Beyond the obvious : what else can we learn from Apple about good product management

Don’t get me wrong: If Apple’s products were not shining examples of hardware and software design, no amount of marketing, education and evangelism would help sell them. But the reverse is also true. The greatest products in the world don’t get anywhere without telling a good story. The ability for Apple to tell that story and then allow consumers to get hands-on experience with products has become a powerful combination that’s allowed Apple to succeed where others have failed miserably.

via macworld.com

I am a big fan of being able to tell a story that connects your customers with the wonders of the product you have built. I firmly believe that this does not have to be restricted to retail or consumer software, it is sorely needed in enterprise software :). If you can do something about this, START NOW! the business world will thank you.

On a side note, Altimeter Group is a rocking collection of post 2.0 analysts such as Ray Wang and Jeremiah Owyang. Check them out.

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True delight - when folks do things with your product you did not even dream of

via sjohnson717.posterous.com

Thanks Steve! great post!

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Shout out to all the parents out there (on a related note Toyota does seem to get social media + marketing)

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Exclusive: Seagate confirms 3TB drive | THINQ.co.uk

After a few weeks of rumours, Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig has confirmed to Thinq that “we are announcing a 3TB drive later this year,” but the move to 3TB of storage space apparently involves a lot more work than simply upping the areal density.

via thinq.co.uk

That is pretty wicked. Think about it, a 3TB drive is ~385 DVD length movies in your hard drive. That is a LOT of hard drive.

How will this change our current reality, our current constraints? If you can contain the entire contents of a couple academic research libraries on your hard drive what does that change? What can you now do that you could not do earlier? What "law of physics" can you now change?

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Autonomy | Purpose | Mastery ---- How to Motivate People: Skip the Bonus and Give Them a Real Project | Fast Company

via fastcompany.com

Just watch the freaking thing!! it is awesome :-)

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Demographic trends in the US: Women marrying men with less education, income - CNN.com

If dating is a numbers game, then single ladies should consider this: A Pew Research Center report this year noted a surge in women between the ages of 30 and 44 making more money than their husbands. Women made more money than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007, compared with 4 percent in 1970. While men make more money overall and hold more management positions, women are making greater gains

"The supply of men has changed," said D'Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends project. "The pool of college educated men isn't growing as rapidly as it is for women."

There is also a gender shift in the realm of education. Women represent nearly 60 percent of students holding advanced degrees in areas such as medicine, law, business and graduate programs, the U.S. Census reported in April.

via cnn.com

CNN has an article on marital preferences. Honestly, not very useful to me. All the women cited in this article are in their mid to late thirties or forties, make of that what you will.

What is more intriguing to me is the stat that says 60% of students holding advanced degrees are women. It would be valuable to trend this over time to ensure this is a moving trend that is not cyclical or serendipitous but indeed consistent. I am curious about what are the men doing instead? Assuming the division has moved from 50-50 to 60-40. What are the 10% of the men who used to pursue advanced degrees doing instead?

My specific interest is in seeing if there is a rise in entrepreneurship that correlates with this decline in advanced degrees? Gary Hoover (http://hooversworld.com/) has been expounding on the value of understanding demographic trends in uncovering opportunities for a while now.

What trends are you noticing?

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Are you ready to face the financial world?

If you earn money and have savings you have to deal with the financial world, you don't have a choice. I know it sounds unfair but that is truth, with that reality let us examine the big picture.

We are innovating in finance faster than in any other field of science. It is not clear yet if we can sustain the pace of innovation without taking massive risks or causing heart attacks to the market. Neither is there a definitive answer to "is this level of financial innovation driven leveraging good for the world as a whole or is it just extremely lucrative for the traders who take risks with other people's money?". You can always come up with a "jaw dropping CAGR" or a "makes me wanna throw up CAGR" depending on the time period you pick.

Unfortunately saying "I am going to take my ball and go home" is no longer an option :-(. You can put your money under your bed and sooner or later inflation will wipe you out. You can put your money in safe investments such as pension funds or index averaged mutual funds but you have no way of knowing how much risk exposure they have since you don't know who the managers of these funds are working with to put the capital to good use. I DON'T HAVE THE ANSWER for you, but I hope to get you to start thinking for yourself in case you have been avoiding it. This post was inspired by Mark Cuban's latest blog post, more on that below.

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Mark Cuban (his tactics as a NBA team owner aside) wrote a provocative blog post title "what business is wall street in". The timing is clearly influenced by the crazy market plunge and snap back from earlier this week.

 

It makes for an extremely interesting and thoughtful question for us imo. Is Wall Street playing its part in the large macro economic theater or is it a case of the tail wagging the dog. I highly encourage reading through the post and the comments, mainly for self education if not anything else :-). 

 

Cuban's Post -> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/05/09/what-business-is-wall-street-in/

One of the key points for me from this post:

Regulators have got to start to recognize that traders are not investors and vice versa and treat them differently. Different regulations. Different tax structure.  Different oversight. Individual investors and the funds that just invest in stocks and bonds are not going to crash the market.  Big traders who are always leveraging up and maximizing the number of trades/hacks they make will always put the system at risk.  We need to recognize that they do not serve much of a purpose other than to add substantial risk to the global economy.  That their stated value add of liquidity does not compensate the US and World Economy nearly enough for the risk of collapse they introduce into the system.

 

What jumps out for you? 

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Moneyball does it again

Dallas Braden  #51  SP

2010 STATS
ERA	W-L	SO	WHIP
3.33	4-2	28	0.96

2010 FANTASY STATS
% OWN	WK +/-	AVG DRAFT
53.2%	-19.8%	201.1

Full Name Dallas Lee Braden Birth Date August 13, 1983 Birth Place Phoenix, AZ Age 26

Weight 184 lbs. Height 6-1 Bats Left Throws Left

Experience 3 years College Texas Tech Drafted 2004: 24th Rnd, 727th by Oak Salary 2010: $420,000

via sports.espn.go.com

Michael Lewis wrote a wonderful tome laying out the adventures of Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta as they create a credible ball club out of Oakland A's using the slimmest of payrolls.
Dallas Braden is the latest example of the fact that this still works. He pitched the 19th ever perfect game in major league history. The beauty of it all; he was recruited in the 24th round and his payroll for 2010 is $420,000. I highly recommend the book if you want to get more into the A's school of thought.

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Warning: Macroeconomic ignorance will lead to exploitation by your elders

Vaggelis Gettos, 24, is just as alarmed at the burden being heaped on the young by austerity measures expected to be announced today, and has pledged to resist them in more protests this week against what he sees as a plot to impoverish Greece.

“We will live much worse than our parents,” he said. “Why should we be made to pay for their mistakes?”

The question of who was to blame and who should pay for the greatest crisis to afflict the single currency was a subject of heated debate, particularly after a leading credit rating agency put the cradle of civilisation in the same category as Azerbaijan by reducing its government bonds to “junk” status.

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country’s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.

Today the party is over, however, and that makes some experts optimistic: Greece now has no choice but to implement much-needed reforms that will bring swift results. “It’s like a dentist putting a child in braces,” said one observer. “It’s not nice, but necessary for growth in the right direction.”

via timesonline.co.uk

I love the irony here. Mr Veggelis Gettos is justifiably worked up and says "why should we be made to pay for their mistakes". Good question Mr Gettos but here is the problem, if you don't, that leaves us with two other options.

a. You are passing the buck on to your children who can ask the same question. or
b. You are making it the rest of the world's problem (i.e. the Germans and the IMF) and they contrary to your parents did not retire at 45 with the world's best benefits.

So let us try this once again Mr Gettos, if this is not your problem, whose problem is it then? I know now is not the time, but I would seriously recommend picking up a book on macroeconomics sooner rather than later. Try http://goo.gl/Kffh or http://goo.gl/bA2W.>

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