If they are hungry, give them mobiles
Posted on June 17, 2009
Filed Under Business Ideas, Economy | Leave a Comment
I recently finished reading The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. A book definitely worth reading that narrates, from the point of view of -as he calls himself- an indian entrepreneur, the life of those who are pushed down due to their chaste and the relations servant/master (mostly) in North India.
At a certain point Balram, the hero of the novel, says something worth mentioning. Paraphrasing:
In India, when people complain that they are hungry, the government gives them mobiles. It seems they don’t realize what they need is food, not phones. That’s the way things work here.
As said, it is not an accurate quote, but it reflects what the author means in the book.
Don’t lie to me!
Posted on June 10, 2009
Filed Under Business Culture, Strategy | 1 Comment
Reliable sources inform me that the giant Nokia is currently laying off about 50 workers a week. Silently. Worldwide. That makes a total of 2,600 a year. Not too many if compared with the 59,000 of Citigroup, 35,000 of Bank of America or 24,500 of HP. But still, many more than the 600 they forecasted for 2009 about 6 months ago, or the 170 job cuts announced barely two weeks ago. Is this lying? Is it omitting? Does it really matter that they say they are in fact laying off a fourth (or an eighteenth) of the people they are actually kicking out?
The answer is: yes, yes, yes!
Like Nietzsche said two centuries ago,
The visionary lies to himself; the liar only to others.
Communication and clarity lead to loyalty. And, in order to achieve this, a company must keep their channels open, both internally (to its own employees) and externally (to press and masses in general). As we usually say, it is easier to catch a liar that a cripple.
Blog me, I’m famous
Posted on June 8, 2009
Filed Under Business Ideas, Trends | 2 Comments
Select a limited number of popular bloggers, give each of them one of your new products and let them post about it and even give those products to their readers. What would you achieve?
Well, in the case of HP, quite a lot.
Few months ago, they gave a model of their laptops to 31 bloggers, letting each one give it away to its readers in a week-long contest. The campaign took 31 weeks (one for each blogger), and the results were pretty astonishing. For instance:
- Sales of this new product increased by by 84% (surprise. The model had already been in the market for almost a year);
- Overall 10% increase in PC sales;
- 14% increase in traffic to HP’s webshop site;
- About 380,000 Google searches matching “31 Days of the Dragon”, the name of the contest.
There was no extra media spend, the bloggers were not paid to participate in the promotion, and their estimated collective reach is, in HP words, in excess of 49 million from their 31 participate sites, reciprocal links and other sites covering/mentioning the giveaway since its inception.
Quickie: Twit twit!
Posted on May 20, 2009
Filed Under Trends | 3 Comments
You have heard about Twitter, haven’t you? As their creators say, Twitter is simply a social messaging utility that works real-time. That is, basically, a chat room with a nice design and in which you don’t need to be connected full-time in order to read the news about your mates, business partners, (in)famous characters, etc. And the best part is: you don’t even have to ask for permission to read their thoughts.
Thus, I would like to trigger you to follow me, ‘Nuelete’ (just click here to do it through Twitter or here if you prefer an RSS notification). If you would like to be followed, send me an e-mail or a direct message through Twitter.
In the same line, feel free to send me suggestions for the Blogroll. If our blogs are in-line (or if you plainly have an interesting one!) I will gladly add it to the list of links you can see on the right side of the page.
Don’t kiss me. Don’t hug me.
Posted on May 8, 2009
Filed Under Business Culture, Trends | 2 Comments
Pigs are all around these days. Seriously. Everyone is talking about these little Mexican sick-versions of Babe and an outbreak of influenza that made appearance few days ago and is putting dollar bills in the eyes of many pharmaceuticals.
But I am not going to talk -once more- about the swine flu, as there is enough coverage about it (for those that have been sucked out of the Earth during the last few days, you can check some information about the pandemy here, here and here). No, what called my attention was one remark made by the Mexican government, which suggested to “avoid large crowds, refrain from kissing as a greeting and maintain a distance of at least 1.8m from each other”. After reading that and comment it around -and, well, making some black humoured jokes about this remark- what stuck me is: can this ‘forced distanciation’ affect business as it is meant today in countries like Mexico or, therefore, the whole Latin America, as well as -in smaller measure- Europe or North America?
Body language takes an important role in business and, in particular, in negotiations. And a part of it is, in some countries, physical contact.
