Archive for the 'business' Category
The poetry of correct positioning
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 12th May, 2008
Do you ever look at an initiative that a group or company have taken and think to yourself, “Wow, that makes sense”. I got that feeling list week, while looking at a press release here in the Isle of Man. You see, the Isle of Man is trying to promote itself in the Space arena. [...]
Thanking customers for their complaints
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 22nd Apr, 2008
Great post on Seth’s blog about how customer feedback should be one of the key drivers that help shape businesses’ offerings. And complaints should really be the start of a conversation that should end with the customer feeling encouraged and satisfied. It’s excellent advice and an excellent way to build a relationship with your customer [...]
Signs your company is going down the tubes
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 9th Mar, 2008
Organisations have lifecycles just like organisms. Hundreds on new companies are born every week, and unfortunately hundreds others close their doors. I came across a good list in my Organisation Behaviour text that outlines 14 factors that you should watch out for if you’re looking out for your organisation’s decline. Here they are:
Excess personnel [...]
Microsoft embracing the real world ..
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 22nd Feb, 2008
Lots of people are commenting about yesterday’s announcement from Microsoft about their intentions to be more transparent, provide more information to the community and make their flagship products more interoperable. In a nutshell, they said that they are implementing the following principles:
ensuring open connections
promoting data portability
enhancing support for industry standards
fostering more [...]
Professor Jim Norton’s Talk
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 21st Feb, 2008
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get to the BCS talk yesterday, which had Professor Jim Norton talking about Responsibilities of Directors and Managers in ICT Enabled Business Change, but I found that you can download the slides from Professor Norton’s website here. Just click on Online Documentation 2008 and find the presentation there. Enjoy the [...]
BCS Talk Tonight
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 20th Feb, 2008
Just a reminder if you’re in the Isle of Man and working in an organisation effecting change, there’s a talk tonight organised by the BCS, IOD and CMI about the responsibilities organisations face when making business changes. It’s at 18:00 at the Sefton and the speaker is Professor Jim Norton.
So get your heads out of [...]
BCS Talk: Responsibilities That Exist When Making Business Changes
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 12th Feb, 2008
If you’re based in the Isle of Man, the local chapter of the BCS have teamed up with the IOD and the CMI to bring a highly respected speaker to the Isle of Man to give a talk about the responsibilities organisations face when affecting business change. It’s at the Sefton on the 20th of [...]
BCS (Isle of Man) talk on China and India
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 13th Jan, 2008
The BCS Isle of Man has invited Charles Chang to speak next week’s meeting. Charles will analyse the politics, economics, social change and technology in China and India and examine the implications these have for enterprises and for governments at the BCS Isle of Man’s first event of the year taking place at 18.00 on [...]
SEO for hire
Posted by: Owen on Saturday, 24th Nov, 2007
Here’s an interesting idea. Agents of Value offer a set of outsourced webmaster services including web development, graphic design and search engine optimisation. While it’s not uncommon for companies to outsource seo, I don’t think I’ve come across anyone who offers to take over the entire webmaster function. Presumably this model replaces having an internal [...]
Google Braindrain
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 22nd Nov, 2007
Interesting post on Techcrunch talking about how there seems to be a number of people leaving Google to join Facebook. And it doesn’t seem to be about just money. Facebook is perceived as being a more exciting place to work and experiencing the phenomenal growth that Google enjoyed in the early days. Facebook is set [...]
In Rainbows - One month on
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 6th Nov, 2007
So, it’s been a month since Radiohead released their new album, In Rainbows, based on a pricing model where punters decide how much they are ready to pay for it. There was lots of speculation as to what this means for the music industry, but we now have some hard and fast figures as to [...]
Involved in Work Connexions
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 19th Oct, 2007
I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to Leo recently and will be helping him in the near future to develop his ideas and direct the technology efforts behind his latest initiative: Work Connexions. It’s a great little idea, one that is sparked from a need in the market for business networking and online [...]
Living in an online world
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 17th Oct, 2007
I was reading in the New York Times that Silicon Valley Startups are commanding high prices again, even though they have little revenue to show. Seems like nowadays all it takes is to hire a few technology gurus, go through the throes of company formation, establish a clientele and then try to sell your company [...]
FONtastic voyage
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 4th Oct, 2007
I had blogged about FON more than a year ago and it’s great to see them grow from strength to strength. Today they’re in the news together with BT announcing a joint venture in a bid to penetrate the UK market. The details of the deal are still a bit unclear, but from a technology [...]
Competitive Advantage through software
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 27th Sep, 2007
Sometimes, one way to leapfrog your competition is to choose software that outstrips the capabilities of your competitors. This can be relatively easy if you have an in-house development team, but is harder for companies who use off-the-shelf packages. And in these cases, it’s worth focusing on niche players to see what differentiates them from [...]
