.
If everyone was to start switching to ebooks, then they might have problems. When people make the switch from CDs to downloaded music, they switch from the likes of HMV and Virgin to Apple's ITunes.
EBay seem to be in quite a good market, and make good money out of it. Things may change of course, but they should probably be OK.
Google. They seem to be stuck in one particular market - algorithmic search. If you are looking for websites, then they are pretty good most of the time, but other sites could take away their crown at any time, particularly now that Inktomi, Altavista and Fast are in Yahoo's hands, and MSN are working on something. For commercial search, they aren't that good at all. When I was looking for insurance, I found Yahoo was better. When I was looking to buy a car, I found MSN was better. If I was looking for a new job, then one of the recruitment sites would be a better choice. If I was looking for a plumber, I would probably have better luck in Yellow Pages or Scoot.
They are all pay for placement sites - but there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, and it does make money for the site.
Hardware companies are difficult to predict. It all depends on their future R&D and their marketing, and nobody can know what that will bring.
I think that this underestimates the significance of what Amazon has done. Your typical pre-internet mail order store took six weeks to deliver an order from the time you mailed it in, and had a much more limited selection of items. Amazon's key innovation was speed: they have a huge stock of items that can be shipped in less than a day, and their order fulfillment is extremely dependable. Because you can get an item delivered in only a few days (or 1 day if you're willing to pay extra), people will buy things on Amazon that they would otherwise have gone to the store for. Conventional catalog houses did't "steal" business from the brick and mortar sector this way. It can actually be quicker (in terms of my time) to order something from Amazon than to drive to a store and look for it, especially if the item is not guaranteed to be in stock at the first store I go to. Amazon has certainly changed the way I shop, and I suspect many others would say the same. That is a new business model at work.
Similarly, EBay has created an entirely new market for used goods, like nothing that existed before. Yes, it is similar to conventional auctions, but it draws in an entirely new pool of customers who would never have bought or sold at an auction before. That is definitely a new business model.
FWIW, I used to work at Peapod while Webvan was still around. Peapod realized that it's a bad idea to build a bunch of facilities if you don't have a large customer base. They also realized that it takes time to build a customer base, especially when your fundamentally changing peoples' grocery shopping experience.
Webvan thought they could build a large customer base overnight. As a result they spent something like $12 million on modern/automated picking facilities and subsequently burned through all of their cash and died off.
You may not remember it, but Peapod has been around since before 1994. They even used to have a Macintosh based software client for their customers to use before Internet access was ubiquitous.
still broken?
.coms', 1.3mm 4k .'s to go (Score:mynuts won, scarIE?)
.'s to plot with?
rick schwartz, 'king of
by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, @04:47PM (#7863341)
just have to laugh out loud at that won rick.
15k turns into 1.3 mil0? what kind of math/optics is that?
it's no billyonerrors' hostage ransom, or gnu dating service, but true to your advise.
may have spelled his name wrong? there's also rumour he's not the king of anything really, despite having 1000's more of
another case of blame crooks for being crooks (Score:mynuts won, as if you didn't know it?)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, @05:44PM (#7863747)
instead of protecting their inf..
the real threat to yOUR social system is the constaNT suck of the endlessly needy corepirate nazi marketeering execrable, if you don't couNT the georgewellian fuddite debt & disruption machines.
both 'institutions' fail miserably, & sadly enough, voluntarily, in the area of protection of personal information, unless it is their own, & even then, they just fail buy ineptitude.
consult with yOUR creators... that's it. you are entitled to some privacy. it's a huge planet.
It was a little more malicious than that, actually. While the CBM-PC was indeed a new and unpopular product compared to the Amiga, the executive team led by Medhi Ali (may his children have saggy breasts and camel humps) were also gutting the company from the inside out, in a manner all too familiar today.
What the frell? You copied this entire post out of an article previously mentioned on Slashdot [slashdot.org]
The article is Here [alwayson-network.com]. This is plagerism in the highest sense and the biggest sham of a post I have ever seen. If you're going to advertise for some sketchy digital picture frame company at least have the decency to make up a new pitch.
People that ask questions like this in /. articles kill me. Are you looking for a sensible answer? Then ask someone you trust. Why ask a bunch of anonymous trolls what they think? Are you going to really use that information?
Recently, Google changed the way it rates sites in a search, and has kept the new algorithm secret.
Those of us who are cynical suspect that your search position is now heavily weighted by how much you spend on their 'adwords' service. And that in turn is driven by their imminent IPO.
Big companies don't seem to be able to make little mistakes, and I'm wondering if Google is going to screw itself out of the #1 position...
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Your management teacher is teaching you how to manage quite well.
The final blow was when in fall of '93 Mehdi decided to build a few 10's of thousands of the new (AA/AGA) machines (A1200, etc), and 300,000+ of the old chipset-based machines (A600). Needless to say, the old machines didn't move off the shelves very fast at Xmas, and that was the final nail.
There were other instances like that too. Mostly it was caused by not following up on successful products (C64, A500, to some extent A3000) and trying to milk them for too long. The A1200 was the right machine; it was just too late by a year or two. Engineering had it's issues too, in particular biting off more than we could chew on the total redesign of the chipset which was never quite finished ("AAA"), and not giving enough attention to the potential high-volume products, though in general engineering was pretty focused on them.
It's tough when the CEO won't let marketing talk to engineering directly, and insists all contact go through him and his cronies... Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Commodore engineer from these times, and after bankruptcy was declared, we burnt Mehdi Ali in effigy in my backyard (literally).
No, you didn't actually spend $40,000. You spent $200,000. Of real money. It's just that the IRS doesn't let you write it off as an expense all at once. Instead, you have to depreciate it over its useful lifetime, which was 5 years (absurdly long) for computers last time I checked. That means a $40,000 deduction for each of 5 years, as you noted. But it's not a "free" way of lowering your taxes.
What is a free way of lowering your taxes is writing off nonsense losses like reduced "goodwill". Accountants have tried to tell me why this is supposed to be real, but it always sets off my bullshit alarms.
Incidentally, though--and obviously if there were a magic formula someone would've gotten rich fast on it by now--I think you overstate the importance of a good product, as well. Plenty of superior products have faltered, and in all honesty, iMacs and iPods aren't really that impressive. Why do people buy iPods instead of the cheaper Dell knockoffs? Image. Why do people buy Starbucks? Not, as you imply, because they've heard from friends that its good. Starbuck's secret to success is the same as McDonalds's. Put one on every other streetcorner and if people aren't hungry or thirsty, they soon will be. Make a consistent product so that when someone is in a different city, he knows what you've got and goes to the familiar.
McDonalds's food sucks, but people still eat there. Not because of product superiority, but because of aggressive marketing, if not in advertising campaigns than in building new locations, which is just as effective.
but you can't really invest in it.
Or... buy a curry farm.
If I could buy a stock that goes up as an India programmers' wages rise, I would.
The next big trend is as follows. India will start growing its economy by about 15% / year. This will start in a few years. India will start needing more and more of its own Developers, tech workers for goods and services that are actually consumed within India.
(These growth figures won't start for about 36 months, so there's still time to figure out a way to invest).
This trend is kind of similar to the disrupive (.mp3) technology towards the Music Industry. Information/Knowledge is uncontollable.
Head shops are finding it harder and harder to control Tech Labor. It's really hard for a company to keep an employee, at a low wage.
You missed the most important thing:
Market Need.
If people don't need it, it doesn't matter how rare, unique, hard to duplicate or substitute it is. And it doesn't matter how well managed, how high quality your product, or your promotion strategy.
It's funny that you mention desktop/laptop support... most of my experience has been on the server side. Dell might have great support for desktop/laptop systems, I certainly wouldn't know about it. In terms of enterprise-level hardware support, especially storage products, HP/Compaq has Dell beat by a mile. That's not to say Compaq can't be frustrating to deal with at times, but generally it's much better. As for IBM, Siemens or Toshiba, I've never had to work with any of them much, server-level or otherwise.
:-)
The main problem with Dell, for us, has been their field service. We have sites scattered all over the country, and we maintain four-hour call-out contracts to keep those sites covered, while having a minimal staff of our own field engineers. Dell out-sources a lot of their onsite support to another company. The individuals employed by that company are stunningly incompetent.
In one instance, a technician shuffled the drives in one cabinet of a 4TB NAS while troubleshooting a multiple drive failure. The NAS did not support roaming drives. Goodbye to 1TB of medical data, hello tape retrieval. Good times! In another case, while trying to replace parts in a Dell NAS head, the technician used a power screwdriver with a screw that was too long. The end result... A neat hole drilled through the NAS head's mainboard. Stellar! It doesn't take many incidents like that to destroy confidence in a company's service offerings. Considering how much money can be made off of service contracts and various uplifts, that can be crippling to a company. And don't even get me started on NAS firmware bugs, christ... if you have a Dell NAS, make sure the firmware is up to date, that's all I've got to say.
Actually, that's a business strategy I think we'll see even more of, but in new areas as well. Selling products at a distinct loss, and then locking the consumers of those products into service contracts, upgrade costs and maintenance fees. I think a lot more closed source software companies will move in that direction, but in a more extreme sense. Like buying a mobile phone that's only good as long as you maintain the contract; software that only works as long as you keep paying. All the more reason to go with open source software
It isn't the buisness model, it is the management. People on top who watch over things with the correct balence between micro-management and complete hands-off, to let things work when they will but stop disasters before they happen.
Think Dell is great because of the buisness model? Then when is Northgate out of buisness (they were a big name before Dell). Why has Gateway had troubled times?
Think Wal-Mart is big? A&P (Is that the name? big power store before I was born) used to be bigger. I've never set foot in a Wards store in my life, and they used to be Hugh. Sears is having big problems and has been for years, yet J.C.Pennys does just fine despite being similear on the surface.
Admire Amazon.com? Look at the balance sheet and tell me with a straight face you really belive they can pay off that dept. They might, but if hard times come (the last recession was not very hard in comparition to others) they will be one of the first gone, while stronger companies will survive.
All failures can be traced to management. If the engineers were incompitent, management hired them; didn't recignize their failings, and fire them. If the company runs out of money, management wasn't paying enough attention to the accountants to make sure there was money. If the product fails in the market, management didn't pay enough attention to marketing (or hired incompitent marketers) to determin how much the market would bare. (both price and quanity)
There is a market for even the most flawed buisness model, so long as management understands the flaws and deals with them in the plan. Of course often the profit isn't worth it, but there again management should recignise that, perhaps by selling the assests and distributing to the investers.
The Internet isn't going to lead to any long term business innovation. It's simply an accelerator of business. Even those businesses that we look at as successes today like Amazon and Dell or perhaps future successes in the realm of VoIP etc. are really just about eeking value out of goods.
The bottom line that we are facing is that there is no more value left in goods. We have already automated everything to the point where a large percentage improvement in profit is going to show diminishing returns in terms of actual dollars for companies. It's like making $2 profit on a $300 computer vs. making $1.50. In the long run the push to ever increase volumes amongst smaller increases in profit will simply reduce product value to zero (which is what we're seeing now on all consumer goods, so much so that we can't realistically afford to produce those domestically anymore).
Sadly, we live in the era of high volume, disposable products and we have the false impression that we "get another one" indefinitely. The Internet just underlines this false availability. Fundamentally, we're heading for a huge crash of product valuation and resource availability. Companies simply can't keep making no money selling worthless products. Eventually, we're just going to run out of raw materials to make so many disposable things.
If the Internet does anything in terms of new business models I hope it kills its own business model. We have to understand that there are no new markets to exploit, that the people we're profiting off of are not some faceless mass, they're ourselves.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
That was exactly my point. :)
Why need they be mutually exclusive? Last time I checked, there was no magical business model-- adaptability, listening to your customer base, and investing in human resources were your best bets.
It depends on the management, not the field of endeavor or the original business model, methinks.
-- MG
Another thing that Amazon did is that they hugely improved over a typical retailer's inventory turnover (it's a rate of full replacement of your warehouse inventory). A typical pre-dotcom retailer had a turnover of 1.5 to 2 per year. Amazon has like 6 to 7. That's efficiency like no other! Bezos might not be liked in these circles but as far as managing goes the guy is a bloody genius!
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
http://www.ufeedme.com/cover/funfacts/files/chopsu ey.htm
Though I don't see how that can account for lumber exports, chop suey (and alot of other dishes served in chinese restaraunts) were invented by american immigrants.
Maxim "FIngo" Veytsman
Apparently your teacher doesn't know the difference between B&N and Borders. Not an uncommon mistake. I work at Borders, and I get people trying to buy things with B&N gift cards (even insisting that we accept them after we've explained that we are, in fact, not B&N) or I overhear them on their cell phones saying "Yeah, I'm at Barnes & Nobles [sic]."
In any case, Amazon runs the Borders.com website, and is a rival of bn.com, as the two are the top selling book vendors on the internet (last I checked). Kind of sad though, that your teacher used to talk about it all the time, all the while talking about the completely wrong corporation.
There is a reason that The Book Of Four Rings
I think you're missing a ring.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
My boss sells a database to insurance agents. This database has all the rates for Canada and the US for (almost) every company. There is no sales to the consumer.
We use the internet in three ways.
1. We use it to distribute our product. (updates twice monthly or as often as needed.)
2. We use it to show off our product by allowing the anyone in the world to find the best rates for their age/health/sex status(see my sig).
3. And after people have found rates, we will direct them to our customers. (The user calls the agent if they are interested).
Agents and brokers love this system, because they get called by people wanting to buy insurance. Ask any agent if they like doing "cold calls". It isn't fun.
So we use the internet as a form of advertising to our customers, as well as a distrubution channel.
Your search - "The Book Of Four Rings" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "Book Of Four Rings" - did not match any documents.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Try dozens. Hint: Most Detroit automaker product brand names like Chevrolet, Dodge, Oldsmobile, etc. were separate companies to begin with.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Please read the article of Lester Carl Thurow.
"The rest of the world cannot stop America from doing anything it
really wants to do or force America to do anything it does not want to do."
America can do what it wants with the world.
This article is not about business; it is about world domination by the
use of military force, not economic domination.
Unites States of America becomes United States of The World.
"Imperial Rome dominated a large region around the Mediterranean Sea.
America dominates the globe."
So USA is bigger than Rome. Remember the bigger you are the harder you fall!
And we all know about the fall of Rome. After Rome, there was a period called
the dark ages which lasted for a thousand years. Can we avoid a second dark
ages after the fall of USA/USW?
I thought the goal of Humanity and human endeavor was to free the world
from oppression, suffering, ignorance and war.
History is littered with wars and who will argue that the root cause of war
is not economics. The act of physical war has become too dangerous and efficient;
our weaponary has become too powerful.
1. Dead people make bad consumers.
2. Unjust wars and invasions are bad publicity and generate bad will.
3. World domination has never worked; no matter how big the stick.
A uninhabitable earth will force human kind to find another
planet for continuing the human experience or face extinction.
Our future is as small groups of humans or human-like entities(intelligent
beings genetically enginered for life in space) roaming the universe in search
of an inhabitable planet while the more fortunate of us live in geodomes
waiting for the next galaxy taxi to take us to our next earth.
Of course, once found, the inhabitable planet will need to conquered and
dominated first! United States of The Universe! USA/USW/USU.
This is a test!
Would boo.com had gotten funded if it hadn't been presented to VCs through "trusted" channels? Or Dr. Koop's heath site? Of course, Apple and Google managed to get funded. Why? Because their founders knew the "right" people.
And they have not learned from the dot.bomb. If anything, they're "circling around the wagons" even harder, i.e. even less willing to consider ideas that originated from outside their personal networks.
A good case can be made for the VC community being essentially irrelevant to modern innovation.
No, funding the 20th wireless network company is not evidence of innovation, it's evidence of something else entirely. Usually that a batch of investors have an ugly surprise in their future, along with the founders who trusted in promises of not only money, but good advice.
Absence of available VC funding is not a problem if you're working on a problem that can be solved by personal resources, (i.e. a something that's a software project that can be done by one or a handful of people) but anything bigger has to be put in the "someday, maybe" file unless you can find somebody with money that's NOT connected to the VC scene capable of being excited by the possibility of doing something different and making money off it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Unless your software is written in-house, or perhaps Open Source, is any proprietary company going to bs supporting it in 10 years? How about 5? Will you be able to find what you need that'll run on your machine(s) in 5 years?
The good news is that if you replace the hardware in 3 years, your replacement should cost a lot less than $200K.
I'm not speaking to the depreciation or accelerated depreciation issues, I'm not an accountant and don't know the current IRS rules with respect to IT.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Try the Baen Free Library> Lots of books, most from pretty well known writers. What you'll often see is the first few books in a series, posted for download (NO DRM) in the hopes you'll buy the current in-print books.
However, I agree with your basic point. There is simply no reason why any electronically typeset book need ever go out of print, no reason why a book should ever stop realizing income for its author and publisher as long as the (M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E) copyright is in force.
The same is true for records and video, of course.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Remember that the most important compensation for a CEO of a publically traded company is in stock, usually options. To maximize that compensation means that stock prices have to be continously maximized. To do this, one has to do things that keep investment analysts who have no clue about the fundamental business of a company happy.
Outsource customer service to cut costs? Even if the customers are pissed, the CEO's a hero. Cut R&D spending? Great idea. Fire the long-service employees who provide the institutional expertise of an organization in favor of kids just out of school? Perfection!
Outsource enough core business functions so that the outsourcing company knows more about your day-to-day business with respect to making products/services and customer service than you do and you are essentially building future offshore competition that can run your company into the ground? You're on the cutting edge!
Just show continously increasing profit numbers, even if the books have to be continuously juggled to do so. No matter what damage this does to an organization's ability to serve its customers.
Long-term damage to a company is irrelevant to a CEO who's going to be with the company for 5 years or less, all he has to worry about is keeping the investment analysts happy for long enough to cash out. Then, he can repeat the cycle somewhere else or retire.
Tech Public Policy stuff
First this started when personal computer makers were dropping off the market.
The typical home computer was a simple 8 bit computer.
Commodore didn't just make it's money on home computers but 8 bit processors. The 6502.
(The early incarnation the 6500 earned MOS a lawsute the setlment permitted the creation of the 6502 and some time after that Commodore would buy MOS)
The success of the Vic20 and 64 was entirely due to video games. The avrage user didn't know what to do with a computer so they were affrade to buy one but they did know they wanted to play video games and a video game computer was perfict.
And then the avrage user would discover all the wonderful things you can do with a computer. That and they'd discover the slow simple Commodore 8 bit computers wouldn't do them very well.
With the PC dropping in price and the Introduction of the Macintosh as well as a growing industry of add on cards for the Apple II the avrage user was no longer willing to settle for a slow underpowered computer.
Commodore was not cought unsupprised by this.
The B series: A line of 8 bit computers (early rummors had them at 16 bits) aimed at small business.
The super pet II: A desktop Unix system presumably aimed at the growing techie market as well as the business market.
The Amiga: A computer aimmed at the business and home user.
Pure conjecture but it appears to me all three were aimmed at business applications while still aimming at a price tag the home users could afford.
The B series (Even at 16 bit) appeared to be primarly data entry and retreaval. The big enhancments were screen keyboard and memory. The 16 bit processor would have been more for handling large chunks of memory than for speed.
A Commodore hard disk was introduced near the end of Commodores legacy suggesting at least there was some plans to make this available for the 8 bits. Maybe the B series was the main target for this?
The Super Pet II: This appears to be aimmed at the very high end.
Commodore used the new 32 bit Z80 based processor and I'm guessing Commodore was betting on the multi-processor capabilitys to pay off.
A sad number of defects in the chip made the Super pet II not as fast as it should have been.
However had that not happend it seams likely Commodore would ship the super pet II with the ability to add more processors over time.
The target of this system is automated jobs. Running a BBS for example. A file server. Processing the data entered on an army of B series systems. Running a house power system. Running a security system. A home made weather station.
There were a wide range of projects for the Commodore pet and 64 and it seams to me Commodore wanted to make the Super Pet II an ideal platform to produce such projects commertally.
Commodore didn't design the Amiga obveously. But it made a nice rounding off for Commodores new line of systems.
By early rummors calling the Amiga "The Vic Mac" had the Amiga aimmed at the same market as the Macintosh.
I'd guess this was to be the secretarys computer.
User friendly so your secretary didn't need to be a computer expert as well as all other skills the job requires.
High quality keyboard and video display. Large expandable memory base. Data entry.
Speed so it was also a workhorse.
But... Commodores founder tended to keep the backers in the dark and in hard times this made the nervous.
I think the large amount of product develupment at a time when Commodore was losing money didn't make a whole lot of sense.
But it was commodores product line that was losing money. This was never explained so...
Insert lawsute and Commodores founder loses control. So he left.
The Super pet II was scrapped. The B series was halted in mid develupment to produce the C16 and 4+ and the the biggest mistake of all time the Amiga was marketed to the then non-existent video game market.
Bit that didn't kill Commodore.
Soon came the new iCD device. A new entertainm
I don't actually exist.
Close, but you misspelled "magazine ads".
Dell was already a major player when this World Wide Watchamacallit started catching on in the mid-90's. They got there by selling custom-configured "PC's Limited" clones direct to the user (i.e. at lower prices than retail-channel manufacturers), through adverts in computer magazines. (I bought one in 1987.) They weren't the only ones doing this at the time, but the professional-looking multi-page ads clearly describing the configuration options and pricing inspired confidence (very much like a print version of modern build-your-own web pages), the machines delivered what they promised, and the tech support was quite good.
(Gateway followed a very similar model, undercutting Dell's prices using cheaper plains-states labor after the Texas outfit started moving upscale. That was also before the Web became a factor: it was the memorable cow adverts in magazines that put them on the map.)
The cyberpunkization of global society is advancing into more and more areas of day-to-day life.
It will either turn out to mega-capitalisim, where it then clearly shows that capitalisim is nothing but a disguised corporate socialisim, or it will slowly merge into a more shall I say 'spiritually aware' version of technocracy, where there is a general overall consensus about society structures of any sorts (think global currency, etc.). It's going to be quite very much like in the cyberpunk novels by Wiliam Gibson or Neal Stephenson, imho.
Anyhow, a businessmodel that takes the future 'global village' (bad and wrong term, imho, but it the call is out...) and that which I call cyberpunization into account would have to focus on one thing primarily: Service orientation.
It's that simple. In a technocratic world where you can get virtually anything in sufficent ammounts for ultra-competitive killer-prices, it's all about getting in touch with people and putting your own expertise in a certain field to work for others and making a buck from that. In fact, the business I'm trying to build right now (www.richdale.de) focuses on just exactly that. Trying to get a headstart into the OSS service business that is about to come on strong.
With the information age just dawning - I seriously do believe we're still in the steam age of computing - I see no point in trying to make a buck by 'moving stuff' from A to B. Amazon, Ebay, DELL, IBM, Aldi, Walmart, etc. are much better at that than I and my friends can ever be.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The Internet is a very useful tool in getting businesses with common goals and objectives talking to each other. This can only be a good thing, especially when they are not working in directly competitive markets.
However, the one major problem with the Information Technology Industry and the electronics industry is that they are constantly trying to re-define themselves with ever increasing speed. This is a major headache for service industries and industrial engineering firms alike, as they are often left in the lurch when they can no longer provide a particular service or product as a certain electronic component or piece of software is no longer available.
This brings in the requirement for Obsolescence Management, where a dedicated team or company helps to solve these obsolescence issues, before they become a problem and start to have an effect on business.
For example, there have been a number of comments about the recent removal from production/service of the Sun Cobalt system. I don't know enough about the particular features of this system, what I do know is if I (assuming that I was a CEO of a company) had invested heavily into this product, I would like to get as much out of it as possible before I have to pay for a replacement. The problem with replacing computer systems is that there is so much to loose by transferring to another technology or platform, as there may be risks of delays and additional costs from staff training, transfer of data etc...
An example of a potential obsolescence tool is Ebay. A few years ago NASA needed supplies of 8-inch floppy disk drives and space certified Intel 8086 microprocessors. The problem with safety critical applications is that upgrading software and hardware may cost more than trying to build a new product from scratch. It might cost several million dollars to change two lines of code in qualified software just to allow a slightly different version of microprocessor to be used. So the best way to avoid it is to scan Ebay (like NASA did) and buy up any suitable floppy drives and microprocessors on offer.
When you consider that some electronic products being developed now for professional systems such as avionics or transportation systems, may have a product life cycle of 25 years, the business opportunities for ensuring the correct supply of suitable components in the future are immense, especially as the average lifecycle of a commerical electronic component now stands at about 18 months.
Where the heck did you get that idea? Chopsticks were invented about 5000 years ago in China. And it's quite certain they started out as a pair of twigs back then.
>The final blow was when in fall of '93 Mehdi decided to build a few 10's of thousands of the new (AA/AGA) machines
The final blow was when everyone realized that an OPEN hardware architecture (IBM-PC) was a superior way to go:
Zero re-porting grief for consumers when moving between manufacturers,
level playing field == real competition based on merit (for hardware--software too, if you now look at Linux and ignore the M$ legacy).
gewg_
Hey, I'm all for nuclear energy.
As long as we store the waste in YOUR back yard. And YOU can personally guarantee it will STAY there for 12 million years.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If I understand your viewpoint it's that consumers are helpless victims of advertising. What happened to all the dot-coms that ran brilliant ads during the Super Bowl a few years ago? Pets.com had that great sock puppet spokesman - they should have cornered the market.
Dell MP3 players are cheaper, but they're not as stylish. The Dell DJ is clunky - the iPod is svelte. Apple isn't bamboozling people with sexy iPod ads; style has a legitimate value for a product you carry around with you.
The failing of a "superior" product is often the fault of a competing product with a better value. Betamax had a clearer picture than VHS, but Sony's refusal to license Beta meant VHS was a better product. Beta was the superior technology - VHS was the superior product. QWERTY versus Dvorak keyboards is another popular example, but Dvorak's superiority has been debunked.
Starbucks didn't go from one store in Seattle to 7,200 stores around the world without a commitment to quality coffee. They didn't ride the wave of the gourmet coffee craze. They got that wave rolling. Starbucks success is the result of hard work and gutsy risk-taking by its founders. In the words of Nation's Restaurant News, "Simply put, Starbucks spends only about $5 million or so on advertising, but it's gotten a remarkable return on its investment by creating a cult following among coffee drinkers."
My tastes are a little more gourmet than McDonald's. But McDonald's has a product with wide appeal: it's cheap, it's consistent, it's exactly what the man on the street wants. If McDonalds sold eggplant sandwiches with goat cheese, they wouldn't be successful. You and I may not personally like it, but the Big Mac is a superior product. It hasn't been foisted on hapless consumers through ubiquity or ballyhoo.
I can't think of a single example of a company that has thrived in the long term with a weak product and strong marketing.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
The Amiga A1000/A500 developed a huge following, but unfortunately many developers dug into the internals of the coprocessors and exploited them producing really great games.
But a new, faster, more powerful system was needed to compete with other computers of the time, and the fateful decision to maintain compatibility was made. That meant being constrained by all the undocumented warts of the A500 chipsets in the designs of the new chips sets.
In hindsight its easy to see that the mistakes was to fail to cut to a completely new system architecture and forget binary compatibility. Apple made the switch from the Apple II to the Lisa and then Mac with a complete break. The Apple II lived on much longer than it would have if Apple hadn't done the disasterous Lisa.
What amazed me when I stumbled on the Amiga was how advanced the Amiga OS design was - it was better than most of the minicomputer and mainframes OSes and clearly the best on microcomputers.
Basically, the people who made the Amiga such a great machine, the game developers, and who supported it most enthusiastically, the game developers and gamers, killed off the Amiga.
lucky for me I haven't needed any support for my Dell servers yet I guess.
They where only bought because at buying time they where the cheapest around - definitely the worst buy I ever did tho.
Sounds like you guys could use a service company and cut back on service contracts from vendors though - the downtime Dell cost you by now most likely is worth the extra premium you would have to pay a proper service company.
Anyway, I see that hardware vendors are increasingly using run-of-the mill components and adding their extra services as support and software. IBM's Tivoli is a great example (and definitely the best kind of free (as in extra with your servers) management software I've seen.
Anyway I was just relating to my experience which has been both in consumer segment and as working in the it department of a major hospital - currently I'm running for a smaller company (11/2 IT staff in all) so I have tried corporate and home user support and some server support and in all segments I can honestly say the only company I've so far been completely satisfied with is IBM - however Toshiba and Siemens have been quite good too (Toshiba I've only needed for home use tho, so they don't really count).
Since when is answering a specifically asked question "offtopic" (this is directed to the moron who down-graded this reply)?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
All of this has been said elsewhere (I'm just too lazy to look up the references) but Amazon does a lot more than sell books. It's a retail technology platform geared to selling anything online in a professional manner. There is more going on at Amazon that meets the eye at first.
Amazon's real issue is can it continue to find a market for it's service? Would large brick and morter retailers prefer to outsource their online equivalent (Target, Toys-R-Us) or do it themselves with their own or 3rd party software.
By the way, Amazon's latest initiative, 'Inside the book' searching isn't really a technology advance - they used their leverage with publishers to sign them up for allowing their texts to be searchable. It's a legal coup far more than a technology one. Don't expect B&N to do this anytime soon.
Cheers
i8msft
Keep It Simple
Did not you know that everything of certain merit that has ever existed was invented in the US?
This crimental will not go unpunished!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Ahh, but there's more to it than that though. The US postal system since more or less the beginning of the republic has always provided for a discount rate on books -- Any non-media package of a pound or more in weight -- which will be the majority of what any mail order company deals with -- has to be sent as priority mail, at double to triple the rate of media mail. Quoting from the Post Office's site:
Just look at that list: books, films, recordings, software, etc. These are all the things that Amazon started out with. That's no coincidence. One of the biggest expenses for a mail order company has to be the cost of putting all those packages in the mail, and Amazon employed a loophole in the US Post Office to set themselves up for a steep discount on that part of their business.
They didn't find a need for books & capitalized on it. Amazon found a loophole for them, and capitalized on that.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
than traditional models. Frankly Amazon.com is nothing more than a large catalog mail order store. Its just that the catalog and much of the ordering process has been automated by computers.
Actually, I contend that the internet is a fundamentally new way of business; one that can be generalized by the term "Just In Time"
For instance, many e-tailers keep track of inventory; when I browse their website, I'm seeing a selection of what is currently available in the warehouse. If something is backordered, I will generally know about it before I place the order, and be able to select an alternate product or vendor if this is unacceptable to me.
Another excellent example of how this Just In Time concept can provide value to both the consumer and the business, is that unlike a catalog, changes are instaneous. Let's say you have a new product you add to your line today; you don't have to wait for the next catalog mailer before you start seeing a sizeable order volume.
Look at the surplus market; internet surplus thrives on a Just In Time model.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Commodore was an outstanding multimedia machine, and this was evident with it's games and video and sound editing solutions. They should have not tried to get into desktop business solutions and keep focus on their original market. Imagine if they were still around today, they would have had cutting edge video editing suites and gaming platforms.
A lot of dotcom businesses failed because they became arrogent and thought that the customer will bow to them at any costs because the idea was so hot. How they were wrong. Customers and their behaiviour and the understanding of that is why amazon and ebay work.