Star Trek’s Universal Translator is on its way to be being marketed to the masses. There are huge companies with immense resources working on solving on of the most difficult problem. Also note how the US audience is skeptical of the German lady. London does have amazing Indian cuisine. But you can’t translator away prejudice.
Check out this Microsoft / Skype related event here.
Most of the value is in the cheese, the bread and the accompanying tomato soup. Mmm, that all tastes toooooo good. And when customers taste the food, they think “that was a great sandwich” and very rarely think “some Chef made that.” We rarely see the Chef to begin with. The quality of the ingredients is essential. It’s the reason Italian food is so good when, surprise, you actually go to Italy. The Chef is still important however.
Just like a good grilled cheese sandwich, you need great employees to help create awesome products. However, the cheese is not going to convince the bread to get into the frying pan together. You need that Chef. The Chefs are the management. What frustrates workers is that they are the ones that produce the quality outcome as the cheese the bread and tomato soup. It doesn’t seem fair and it probably isn’t that the cheese and bread don’t get the credit for the amazing meal. The chefs do. From Steve Jobs to George Lucas to Richard Branson, the chefs get a the bulk of the credit and the value from orchestrating the meal that is any business. They just sit in the kitchen while customers eat the cheese and bread and tomato soup that are the true value of the transaction. This is why social democratic values will always live on. It doesn’t seem fair that the cheese that makes the sandwich awesome gets paid less than the chef. It’s really hard to see whether the Chef made the meal awesome or the ingredients themselves are where the value lies…..
The difference in business (if there is one: sarcasm) is that sometimes the cheese is smarter than the Chef. But if the chef doesn’t listen and just wants the cheese to stay flavourful, then management misses out on something awesome. In fact, recognising when someone who is not a manager is way smarter than the managers can lead to the opposite effect which is that the Chef replaces that cheese. I think I’ve taken this metaphor too far….
US states are being played off of one another in a competition for Japanese auto factories in the US. Iacocca believed in 1984 that the Japanese were outcompeting the US because of the close ties between management and government officials in Japan. Like China today, Japan according to Iacocca in 1984 was manipulating the yen by pegging it to the US dollar.
In 1984, Iacocca believed that the US was a free trade bastion and Japan had many restrictions for US trade. Japanese car prices fluctuate based on where they are being sold around the world for example in Paris a car would sell at $10,500, San Francisco at $7,200 and $9,000 in Frankfurt, there was no free trade policy in Japan in the 1980s. Iacocca advocates for economic nationalism and protectionism by restricting the number of Japanese cars sold in the US market (with the benefit going to Chrysler, of course). Iacocca believes in dependency theory when he asks: “Question: What do you call a country that exports raw materials and imports finished goods? Answer: A colony.”
This is a synopsis & analysis based on Iacocca: An Autobiography and other miscellaneous research sources. Enjoy.
This video has a bunch of mistakes in it. Like the Apple III was a huge success. No it was certainly not. If you look at the revenue figures, the Apple II carried Apple through the rough waters of the series of R&D blunders under Steve Jobs. Also IBM was not a market leader in 1977 in the personal computer space;-( The video also implies that the Macintosh was a success since it sold 100000 computers in the first 6 months. WRONG! That is not very good sales. It was innovative but toy-like so future versions had to be built on a low sales performer that pushed the company to the brink. Still noteworthy; this video format combine infographics w/ video in an engaging manner. Obviously a future of content marketing channel is “Motion Design.”
