...und die Beste davon in 2013 ist Amazon.
Montag, 22. Juli 2013
Dienstag, 9. Juli 2013
Montag, 1. Juli 2013
30 Jahre perbit
Dann, geht die Schlacht verloren, laßt Ihr's Euch
Gefallen, dass man durch die Straßen Roms
Euch im Triumphe führt?
Brutus.
Nein, Cassius, nein! Glaub mir, du edler Römer,
Brutus wird nie gebunden gehn nach Rom;
Er trägt zu hohen Sinn. Doch dieser Tag
Muß enden, was des Märzen Idus anfing;
Ob wir uns wieder treffen, weiß ich nicht:
Drum laßt ein ewig Lebewohl uns nehmen.
Gehab dich wohl, mein Cassius, für und für!
Sehn wir uns wieder, nun, so lächeln wir;
Wo nicht, so war dies Scheiden wohlgetan.
Cassius.
Gehab dich wohl, mein Brutus, für und für!
Sehn wir uns wieder, lächeln wir gewiß;
Wo nicht, ist wahrlich wohlgetan dies Scheiden.
Brutus.
Nun wohl, rückt vor! O wüßte jemand doch
Das Ende dieses Tagwerks, eh es kommt!
Allein es gnüget, enden wird der Tag,
Dann wissen wir sein Ende. – Kommt und fort!
Bereits während meiner Schulzeit habe ich mir gewünscht, die Zukunft voraussehen zu können. Gern hätte ich in 1983 die Sicherheit gehabt, dass perbit sein 10-, 20- oder 30-jähriges Bestehen feiern würde. William Shakespeare erinnert uns deutlich daran, dass es nicht möglich ist "das Ende eines Tagwerks" vorauszusehen. Brutus und Cassius stehen kurz vor der Schlacht mit Augustus Cäser und wissen nicht ob sie gewinnen oder verlieren werden. Sie denken, dass sie vielleicht verlieren und über die Konsequenzen nach, glauben an den Sieg aber sie sind nicht sicher. Wie die meisten von uns, überlegt Brutus wie schön es wäre bereits im Voraus zu wissen, ob sie gewinnen werden oder nicht. Der Tag wird enden, und dann wird er es wissen, und das genügt.
30 Jahre perbit, jetzt weiss ich's auch und das genügt. Vielen Dank an Wolfgang und alle anderen die "mitgekämpft" haben. Kommt und fort!
Dienstag, 11. Juni 2013
Dienstag, 21. Mai 2013
Kreativität nach Rilke
"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.
In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble."
-Bill Watterson, 1990.
He concludes by echoing Rilke:
"Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself."
“Sie sind so jung, so vor allem Anfang, und ich möchte Sie, so gut ich es kann, bitten, Geduld zu haben gegen alles Ungelöste in Ihrem Herzen und zu versuchen, die Fragen selbst lieb zu haben wie verschlossene Stuben und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. Forschen Sie jetzt nicht nach den Antworten, die Ihnen nicht gegeben werden können, weil Sie sie nicht leben könnten. Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.“
Donnerstag, 16. Mai 2013
Web Anwendungen heute
Was fällt also auf an erfolgreichen Web Anwendungen?
In erster Linie sind sie einfach. Der Benutzer hat gar nicht das Gefühl, mit einer komplexen Software zu arbeiten. Die neue erfolgreiche Anwendungen (Apps) fokussieren anfangs auf einen einzelnen Zweck und auf möglichst wenig Funktionalitäten. Erst mit der Zeit und steigender Bekanntheit erweitern sie das Angebot in Breite und Tiefe. Sie sind schnell und unmittelbar in der Benutzung. Es gibt kaum Vorkontrollen oder viele Regeln, sondern nur ein Eingreifen bei Missbrauch, der ebenfalls hauptsächlich von Benutzern gemeldet wird.
Und woran scheitern Web Anwendungen?
In erster Linie verhindert Technikverliebtheit den Erfolg. Je mehr Menupünkte und Icons anfangs angeboten werden, desto wahrscheinlicher ist der Misserfolg. Je mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf ein schickes Äußeres gelegt wird, desto größer ist die Gefahr, den Benutzer abzulenken und zu verwirren. Wer das Aussehen über Einfachheit, Klarheit und Schnelligkeit stellt, gewinnt weniger neue Benutzer. Und schließlich scheitern viele Anwendungen beim Versuch, den Benutzer zu einem bestimmten Verhalten zu zwingen.
Es funktioniert nur das, was wirklich im Interesse des Benutzers liegt. (Wie damals in 1983, vielleicht!)
In erster Linie sind sie einfach. Der Benutzer hat gar nicht das Gefühl, mit einer komplexen Software zu arbeiten. Die neue erfolgreiche Anwendungen (Apps) fokussieren anfangs auf einen einzelnen Zweck und auf möglichst wenig Funktionalitäten. Erst mit der Zeit und steigender Bekanntheit erweitern sie das Angebot in Breite und Tiefe. Sie sind schnell und unmittelbar in der Benutzung. Es gibt kaum Vorkontrollen oder viele Regeln, sondern nur ein Eingreifen bei Missbrauch, der ebenfalls hauptsächlich von Benutzern gemeldet wird.
Und woran scheitern Web Anwendungen?
In erster Linie verhindert Technikverliebtheit den Erfolg. Je mehr Menupünkte und Icons anfangs angeboten werden, desto wahrscheinlicher ist der Misserfolg. Je mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf ein schickes Äußeres gelegt wird, desto größer ist die Gefahr, den Benutzer abzulenken und zu verwirren. Wer das Aussehen über Einfachheit, Klarheit und Schnelligkeit stellt, gewinnt weniger neue Benutzer. Und schließlich scheitern viele Anwendungen beim Versuch, den Benutzer zu einem bestimmten Verhalten zu zwingen.
Es funktioniert nur das, was wirklich im Interesse des Benutzers liegt. (Wie damals in 1983, vielleicht!)
Freitag, 19. April 2013
Woran Strategie meistens scheitert (english)
Wrong:
“The essence of strategy is coping with competition.”
Ignoring Peter Drucker's foundational insight of 1973 that the only valid purpose of a business is to create a customer, some companies focuse strategy on how to protect themselves from other business rivals. The goal of this strategy is to find a safe haven for businesses from the destructive forces of competition.
The business reality of today is that the only safe place against the raging innovation is to join it. Instead of seeing business -and strategy-_ as a matter of figuring out how to defeat one’s known rivals and protect oneself against competition, if a business is to survive, it must aim to add value to customers through continuous innovation and finding new ways of delighting its customers. Experimentation and innovation become an integral part of everything the organization does.
Firms like Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, Costco, ALDI and IKEA are examples of prominent firms pursuing this approach. They have shifted the concept of the bottom line and the very purpose of the firm so that the whole organization focuses on delivering steadily more value to customers through innovation. Thus experimentation and innovation become an integral part of everything the company does. Companies with this mental model have shown a consistent ability to innovate and to disrupt their own businesses with innovation.
Thus what is striking about continuous innovation is that the approach is not only more innovative: it tends to make more money. The latter point is important to keep in mind. For all the hype about innovation, unless it ends up making more money for the firm, ultimately it isn’t likely to flourish. Making money isn’t the goal, but the result has to be there for sustainability.
Is continuous innovation sustainable? Firms like those I mentioned have been at it for one or more decades with extraordinary results. What’s interesting is that they are consistently disrupting others, rather than being disrupted themselves. Will they survive for 50 or 100 years? Time will tell. What we do see is that they are doing a lot better than firms focusing merely on defeating rivals.
Strategy meetings leads to “the division of management into two classes: “top management” and “middle management.” Top management takes responsibility for deciding on the mix of products a company ought to pursue and for judging the performance of business unit managers. Middle management is merely responsible for the execution of activities within specific lines of business. That which is done at the top of an organization is strategic management. Everything else is the more menial task of operational management.
Two classes of management.
Practitioners of strategy meetings generally insist on the distinction between strategic management and operational management. Strategic (i.e. top) management is a complex, reflective, and intelligent activity that involves interpreting multidimensional matrices. Operational management, by contrast, requires merely the mechanical replication of market practices in order to match market returns. It is a form of action, suitable for capable but perhaps less intelligent types.
This picture of CEO-superdeciders helps justify their large salaries but it has little foundation in fact or logic.
This strategy theory is also wrong. The ceremonies are ultimately about the divine right of the rulers to rule. Ultimately they are “like a ritual rain dance. It has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think that it does.”
The future of strategy meetings.
When rightly conceived as the art of thinking through how companies can add value to customers–and ultimately society–through continuous innovation, strategy meetings have a bright future. The market is vast because most large firms are still 20th Century hierarchical bureaucracies that are focused on “the dumbest idea in the world”: shareholder value. They are very weak at innovation.
For strategy meetings to succeed however, the participants need to know something both about innovation and about the sectors in which they operate and the customers who populate them. Merely rejiggering the financials or flattering the CEO as the master strategist is not going to get the job done. Managers are going to have to get their hands dirty understanding what happens on the front lines where work gets done and where customers experience the firm’s products and services.
To prosper, everyone has to become both more creative and more down-to-earth.
Also, lieber der Kunde begeistern als der Mitbewerber Platt machen!
“The essence of strategy is coping with competition.”
The business reality of today is that the only safe place against the raging innovation is to join it. Instead of seeing business -and strategy-_ as a matter of figuring out how to defeat one’s known rivals and protect oneself against competition, if a business is to survive, it must aim to add value to customers through continuous innovation and finding new ways of delighting its customers. Experimentation and innovation become an integral part of everything the organization does.
Firms like Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, Costco, ALDI and IKEA are examples of prominent firms pursuing this approach. They have shifted the concept of the bottom line and the very purpose of the firm so that the whole organization focuses on delivering steadily more value to customers through innovation. Thus experimentation and innovation become an integral part of everything the company does. Companies with this mental model have shown a consistent ability to innovate and to disrupt their own businesses with innovation.
Thus what is striking about continuous innovation is that the approach is not only more innovative: it tends to make more money. The latter point is important to keep in mind. For all the hype about innovation, unless it ends up making more money for the firm, ultimately it isn’t likely to flourish. Making money isn’t the goal, but the result has to be there for sustainability.
Is continuous innovation sustainable? Firms like those I mentioned have been at it for one or more decades with extraordinary results. What’s interesting is that they are consistently disrupting others, rather than being disrupted themselves. Will they survive for 50 or 100 years? Time will tell. What we do see is that they are doing a lot better than firms focusing merely on defeating rivals.
Strategy meetings leads to “the division of management into two classes: “top management” and “middle management.” Top management takes responsibility for deciding on the mix of products a company ought to pursue and for judging the performance of business unit managers. Middle management is merely responsible for the execution of activities within specific lines of business. That which is done at the top of an organization is strategic management. Everything else is the more menial task of operational management.
Two classes of management.
Practitioners of strategy meetings generally insist on the distinction between strategic management and operational management. Strategic (i.e. top) management is a complex, reflective, and intelligent activity that involves interpreting multidimensional matrices. Operational management, by contrast, requires merely the mechanical replication of market practices in order to match market returns. It is a form of action, suitable for capable but perhaps less intelligent types.
This picture of CEO-superdeciders helps justify their large salaries but it has little foundation in fact or logic.
This strategy theory is also wrong. The ceremonies are ultimately about the divine right of the rulers to rule. Ultimately they are “like a ritual rain dance. It has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think that it does.”
The future of strategy meetings.
When rightly conceived as the art of thinking through how companies can add value to customers–and ultimately society–through continuous innovation, strategy meetings have a bright future. The market is vast because most large firms are still 20th Century hierarchical bureaucracies that are focused on “the dumbest idea in the world”: shareholder value. They are very weak at innovation.
For strategy meetings to succeed however, the participants need to know something both about innovation and about the sectors in which they operate and the customers who populate them. Merely rejiggering the financials or flattering the CEO as the master strategist is not going to get the job done. Managers are going to have to get their hands dirty understanding what happens on the front lines where work gets done and where customers experience the firm’s products and services.
To prosper, everyone has to become both more creative and more down-to-earth.
Also, lieber der Kunde begeistern als der Mitbewerber Platt machen!
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