Posts by: Tim J. Smith, PhD
Apple has had a beating both in the market and the press lately. Despite record quarterly profit, they lost their number-one stock spot to Exxon Mobil. By some prognostications, Samsung is rising in the smartphone market, and Huawei is taking a stronger foothold on the price-sensitive emerging-market field, while Apple is stumbling. Well, for those who failed to sell Apple at above $700 prices and now see it below $450, what did you expect?
MoreEconomic price optimization has a lot to tell us, but not necessarily the price which optimizes the firm’s profits. Economic price optimization relies on a defined demand curve. Unfortunately, defining the demand curve with sufficient precision and reliability for decision making can be done for only a subset of challenges. So if this method is not useful for pricing in many cases, what use is it?
More“We’re looking to make progress quickly, either fail fast or succeed fast.” Daniel Hullah, Venture Capitalist Most businesses fail, but some succeed…
MoreFirmographics are descriptive attributes of firms that can be used to aggregate individual firms into meaningful market segments. In an analogy, firmographics are to businesses and organizations what demographics are to people. Firmographics describe businesses, non-profits, and governmental entities.
MoreSomewhere between blunt and precise lies communication. Go too far in either direction and you lose them. When sales people manage information…
MoreThales SA and Panasonic Corp. have recently begun marketing Wi-Fi-enabled iPad in-flight entertainment systems alongside traditional wired and seatback entertainment systems. Does handing out iPads to passengers and going Wi-Fi make sense for other airlines or is this a frivolous luxury for the elite that commoners will never see? A modeling of the Exchange Value can determine.
More“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all…
MoreAs Mark Hurd, co-president of Oracle re-emerges on the public stage, we see him once again focusing on the sales force. Within Oracle’s sales force, he has changed job descriptions, reporting structures, compensation plans, staff size, and corporate routines in a stated effort to improve revenue and profits. But what principles guide his sales-force design? Is he a sales-force master architect or a tinkerer that will destroy Oracle’s revenue?
MoreFine. Life sucks and then you die. Get over it. Be happy. Do your work. Any executive can blame a bad market…
MoreCharting a winning corporate strategy is rarely an easy task, and 2012 has been particularly difficult for executive decision-making. Yet difficult times do not get executives off the hook for poor performance. A case in point: Sears is floundering while Target is advancing. What is driving the significant divergence in performance between these two competitors? Is a role reversal possible in the next 18 months?
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