Plans2Reality

The third industrial revolution begins: The gentleman manufacturer | The Economist

3D printing is not that new, but it appears we are at, or even past, the stage where laser printers were int he late 1980s - leaving the corporate world and becoming personal

 

via www.economist.com

Kodak's long fade to black - latimes.com

Kodak’s chairman has been denying that the company is contemplating a bankruptcy filing with such vehemence that many believe Chapter 11 must lurk just around the corner.

Like the passing of distinguished individuals, the passing of great corporations should prompt us to ponder the transience of earthly glory.

via www.latimes.com

How Apple beat IBM in Steve Jobs' first retail war • The Register

You really want to read this article, and not just because it is pro-Apple. There are two excellent marketing points in it, and an example of why the even biggest company needs to be flexible enough to get something out the door in 48 hours - over a weekend.

The Golden Age of Computer Sales surely must have been Christmas 1984. The Macintosh had just been released, Compaq and IBM offered powerful new CPUs, but the real action was a massive Christmas sales battle between the Apple//c and the IBM PCjr. I remember it well, I was working at ComputerLand in Los Angeles, and I was at the very center of the battle.

via www.theregister.co.uk

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam

Most of us are familiar with the ad hominum attack, the technique of discrediting an idea by attacking the person who expressed it. It's certainly common enough, even among folks who should know better. (Yes, I'm talkng about you, Scientific American)

But there is another, more pernicious argument - that of arguing from ignorance. This doesn't mean the arguer is ignorant, but rather that the necessary information is not known.

Another way of putting it is to say that absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Wikipedia says, "It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is 'generally accepted' (or vice versa)."

This situation arise in business frequently, and in technology businesses very frequently. In the tech sector, we often deal with many unknowns, including not know what will go wrong. We know, from experience, that we are likely to encounter suprises and setbacks along the way, but because we don't know what they will be, we discount them.

The most obvious case is when creating a schedule for a major development project. We don't know what will go wrong, so management tends to ignore the possibility of anything going wrong.

Sadly, this is all too common.

Solyndra - What Went Wrong? ...part 1

Solyndra has been in the news of late. Some of you may have heard.  ;-)

Why did this happen? Before I answer this, let me clarify a few facts.

1. Solyndra received a loan guarantee, not a loan or a grant. The amount actually borrowed, from private lenders, was around $520 million. Solyndra had to raise an additional couple of hundred million in captial to add to this, in order to build the new factory.

2. People think we have lost "manufacturing" employees. In point of fact, few people actually worked on the panel assembly line. It was extremely highly automated, with hardly the touch of a human hand. There are videos on Youtube that show this.

3. The was nothing wrong with the basic panel design; in fact is is an excellent fit for rooftop solar installations on a great many types of buildings. Some have argued that it was silly to make the tubes round; they do not understand the economics of PV electricity production.

4. The bankruptcy is unfortunate, to put it mildly, but do not beleive that there is some secret cabal of insiders who are making a killing on this.

More in my next post.

Are You a Dissident Marketeer? Should You Be?

The following quotation is left from a speech by John Derbyshire. The speech itself is not about marketing, but its central idea does apply. (The speech is here, for the curious.)

The dissident temperament has been present in all times and places, though only ever among a small minority of citizens. Its characteristic, speaking broadly, is a cast of mind that, presented with a proposition about the world, has little interest in where that proposition originated, or how popular it is, or how many powerful and credentialed persons have assented to it, or what might be lost in the way of property, status, or even life, in denying it. To the dissident, the only thing worth pondering about the proposition is, is it true? If it is, then no king's command can falsify it; and if it is not, then not even the assent of a hundred million will make it true.

 How does this apply to marketing?

Too many marketing campaigns are based around ideas and concepts that have not truly been challenged for truthfulness. "Everyone knows" that - fill in your favorite 'rule' of marketing here. While many of such rules have some basis in fact, at some time, they need constant re-validation. Even more so now, in a technology environment that is changing rapidly.

So, be a marketing dissident. Question how you sell your product.  

Help a Deserving Girl Advance Her Acting Career

Need your help. A great family we know in Germany has a high school daughter now on a German soap opera. She's nominated for the German Soap Opera Award 2011. Its a vote of the people. You can vote! Every day until May 23.

Site is:

http://www.mypromi.de/index.php/fanpreis-weiblich/item/370-carina-diesing

Please vote EVERY DAY. You vote by clicking on the hand in the top left corner.

 

Make Your Processes Fit Your Business

I recently had a conversation with a client over some new methods to deliver useful technical content to customers in a more timely manner. One objection raised was that the company's approval process took time, and therefore more-frequent publication of information was not possible, even though everyone agreed they were desirable.

This is, bluntly put, stupid.

A company's processes are its own to design, use, modify, or rip up and start over. Certainly the law must be obeyed, but even stodgy old print-based newspapers manage to get new information out on a daily basis. If your organization cannot get ut of its own way, you need to change your processes and methods of work so you can.

Mike Hackworth, the legendary CEO of Cirrus Logic, expressed it only slightly differently when he said, "Make the computer fit the business, not the other way around." He would never accept anything like, "oh, the computer won't let us do that" as an excuse.

I've generalized his phrasing a bit, but it still holds.

Is your own organization in the way of its own success?

How many design wins is this costing you?

LED lamps for the home - an update from Electronica

We were pleased to see a large number of firms exhibiting LED lamps for use in home and business. Many are designed to fit into existing lamps, i.e. they have Edison-base contacts, like regular lightbulbs.

Our past experience with LED lamps has been mixed. We've seen too many failures, too soon. We suspect the culprit is the power supply, not the LED itself. Many of these power supplies use electrolytic capacitors. There is nothing wrong with this per se, except that few electrolytic capacitors can handle the heat. Thus, the capacitor fails and the lamp is dead.

Some vendors seem to be aware of this. We plan to evaluate some units and report. Stay tuned.

Going Outside the System Works Again

A cell phone pic and a willingness to go outside the system saved us a lot of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Read more:

(AP) – 20 hours ago

via www.google.com