Pinboard (jerryking)
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recent bookmarks from jerrykingAI Startups Have Tons of Cash, but Not Enough Data. That’s a Problem. - WSJ2023-06-23T21:49:53+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-startups-have-tons-of-cash-but-not-enough-data-thats-a-problem-d69de120?mod=hp_minor_pos6
jerryking>Big companies aren’t so willing to share proprietary data with startups looking to power their large-language models<<
]]>artificial_intelligence data E&Y generative_systems intellectual_property large_companies large_language_models partnerships proprietary protective_moats start_ups training_beds transaction_datahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:166bba50b846/Why Companies Are Pushing Premium Products With Higher Prices - The New York Times2023-03-05T22:19:21+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/business/economy/premium-prices-inflation.html
jerryking>Companies are trying to maintain fat profits as the economy changes, making “premiumization” their new favorite buzzword.<<
Big companies are prodding their customers toward fancier, and often pricier, versions of everything from Krispy Kreme doughnuts to cans of WD-40.
It’s evidence of the corporate world’s new favorite buzzword: “premiumization.”...........Businesses are hoping to keep the good times rolling after several years in which they seized on strong spending by consumers and rapid inflation to raise prices and pump up profit margins. Many firms are embracing offerings that cater to >>higher-income<< customers — people who are willing and able to pay more for products and services.
One sign of the trend: the notion of premiumization was raised in nearly 60 earnings calls and investor meetings over the past three weeks..........The premiumization trend also reflects a divide in the American economy. The top 40% of earners are sitting on more than a trillion dollars in extra savings amassed during the early part of the pandemic. Lower-income households, on the other hand, have been burning through their savings, partly as they contend with the higher costs of the food, rent and other necessities that make up a bigger chunk of their spending.
“The pool of people willing to spend on small to large premium offers remains strong,”.........As products grow more expensive and exclusive, big swaths of the economy are at risk of becoming gentrified, raising the possibility that poorer consumers will be increasingly underserved.........Businesses have long **segmented customers** , trying to push richer ones into pricier and more profitable purchases......the trend picked up during the pandemic, and the lurch toward >>luxury<< is now spanning a wider array of products and services..........At American Express....... “we’re constantly tightening up the card members that we’re acquiring,” .......the firm has been steadily limiting its focus to **higher-earning** applicants.......Other companies are emphasizing premium offerings as an alternative to discounts. Krispy Kreme ....is planning to do less discounting this year.... aiming instead to generate “excitement around our premium specialty doughnuts,” which include fancier, higher-priced offerings around holidays............Pushing premium products has come up in some unexpected corners of the corporate world. WD-40, the firm that makes the lubricant of the same name, has found that customers will pay more for products with enhancements, like a can with a “smart straw” to spray the lubricant in two different ways — in either a precision stream or more of a mist. “Premiumization creates opportunities for revenue growth, grows margin expansion, and most importantly, it **delights our end users**”...........The question now is what the shift toward more premium products means for the broader economy..................To fight inflation, the Federal Reserve has been rapidly raising interest rates, which is meant to slow economic growth and cool >>consumer demand<<. That could make it harder for businesses to continue charging more, cooling inflation and potentially cutting into profits in the process..............And attempts to maintain profit margins by giving products a premium sheen are not guaranteed to pay off........Six Flags, the theme park operator, recently shifted to a more premium model by raising prices and limiting discounts.....It has had mixed results so far. In the nine months through September, attendance at its parks fell by 25 percent from the year before, spending per guest rose 22 percent and, in the end, profits fell by nearly 10 percent.............In January, the Walt Disney Company acknowledged that it might have pushed too hard on prices at its theme parks, angering loyal customers............the shift toward premium products could signal the start of a more lasting change, as businesses settle into a routine of selling lower volumes for higher prices in a divided economy — a strategy that could leave poorer consumers worse off.........Take the U.S. car market. At the end of 2017, 36 models were priced below $25,000, and the share of cars that cost that much or less accounted for nearly 13 percent of all sales of new cars. At the end of last year, only 10 models had starting prices that low, and their share of sales plunged to less than 4 percent..........Carmakers may be cutting cheap models in part because it is hard to justify the cost of making them in an era of expensive parts and persistent labor shortages.........“They’re better off selling fewer and maintaining >>pricing power<<,” Mr. Smoke said. That could spur competitors to jump into the market to provide cheaper cars, but such an adjustment is unlikely to happen quickly...........For now, car ownership could increasingly become the purview of the rich..........It’s a window on what a widespread emphasis on premiumization could mean for the economy: Lower production, potentially higher inflation in the short run and permanently higher prices in the long run.
]]>brands concierge_services consumerism customer_segmentation delighting_customers high-end high-income large_companies luxury premium Walt_Disney consumer_demand pricing_powerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:132627f91b7b/The Engineers Are Bloggers Now2023-01-08T14:17:51+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/business/uber-engineer-bloggers.html
jerrykingblogging blogs Communicating_&_Connecting engineering software_developers Big_Tech in-house large_companies talent war_for_talenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0a2b5124a55e/Corporates need 500-venture strategy for venture building to work2022-07-15T17:19:23+00:00
https://sifted.eu/articles/500-venture-strategy/
jerrykingCambrian_explosion corporate_investors large_companies start_ups intrapreneurshiphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:932fd77c6c66/Deloitte AI head Shelby Austin to lead startup spun out of consulting giant - The Globe and Mail2020-10-14T01:28:49+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-deloittes-ai-head-to-lead-toronto-startup/
jerrykingartificial_intelligence CEOs Deloitte start_ups Arteria contracts large_companies spin-offshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:4487640a3f30/General Mills Adds More Outsourcing Partners as It Aims to Meet Packaged-Food Demand2020-07-28T04:36:37+00:00
https://notes.pinboard.in/u:jerryking/7e68987b771aec8f9a82
jerrykingBig_Food brands CPG food General_Mills large_companies supply_chains partnerships third-party rising_demandhttps://notes.pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:d9d3d14e4a2e/Opinion | That Flour You Bought Could Be the Future of the U.S. Economy2020-07-24T13:37:12+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/opinion/us-grain-industry.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
jerryking> “The New Bread Basket,” by Amy Halloran <<
By the established logic of the business world, Maine Grains, a small miller of flour in a rural part of the state, should not exist. With some 20 employees, it mills about 2,000 tons of flour a year in an industry where larger companies can mill more than 20,000 tons a day. Grain has long been a commodity business, and milling is driven by size and scale. Yet tiny mills like Maine Grains and small brands like King Arthur Baking Company and Bob’s Red Mill are thriving. They raise a bold question: Could flour, of all products, suggest a better path for more of the U.S. economy?............Milling flour, at the risk of stating the obvious, is not a new business.........abandoned mills are testament to the fact that during the 20th century, the business of flour was almost entirely overtaken by large, centralized operations. For many decades now, flour has been ruled by the central dogma of American business strategy: maximization of size and scale, ideally to the point of monopoly........This bigger-is-better, dominate-the-industry strategy is a major reason the American economy is as oligarchical and homogeneous as it is. It leads to large national companies that richly reward shareholders and executives while limiting workers’ salaries and reducing the prospects for smaller or local competitors. The sale of flour is no different..............The dominant retail flour brand, Gold Medal Flour, belongs to General Mills, a conglomerate with some $17 billion in annual revenue. Most of the flour sold today is for commercial use and ends up in premade or processed food products..........smaller sellers of flour are flourishing.......King Arthur, founded in 1790 in Boston and now based in Vermont. It experienced a tripling of sales over the spring, buoyed by legions of new bakers in quarantine. (Sales at Gold Medal also went up, but not nearly as much.) Among consumers, King Arthur is probably best known for connecting with people who are learning to bake. Its website introduces them to new challenges, like building a sourdough starter and folding dough for baguettes, and the company has a hotline for bakers in distress.......King Arthur is ....a private company, owned entirely by its employees......King Arthur is challenging the commodity pressures in flour markets using methods that were pioneered in the craft beer and local produce markets [ i.e. = "small-batch"]. The commodity industry takes flour as flour — just an ingredient, the cheaper the better. But baking is also an emotional experience, an act of creation in its beauty and intensity, a longstanding symbol of the home. ........Offering a distinctive, high-quality product and engaging deeply with customers aren’t exactly new ideas. But they aren’t what has been called for in commodity-based businesses, which are trapped by global market prices and aim to control the market by brute efficiency. .... the return of true agricultural localism......Could more parts of the American economy be restructured along these lines, with employees as beneficiary-owners, with more people doing more work in companies operating on a more reasonable, human scale?......The flour industry might seem an unlikely arena for business innovation. There was once a time, in the 1990s and 2000s, when it was widely thought that Silicon Valley would show us the way to a better, fairer economy, creating entire ecosystems of companies with distinctive offerings. Yet that was before the emergence and eventual dominance of Amazon, Facebook and Google. Instead of high-tech, it is low-tech businesses like craft beer and community supported agriculture that seem to stand at the forefront of economic transformation..... If it can happen with flour, it can happen anywhere.
]]>20th_century baking brands commodities craftsmanship emotional_connections employee-owned employees employee_ownership General_Mills grains human_scale innovation large_companies localization monopolies oligopolies privately_held_companies scaling size Tim_Wu dogma low-tech small_batchhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:d2f6cac5ed50/Startups Should Say No to Most Opportunities – David Cummings on Startups2020-05-28T20:34:37+00:00
https://davidcummings.org/2010/09/23/startups-should-say-no-to-most-opportunities/
jerryking>OEM<< integration.
95% of the time startups should say ‘no’ to these opportunities.
When should you say ‘yes’ to an opportunity like this? Let’s look at a few potential reasons:
** The partnership has guaranteed revenue minimums for the startup, and the money is meaningful (I did one of these is 2002 and it was worthwhile).
** There is no custom technical work to be done (e.g. the startup has an API and the bigger company can do everything they need to without customization).
** Partnerships like the one being proposed are part of the startup’s core strategy and it will be the first of many that look the same.
It is flattering to have these kinds of discussions with more established companies, but without a plan and strategy in place [i.e. = a willingness to "muddle through"] they can also drain a good deal of time and energy. My recommendation is to not get too enamored unless it meets one or more of the criteria listed above.]]>large_companies opportunities start_ups say_"no" APIs customization partnerships personal_energy time_sink core_businesses muddling_through OEM non-core business_development overexpansion unfocusedhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:9f53e444ee8f/Large Tech Companies Prepare for Acquisition Spree2020-05-21T19:57:00+00:00
https://notes.pinboard.in/u:jerryking/8c3c8e669ce80f4d5451
jerrykingCIOs FAANG large_companies M&A mergers_&_acquisitions Microsoft pandemics start_ups Uberhttps://notes.pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a9947134a14d/Startup Funding Dwindles Due to Coronavirus Slowdown2020-03-27T21:15:46+00:00
https://notes.pinboard.in/u:jerryking/9622b9efa51563908bf0
jerrykingacquihires angels automation Big_Tech corporate_investors COVID-19 early-stage Fortune_500 funding investors large_companies layoffs pandemics start_ups valuations viruses economic_downturnhttps://notes.pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:888f546c74c6/How to Transform a ‘Big, Old’ Company into an Agile Digital Business - CIO Journal. - WSJ2019-11-12T04:10:57+00:00
https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2019/11/08/how-to-transform-a-big-old-company-into-an-agile-digital-business/?guid=BL-CIOB-14856&mod=hp_minor_pos5&dsk=y
jerrykingdigital_strategies howto transformational Irving_Wladawsky-Berger large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:cbe36c7b4f01/Opinion: Seven pieces of advice for this year’s business grads2019-06-12T19:02:29+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-seven-pieces-of-advice-for-this-years-business-grads/
jerrykingadvice Don_Tapscott entrepreneurship large_companies leadership life_long_learning millennials new_graduates op-ed Peter_Drucker preparation work_life_balancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:34f11b25f69d/How Corporations Can Better Work With Startups2019-06-04T01:15:36+00:00
https://hbr.org/2019/06/how-corporations-can-better-work-with-startups?
jerrykingHBR howto large_companies start_ups Gulliver_strategieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:f4dee269c4b4/Opinion: Canadian CEOs facing an innovation disconnect - The Globe and Mail2019-05-30T15:59:04+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canadian-ceos-facing-an-innovation-disconnect/
jerrykingCanadian CEOS collaboration disruption innovation large_companies start_ups failure-toleranthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:dece8ef83a66/Why the tech giants have CEOs running scared | FT Big Deal2019-05-02T03:45:04+00:00
https://bigdeal.ft.com/videos/why-tech-giants-have-ceos-running-scared/
jerrykingBig_Tech CEOs deal-making disruption large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:eee27acc74b2/Big Companies Thought Insurance Covered a Cyberattack. They May Be Wrong. - The New York Times2019-04-16T14:59:36+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/technology/cyberinsurance-notpetya-attack.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
jerrykingbrands cyberattacks Fortune_500 insurance large_companies Mondelezhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:761eead0c3ff/Bezos on why failure is not failure2019-04-12T04:58:46+00:00
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/11/1554989596000/Bezos-on-why-failure-is-not-failure/
jerrykingAlexa Amazon AWS big_bets experimentation failure Jeff_Bezos large_companies market_research scaling Amazon_Echo unarticulated_desires voice_interfaces failing_wellhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:15390a0f8e26/The Missing Piece in Big Food’s Innovation Puzzle2019-04-01T15:28:37+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-missing-piece-in-big-foods-innovation-puzzle-11554111585?mod=hp_featst_pos2
jerryking>ingredient<< companies like Tate & Lyle and Kerry Group work with global brands behind the scenes to come up with **new ideas** [i.e. = "fresh ideas"]. These businesses can spend two to three times more on innovation as a percentage of turnover than their biggest clients.
One part of their expertise is **overhauling**[i.e. = "renovations"] >>recipes<<. Ingredients companies can do everything from adding trendy probiotics to taking out excess sugar or gluten. Nestlé got a hand from Tate & Lyle to remove more sugar from its Nesquik range of flavored drinks, while Denmark’s Chr. Hansen helped Kraft Heinz switch from artificial to natural colors in the U.S. giant’s Macaroni & Cheese......Another service food suppliers offer is coming up with successful innovations to help revive sales. Nestlé’s ruby chocolate KitKat, which has become very popular in Asia, was actually created by U.S. cocoa producer Barry Callebaut, for example.
=============================================
See also, "For innovation success, do not follow the money"
07-Nov-2005 | Financial Times | By Michael Schrage
"There is no correlation [i.e. = "uncorrelated"] between the percentage of net revenue spent on R&D and the innovative capabilities of an organisation – none,"...Just ask General Motors. No company in the world has spent more on R&D over the past 25 years. Yet, somehow, GM's market share has declined....R&D productivity – not R&D investment – is the real challenge for global innovation. Innovation is not what innovators innovate, it is what **customers actually adopt**. Productivity here is not measured in patents granted but in new customers won [i.e. = " first time customers/visitors"] and existing customers profitably retained.]]>Big_Food brands ingredients innovation investors Kraft_Heinz large_companies Mondelez Nestlé R&D shifting_tastes start_ups foodservice Unilever flavours food ingredient_diversity health_foods healthy_lifestyles new_ideas customer_profitability Michael_Schrage recipes KitKat uncorrelated fresh_ideas signature_dishes customer_adoption looking_for_what's_missing first_time_customers/visitorshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:67c654a2299a/US retailers trump Warren Buffett with push into own brands2019-03-17T21:00:13+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/f508b66a-445c-11e9-b168-96a37d002cd3
jerryking3G_Capital Amazon balance_of_power brands Campbell_Soup Costco General_Mills Kraft_Heinz Kroger private_labels retailers Target Wal-Mart Big_Food consumer_goods Fortune_500 large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7af71b5311ab/The gutting of Barrick Gold – it didn’t have to be this way - The Globe and Mail2019-01-24T15:35:34+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-the-gutting-of-barrick-gold-it-didnt-have-to-be-this-way/
jerrykingEric_Reguly head_offices hollowing_out John_Thornton large_companies LSE mining Peter_Munk Pierre_Lassonde sellout_culture TMX Barrick Corporate_Canada branch_plantshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:582046d45db0/Meg Whitman: ‘Businesses need to think, who’s coming to kill me?’2019-01-18T18:54:07+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/769d4144-18db-11e9-9e64-d150b3105d21
jerryking>high-quality<<, >>bite-sized<< video content for >>millennials<< (and the rest of us) hooked on smartphones......Whitman's experience has left her with plenty of advice for chief executives struggling with nearly every kind of disruption — technological, cultural and geopolitical. “I think every big business needs to be thinking, ‘Who’s coming to kill me?’ Where are the **big markets** that for regulatory reasons, or just because things are being done the way they always have been, disruption is likely? I’d say healthcare is one,” ...... a “Quibi”, is the new company’s “snackable” videos, designed to be consumed in increments of a few minutes....“You have all these **in-between moments**, and that’s what inspired the length of the content,” she says. “Very few people are watching long-form content on this device,” she says, holding up her iPhone. “They’re spending four to five hours a day on their phones, but they’re playing games, watching YouTube videos, checking social media, and surfing the internet. And although [people] pick up their phones hundreds of times a day, the average session length is 6.5 minutes.”.......Whitman’s hope is that just as people now >>binge<< on hour-long episodes of The Crown or House of Cards at home, they’ll do the same on their smartphone while in the doctor’s office, or commuting, or waiting for a meeting to start. As Whitman puts it, “every day you walk around with a little television in your pocket.” She and Katzenberg are betting that by the end of this year, we’ll spend some of our “in-between moments” watching micro-instalments of mobile movies produced by Oscar winning film-makers or stars ... interviewing other stars. ....The wind was at her back at eBay, where she became president and chief executive in 1998, presiding over a decade in which the company’s annual revenues grew from $4m to $8bn. “It’s hard to **change >>consumer behaviour<<**. We did that at eBay. We taught people how to buy in any auction format on the internet, how to send money 3,000 miles across the country and hope that you got the product.”
Quibi, she believes, doesn’t require that shift. “People are already watching a lot of videos on their phones. You just need to create a different experience.” She lays out how the company will optimise video for phones in ways that (she claims) will utterly change the >>viewing experience<<, and will leverage Katzenberg’s 40 years in the business.
..
]]>CEOs disruption Meg_Whitman Rana_Foroohar start_ups women bite-sized Hollywood Jeffrey_Katzenberg mobile subscriptions web_video high-quality smartphones advice large_companies large_markets interstitial Quibi paranoia venture_backable behavioral_change binge-viewing consumer_behavior millennials viewing_experience short-form always-onhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a9b72143f87d/How Small Companies Can Get Big, Fast2018-12-17T19:54:54+00:00
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelskok/2014/04/10/how-small-cos-can-get-big-fast/#799462b6161c
jerryking>What’s in it For Them?<<
One mistake small companies make when they get the chance to approach a larger company is that they make the conversation about them, the little guy. They begin by asking how the large company can help them sell their product or service when it should be the other way around. The best way to make a partnership pitch is by approaching a company and telling them what you’re going to do for them.
So flip all the points above and ask yourself how you’ll pitch to your potential partner to ensure this is a must-have partnership for them.
Usually, one of the key benefits a large company will want to realize is >>competitive advantage<< from faster >>time-to-market<< [i.e. = "speed"] and more >>nimble<< development. Start there and figure out how<< you can build out things like opportunities to increase average revenue per user or >>ARPU<< for them. But be prepared to prove it and don’t rush it. Like any relationship it needs to be two way.]]>large_companies partnerships product-market_fit small_business minimum_viable_products serving_others value_propositions Gulliver_strategies competitive_advantage nimbleness speed what's_in_it_for_them? ARPU time-to-markethttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:78f1564a4c98/Every Company Is Now a Tech Company2018-12-05T13:57:27+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/every-company-is-now-a-tech-company-1543901207?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=1
jerrykingChristopher_Mims CTOs artificial_intelligence automation Amazon books Cisco Jet John_Chambers Wal-Mart e-commerce acquihires connecting_the_dots large_companies cultural_clash reinvention technology silo_mentality post-deal_integration digital_savvy upheavals turnover serial_acquirershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a8658dcd8b0c/CEOs are forged, not born - The Globe and Mail2018-10-11T13:30:11+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/leadership/article-ceos-are-forged-not-born/
jerrykingboards_&_directors_&_governance CEOs Communicating_&_Connecting complexity decision_making execution gut_feelings large_companies strategic_thinking stressful successionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ec4f5e78a5e8/Why big companies squander good ideas2018-09-07T19:15:10+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/3c1ab748-b09b-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c
jerrykingApple blitzkrieg disruption ideas IBM innovation iPod missed_opportunities Rotman Steve_Jobs theory Tim_Harford upstarts large_companies Walkman Clayton_Christensen organizational_change organizational_structure MPOF militaries hard_work digital_cameras innovators misfits WWI Xerox Kodak cameras unique_needshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:84dddb2003db/Welcome | Partners in Food Solutions2018-08-13T23:29:38+00:00
https://www.partnersinfoodsolutions.com/
jerrykingfood sustainability developing_countries large_companies brands Africahttps://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:4cbcff923061/WARC 2017 Onepager2018-08-11T15:19:02+00:00
http://content.warc.com/hubfs/WARC_2017_Onepager_Final_exl_ROI_benchmarker.pdf
jerrykingWARC advertising large_companies Fortune_500 brands market_researchhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:18462e16e7bd/Employers buy into ‘Netflixisation’ of executive education | Financial Times2018-08-05T20:39:16+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/4fcd2360-8e91-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546
jerrykingtraining organizational_learning mobile_applications large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0f1774e1c23a/Venture capital firms have a gender problem. Here’s how to fix it - The Globe and Mail2018-07-28T00:45:40+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-venture-capital-firms-have-a-gender-problem-heres-how-to-fix-it/
jerrykinggender_gap venture_capital vc women angels start_ups large_companies under-representation entrepreneur foundershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:5ec97246e0be/JetBlue Tech Execs Tap Startups To Help Airline Innovate - CIO Journal. - WSJ2018-07-06T05:11:12+00:00
https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/07/03/jetblue-tech-execs-tap-startups-to-help-airline-innovate/?mod=hp_minor_pos6
jerrykingJetBlue brands large_companies airline_industry innovation start_ups CIOs machine_learning blockchainhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e2ab4a51918f/New chapters begin with a moment of reflection2018-05-24T22:06:44+00:00
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-chapters-begin-moment-reflection-denise-morrison/?trk=eml-email_feed_ecosystem_digest_01-recommended_articles-6-Unknown&midToken=AQG1SJb4xpvw9Q&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=1psMLCoeJ9o8g1
jerrykingexits women CEOs reflections Second_Acts Big_Food large_companies Fortune_500 brands consumer_goods Campbell_Souphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:35aa9ceebce2/Goldman’s Latest Push: Managing Cash for Big Companies - WSJ2018-04-03T19:33:13+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldmans-latest-push-managing-cash-for-big-companies-1522778718
jerrykingGoldman_Sachs financial_services large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:b09549b7db29/Millennials shouldn’t treat their careers like lottery tickets - The Globe and Mail2018-03-21T15:28:30+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/leadership-lab/millennials-shouldnt-treat-their-careers-like-lottery-tickets/article38280231/
jerrykingmillennials Managing_Your_Career career_paths start_ups large_companies advice new_graduates high-risk Jason_Isaacshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:40837514a095/The Next Big Threat to Consumer Brands (Yes, Amazon’s Behind It) - WSJ2018-02-27T18:40:01+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-consumer-brands-dont-have-an-answer-for-alexa-1519727401
jerrykingbrands CPG Fortune_500 large_companies Alexa Amazon personal_care_products e-commerce shifting_tastes upstarts personal_assistants voice_interfaces artificial_intelligence Siri virtual_assistants voice_assistants Unilever Nestlé shelf_space Wal-Mart retailers Costco P&G threatshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:3537762faf2a/Big brands lose pricing power in battle for consumers2018-02-02T15:12:12+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/1b802fa2-0797-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
jerryking>retailers<< — notably, >>Amazon<< and >>Walmart<<, which together sell $600bn worth of goods a year. Walmart has long put pressure on suppliers to **cut prices**. Amazon’s rise has exacerbated the “deflationary impact”, Société Générale says, creating a “much tougher environment in the US”. After Amazon bought Whole Foods in June, the >>price war<< grew more intense in >>groceries<<, pushing prices to historic lows that punished producers.
Brand loyalty has suffered in the process. Equipped with the tools to compare prices online instantly, and bombarded with more choices, shoppers are growing more likely to opt for cheaper and discounted products — particularly in categories such laundry detergent and shampoo. To keep their spots on store shelves, >>brands<< are having to accept lower prices......Former Amazon employees say the company’s >>algorithms<< scan prices across competitors in real time, automatically adjusting its own so it can offer the lowest price. While most big brands have wholesale agreements with Amazon, >>third-party<< sellers are prolific on the site, complicating price control further. A 34oz bottle of >>P&G<<’s Pantene Pro-V Shampoo & Conditioner was listed by 10 different sellers — nine of them third parties — on the shopping site.
Amazon’s dominance makes it difficult for brands to abandon the platform, or try to sell directly on their own websites. “You have 200m customers on Amazon. If you walk away, there’s 200m people who are going to just buy from your competitors,” says James Thomson, a former Amazon manager who consults brands. “You’re probably not going to win.”
“This is a pretty **dire situation**,” he adds. “If brands are worried about meeting quarterly targets, they can’t afford to lose Amazon sales.”
Still, “the retailers have nothing to gain by pushing [consumer products makers] into bankruptcy”,......Consumer goods companies have responded to the pricing pressures by aggressively cutting costs, led by the “>>zero-based budgeting<<” model of 3G Capital,
]]>large_companies Fortune_500 brands CPG pricing shareholder_activism Amazon P&G Nestlé win_backs price-cutting Nelson_Peltz shifting_tastes Colgate-Palmolive upstarts Unilever zero-based_budgeting 3G_Capital e-commerce Mondelez Big_Food price_wars difficult_situations algorithms grocery third-party pricing_powerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0304a4a0f358/Outfoxed by Small-Batch Upstarts, Unilever Decides to Imitate Them - WSJ2018-01-04T19:42:39+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/outfoxed-by-small-batch-upstarts-unilever-decides-to-imitate-them-1514910342
jerrykingbrands Unilever marketing guerrilla_marketing offensive_tactics CPG India shifting_tastes localization mergers_&_acquisitions personal_care_products upstarts small_batch large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ff3560ac39ce/IKEA Jumps Into ‘Gig Economy’ With Deal for TaskRabbit2017-09-29T12:06:51+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ikea-to-acquire-online-freelancer-marketplace-taskrabbit-1506618421
jerrykingIKEA TaskRabbit gig_economy mergers_&_acquisitions M&A Silicon_Valley large_companies brands Fortune_500 start_ups e-commerce home-delivery BOPIS augmented_reality urbanization digital_strategies retailers product_launches home-assemblyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:64a869304643/Benevolent Bacon? Nestle And Unilever Gobble Up Niche Brands - WSJ2017-09-07T16:13:52+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nestle-unilever-bite-sized-deals-betray-healthier-appetite-1504791313
jerrykingCPG Unilever brands niches mergers_&_acquisitions M&A Nestlé start_ups large_companies Fortune_500 plant-based Big_Food healthy_lifestyles emotional_connections shifting_tastes high-growth gazelleshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c4ca2dc79424/Tornado-Ravaged Hospital Took Storm-Smart Approach During Rebuild - Risk & Compliance Journal.2017-09-05T03:10:28+00:00
https://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2017/08/30/tornado-ravaged-hospital-took-storm-smart-approach-during-rebuild/
jerrykingdisasters Hurricane_Harvey extreme_weather_events hospitals tornadoes design rebuilding preparation emergencies lessons_learned worst-case natural_calamities anticipating insurance vulnerabilities large_companies redundancies business-continuity thinking_tragically high-risk risk-management isolation compounded network_risk black_swan beforemath frequency_and_severity resilience improbables George_Anders hazards disaster_preparedness what_really_matters low_probability loss-mitigationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c86179da8b26/7 Closing Strategies to Double Your Average Sale Size2017-08-29T23:19:28+00:00
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/293020
jerryking>Stand apart from the crowd<<.[i.e. = standing out from the crowd"]
High-level prospects hear from an average of 10 salespeople every day. If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll never get through to them or earn their trust. To double your average sales size, you must be intentional about standing apart from the crowd in your industry. While others pitch, you should ask questions. While others are enthusiastic, you should be low-key and genuine. While your competitors focus on their products, you should focus on your prospect’s deepest frustrations and show how you can solve them.
3. Stop selling to low-level prospects.
Selling low-level prospects harms your close rate and decreasing your average sale size. Low-level prospects simply don’t have the power or budget to tell you “yes." They’re not the decision-makers. If you want to increase the size of your sales, stop selling to prospects who lack the budget to invest in your solution.
4. Sell to decision-makers.
It’s a best practice to head straight to the top of the food chain and sell to directors, vice presidents, and C-level executives. They have the power and budget to say “yes” to your offer. If someone refers you back down the chain, you’re still landing an introduction to the right person -- by his or her boss, no less.
5. Stop cold-calling.
Cold calls are miserable. Try implementing a sales-prospecting campaign. Plan your calls, letters and emails as follow-ups to a valuable letter or package you send via FedEx. This could be a special report, unique sample or company analysis. These intentional, repeated touches over a series of months will set you up as a familiar name by the time you actually get your prospect on the phone. When a huge sale is on the line, you can afford to invest time and money to catch a single prospect’s attention.
6. Know the decision-making process.
If you’ve closed only small deals at small companies in the past, you might be accustomed to working with just one or two decision-makers at a time. In large corporations, the decision-making process can be much more complicated. One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is failing to understand the decision-making process. Get a grasp of this early on, and you can stay in front of the right people, build value for them and close your sales at higher prices.
7. Leverage sales for introductions.
When you close one large sale at a big organization, don’t stop there. Ask new customers for introductions to others in their company or network who could benefit from your offering. You have nothing to lose by asking for introductions, but failure to do so will cost you massive opportunity and revenue.]]>sales fear large_companies differentiation sales_cycle buyer_choice_rejection cold_calling referrals JCK executive_management campaigns Aimia LBMA strategic_thinking close_rate questions thinking_big enterprise_clients C-suite low-key authenticity doubling the_right_people Gulliver_strategies rejections prospecting standing_out_from_the_crowdhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:20a0a5e8d59e/Brands Strike Back: Seven Strategies to Loosen Amazon’s Grip - WSJ2017-08-07T18:34:24+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brands-strike-back-seven-strategies-to-loosen-amazons-grip-1502103602
jerrykingAmazon brands Fortune_500 large_companies strategies contra-Amazonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:fbe5f551b603/The High Cost of Raising Prices - WSJ2017-07-31T17:35:11+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-cost-of-raising-prices-1501446630
jerryking>Jack Welch<< would constantly berate them, saying, “Any idiot can raise prices.”[i.e. = "price hikes"] Except he used a stronger word than idiot to coax them into >>squeezing out costs<<, adding features, improving services and generally >>delighting customers.<< Contrast this with Berkshire Hathaway . Vice Chairman Charlie Munger found that with See’s Candies “we could raise prices 10% a year and no one cared. Learning that changed Berkshire.” .........There’s a long list of price bumpers. Walk down any supermarket aisle. Kellogg’s prices constantly snap, crackle and mostly pop. Procter & Gamble toothpaste sizes shrink faster than my cavity count, always less for the same price. Now private-equity firms are circling P&G. Same for Nestlé . Expect rising beer and liquor prices soon....Empires are lost on rising prices. Until recently, rather than innovate in mobile or cloud computing, Microsoft kept raising the price of its Windows operating system to computer manufacturers. Tablets and phones ate their lunch. Fees rose at eBay until Amazon took its growth away. .........Increasing prices attracts others to attack your market. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos warns: “Your margin is my opportunity.”[i.e. = "mantras"]....Competition solves much of this problem. Investors love protected businesses, but eventually relentless price increases kill them all. Consumers are the kangaroo at the bar in the old cartoon: The bartender says, “Say, we don’t get a lot of kangaroos in here.” The kangaroo replies, “No, and with these prices, I can see why!” Call me a kangaroo, but I prefer to invest in companies that lower prices and offer more.]]>Andy_Kessler pricing price_hikes drawbacks margins CPG shareholder_activism P&G Nestlé Kellogg Jack_Welch GE large_companies cost-cutting Amazon Jeff_Bezos staying_hungry delighting_customers high-cost Charlie_Munger squeezing_out_costs mantrashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:7f7babc77b11/Reza Satchu: What I learned after selling my first startup for nearly $1 billion2017-07-10T03:26:01+00:00
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/reza-satchu-what-i-learned-after-selling-my-first-startup-for-nearly-1billion/article35509410/
jerrykingchutzpah entrepreneur large_companies brands Fortune_500 McGill gut_feelings next_play Alignvest audacity thinking_big CDL go-for-bronze imperfect_informationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e4611fcd66cc/The Amazon-Walmart Showdown That Explains the Modern Economy - The New York Times2017-06-19T00:16:46+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/upshot/the-amazon-walmart-showdown-that-explains-the-modern-economy.html
jerrykingincreasing_returns_to_scale Amazon Wal-Mart Whole_Foods retailers economics Bonobos shirts mens'_clothing omnichannel apparel digital_economy automation robotics competitive_landscape market_concentration barbell_effect income_inequality antitrust market_power corporate_concentration grocery fresh_produce supermarkets large_companies UX inventory-free global_economy fixed_costs variable_costs Neil_Irwin winner-take-allhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8537651acc07/From Diaper to Soda Makers, Big Brands Feel the Pinch of a Consumer Pullback - WSJ2017-04-26T19:00:24+00:00
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-diaper-to-soda-makers-big-brands-feel-the-pinch-of-a-consumer-pullback-1493223098
jerrykingbrands large_companies volatility P&G Gillette Yoplait CPG PepsiCo healthy_lifestyles Kraft_Heinz Nestlé Wal-Mart Coca-Cola price-cutting price_hikes Fortune_500 upstarts supply_chain_squeeze shifting_tastes Amazon Big_Food hard_choices pullbacks declining_saleshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:3f6b39060fab/Microsoft Accelerator - 5 Recommendations for Startups Preparing to Engage Corporates2017-04-19T20:04:18+00:00
https://www.microsoftaccelerator.com/blog/entry/5RecommendationsforStartupsPreparingtoEngageCorporates%7C6227
jerrykinghowto start_ups large_companies brands Fortune_500 Gulliver_strategies tipshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:807da645b991/Fintech Fictions, Fallacies, and Fantasies2017-03-16T15:52:31+00:00
https://thefinancialbrand.com/53021/fintech-fictions-fallacies-and-fantasies/
jerryking>was the wrong question to ask<<. There is no one or the other. Banks need fintech, fintech needs banks. And banks become fintech, as fintech become banks.
In many ways, fintech is a–or the–path to reinvention for many banks. This is why a Capital One acquires design firms, or a BBVA acquires a Simple. It’s not simply to acquire the technology, and certainly not to “usurp the threat of FinTech by co-opting it.” It’s to inject new thinking and new capabilities into the company.]]>fin-tech myths fantasies financial_services banks symbiosis large_companies start_ups capabilities Fortune_500 brands Capital_One design Simple BBVA new_thinking asking_the_wrong_questionshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:4fb73dbba1bd/Big Companies Should Collaborate with Startups2017-03-14T04:24:39+00:00
https://hbr.org/2016/02/big-companies-should-collaborate-with-startups
jerryking>Growth<< is increasingly hard to come by, so large companies are increasingly looking to entrepreneurs to help them find it. In the food and beverage category, growth came from 20,000 small companies outside of the top 100, which together saw revenue grow by $17 billion dollars.
Despite that aggregate revenue growth, not every startup is successful — in fact, the vast majority will fail.
Ironically, startups and established companies would both improve their success rates if they collaborated instead of competed. Startups and established companies bring two distinct and equally integral skills to the table. Startups excel at giving birth to successful >>proof of concepts<<; larger companies are much better at successfully scaling proof of concepts.
Startups are better at **detecting and unlocking emerging and latent demand** [i.e. = "hidden value"/"value extraction"]. But they often stumble at scaling their >>proof-of-concept<<[i.e. = "pilot programs"], not only because they’re often doing it for the >>first time<<, but also because the skills necessary for creating are not the same as >>scaling<<. Startups must be agile and adapt their value proposition several times until they get it right. According to Forbes, 58% of startups successfully figure out a clear market need for what they have.
In contrast, big companies often end up launching things they can make, not what people want.
Successful collaboration between startups and established companies [i.e. = "Gulliver strategies"] must go beyond financial deals: it must be personal and mission-oriented.....areas of emerging and >>latent demand<< are often highly concentrated.... spend time physically in hotbeds specific to your sector. ....met people...walk the aisles ...... explore >>up and coming<< >>datasets<<. SPINs is a retail measurement company that covers the natural and organic grocers. Yet too many companies don’t even bother to acquire this data because they dismiss it as too small to matter.....Just as important as >>personal knowledge<< are >>personal relationships<<. ...spend time with customers....skew more toward emerging customers......connect with key people who have tight connections with both startups and established companies in your industry.....>>collaboration<< needs to be >>mission-oriented<<, meaning it has to be focused on something larger than financial success. ......Executives who wish to tap into the growth of these smaller companies will find that having a big checkbook is not going to be enough, and that waiting for an investment banker to bring them deals is the wrong approach. A mercenary mindset will only go so far. When big companies try to engage with startups, a missionary mindset will create better odds of success.]]>large_companies Fortune_500 brands start_ups collaboration face2face personal_meetings personal_touch information_sources personal_relationships personal_knowledge HBR growth funding M&A success_rates proof-of-concepts mindsets missionaries mission-driven cultural_clash Gulliver_strategies scaling datasets first_time_customers/visitors hidden_value pilot_programs up-and-comers value_extraction Mondelez latent_demandhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:5edd32c5fefb/Oxford Diary2017-03-11T16:44:27+00:00
https://www.ft.com/content/c892fb9e-fe87-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30
jerrykingGoogle future conferences change handpicked entrepreneur ISIS civil_servants algorithms YouTube mass_media digital_media artificial_intelligence biases value_judgements large_companies print_journalism technological_change cultural_clashhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:981930365c90/Have Americans Given Up?2017-03-07T12:57:47+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/did-american-complacency-lead-to-trump/518586/
jerrykinglarge_companies dynamism Tyler_Cowen economists books innovation illusions Silicon_Valley geographic_mobility economic_mobility housing Donald_Trump elitism restlessness safety_nets risk-mitigation monopolies self-defeating the_American_dream health_insurance America_in_Decline? complacency homebodies infrastructure risk-taking Social_Security Washington_D.C. economic_dynamism striking_a_balancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:06017ef6cb08/How brands can source the best tech startups - Marketing Week2017-03-04T20:35:19+00:00
https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/05/21/how-brands-can-source-the-best-tech-startups/
jerrykingbrands Fortune_500 marketing start_ups best_of match-making large_companies Mondelez LBMA brand_purposehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:614656255c8b/Why Employees Leave Startups for Big Brands | | Observer2017-03-04T16:30:49+00:00
http://observer.com/2017/01/why-employees-leave-startups-for-big-brands/
jerrykingstart_ups brands large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:f44fd1f90cb0/Why Starbucks Might Be Innovating Too Fast - Barron's2017-01-27T06:43:43+00:00
http://www.barrons.com/articles/why-starbucks-might-be-innovating-too-fast-1485477030
jerrykinginnovation Starbucks congestion handoffs in-store order_management_system mobile_applications smartphones consumer_behavior operations wait_times brands large_companies shortcomings revenge_effects the_big_picture personal_experiencehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ae288f251ac2/For Non-Tech Companies, if You Can’t Build It, Buy a Start-Up - The New York Times2017-01-03T01:28:57+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/business/dealbook/mergers.html?mabReward=A6&recp=6
jerrykingstart_ups mergers_&_acquisitions M&A GE Honeywell post-deal_integration Fortune_500 brands large_companies acquihires strategic_buyers ubiquitousness digital_savvyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:8ee5ac7cb907/Tech Startups Struggle to Close Deals With IT Buyers - WSJ2016-08-24T15:03:31+00:00
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-startups-struggle-to-close-deals-with-it-buyers-1472031002
jerrykingstart_ups large_companies CIOs Haier challenges cloud_computing SaaS IT risks customer_adoption risk-aversionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:0f987bbbf7f6/Inside the mind of a venture capitalist | McKinsey & Company2016-08-23T14:45:30+00:00
http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/inside-the-mind-of-a-venture-capitalist?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth
jerrykingSteve_Jurvetson McKinsey DFJ venture_capital vc disruption space large_companies software core_businesses Moore's_Law machine_learning passions Elon_Musk accelerated_lifecycles space_travel innovation self-confidence humility teams high-growth synthetic_biology electric_cars rocketshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e89e607ee031/How To Create A Major Account Strategy - SalesHQ2016-08-08T15:47:03+00:00
http://saleshq.monster.com/training/articles/970-how-to-create-a-major-account-strategy-
jerrykingjck sales enterprise_clients large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:4faa726b7111/How to approach your own career like an entrepreneur - Fortune2016-07-20T03:40:22+00:00
http://fortune.com/2014/12/29/startup-you/
jerryking>self-aware<< than most. On a quarterly basis, he conducts a life >>assessment<< and reviews what he considers to be his professional competitive advantage. Among his “most unique” attributes he lists his receptiveness to feedback. Indeed, in his quest for continual improvement, he has recorded personal and professional feedback in a single, running Google doc since 2010. He reads it once a week, when prompted by a recurring calendar invite.
And so began what Julka considers the “abnormal part” of his job search: He drew up a spreadsheet of 60 target companies, a few of which he researched for 60 to 80 hours (he admits he “overinvested”). He read 10-Ks and 10-Qs and a hundred CrunchBase articles; he mined his personal and virtual connections; he enlisted a friend, a former Google programmer, to tutor him in code; and he found free online videos from which he learned UX/UI design. With his wife’s support, he gave himself five weeks in Silicon Valley—no mean feat given that he had an 18-month-old baby at home. He met with three or more people a day, prepared a 48-page set of interview notes, and rode the highs and lows of pitching himself for a job that many thought he was an odd fit for.
It ended on a high. In September 2013 he got several job offers—including one, through a contact of his business school professor, at Bizo, a startup that has since been acquired by LinkedIn LNKD .
Julka may sound like a case study in craziness, a modern-day Ben Franklin whose entrepreneurial energy and efforts cannot be easily matched. But while he exists at one extreme, he’s the prototype for what it takes to navigate one’s career these days.
The truth is, wherever you are on the corporate ladder, whatever you do for a living, you’ve got to think like you’re launching a business from the ground up.
As LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha wrote in their zeitgeist-tapping book from 2012, The Start-Up of You, “All humans are entrepreneurs.” To accelerate your career in today’s economy, you’ve got to embrace that spirit and apply the Silicon Valley formula—“adapt to the future” and “invest in yourself”—no matter how comfortable in your job you might be.
Imagine you’re a founder. You’ve been working for days—years, really. (You can’t remember the last time you took a day off.) You’ve networked like crazy. And now, at last, you’ve landed one of those much-coveted meetings with a high-profile venture capital firm on Sand Hill Road.
the start up of you bookIt feels as though you’ve been waiting your whole life for this: You’ve prepared your slide deck, rehearsed your pitch, and honed your talking points. You’re ready to be grilled about even the finest details of your marketing and monetization strategies. You’ve gone so far as to research your VC’s hobbies. But the product you’re selling isn’t some whiz-bang app or the latest and greatest cloud-computing platform; the product is you.
Here’s where your potential backer steps in: What’s your competitive advantage, she asks? The questions come rapid-fire: What’s your >>addressable market< The opportunities for growth? Your five-year plan? Your 10-year plan? [i.e. = "all examples of illuminating questions to consider from a personal 'invest-in-me' perspective"]
You may not be used to thinking about your career in such calculating terms, but old standards like “follow your passion” get you only so far. You won’t get Series A funding, but the analogy is apt: If you are the startup, you’d better start answering to your inner VC.
“You’ve got to have a sense of purpose, authenticity, self-awareness, intellectual honesty, and the ability to navigate ambiguity,” says Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst Partners, a venture capital firm. That’s what he looks for in companies—and people—he invests in. Alan Braverman, an entrepreneur and angel investor who co-heads the Giant Pixel, a tech startup studio, speaks more bluntly: “What most people consider a **safe career path**, I consider falling behind.”
You don’t have to be a TaskRabbit (or a VC) to know that the world of work has changed. Technology, globalization, and one long recession—in which nearly one in six Americans reported losing a job, according to Princeton economist Henry Farber—have all disrupted old-fashioned employment. Corporations have downsized, outsourced, and rightsized. They slashed training budgets during the recession, and though that spending is coming back—up 15% in 2013, according to a Deloitte survey—corporate >>talent development<< is thought to be a dying art. “As companies see it, the incentives are just so perverse,” says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at Wharton Business School. “Typically you train someone, and once they become useful, they’re hired away from you.” Meanwhile, the slow march of automation continues: Robots now fly planes, perform surgeries, and in some cases write news. That leaves you, dear worker, in a tight spot—whether or not you’ve got your dream job now, you’ve got to stay relevant and evolve.
That’s not as easy as it once was. The >>half-life<< of desirable skills has shortened with the hastening pace of technological change. (A Python programmer now eats the once-hot Java programmer for lunch.) Fabio Rosati, CEO of the online freelancing platform Elance-oDesk, says these dynamics are moving us from the era of employment to one of newfangled “employability.” Professionals, like the 9.3 million who find work on his site, are now being viewed as mobile, independent bundles of skills. In this universe the most adaptable talent rules the day. Increasingly, learning agility is an attribute sought in corporate leadership, says Vicki Swisher, a senior director at Korn Ferry, an executive search firm. What’s more, she says, it’s what employers are looking for in all new hires.
That agility is also mission critical for your personal enterprise (formerly known as your career path). Rather than climb a single corporate ladder like the company man of yore, you’re more likely to spend your career scaling a professional jungle gym, maneuvering between projects, jobs, companies, industries, and locales. By the reckoning of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest job-tenure survey, you’ll pivot every 4.6 years (make that three if you’re a millennial, a demographic that will dominate the workforce in 2015). To do this well requires imagination, initiative, and some guts. Much like a startup, you’re forging your way ahead in a dynamic world where there is no conventional path.
“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” advises Mike Abbott, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who knows as an entrepreneur and as someone whose career zigged to Microsoft, Palm, and Twitter before it zagged to venture capital. In his case, he sought discomfort. “That’s how you learn the most.”
While the ideas of a free-agent nation and personal brand building have been with us for a couple of decades, >>DIY<<-career building has gotten a big push from the digital (and old-fashioned sharing) infrastructure that fosters this independence. There’s the rise in communal workspaces like WeWork and educational alternatives like Coursera, which offers college courses online, and General Assembly, which trains workers in the most in-demand tech skills. (As Julka’s case shows, YouTube and Google can also be empowering resources.)
A slew of online platforms has made it simpler to drum up employment, from one-off gigs to full-time jobs. Professionals can peddle their services, whether it be supply-chain management or legal advice, more easily and independently too, through sites like Elance-oDesk and TrustedPeer, which sometimes cater to big companies.
The data are messy on the size and shape of this new, more independent workforce. The BLS, whose classification system dates back to 1948, counted 14.4 million self-employed Americans in April 2014. That’s a far cry from the results of a study commissioned this year by the Freelancers Union and Elance-oDesk, which put the number of freelancers—a broader category that includes temps, part-timers, and moonlighters—at 53 million, or one in three American workers. (A report on freelancers from the Government Accountability Office in 2006 had a slightly lower figure, with 42.6 million.)
The jobs are out there, the evidence shows. In October the BLS recorded 4.8 million open positions, the highest level in 14 years.
Whether you’re after one of those jobs, attempting to move up or out at the one you’ve got, or trying to make it on your own, thinking entrepreneurially will help you get ahead. Like Nitin Julka, Fortune talked to three dozen experts in the new startup economy—venture capitalists, recruiting specialists, and successful jungle-gym-climbing workers for tips about how to get yourself launched. Consider the five rules below your mini-accelerator.
You’re in the founder’s seat now.
Choose growth over profitability
Startups don’t start off making money. They chug along on venture funding while they figure out what the heck they’re doing. It may sound unpalatable, but it’s a good idea for your career too. Rather than focus on short-term gains, think long-term goals and what you need to get there. Consider Lateef Jackson, 38, a software engineer in Portland, Ore., who at 29 took a job in private equity—as an unpaid intern—to expose himself to business and investing. “It was life-changing in that I realized the lack of barriers to my dreams,” he says. Or Ryan Holiday, who as an aspiring author dropped out of college at 19 to work for two writers and intern at a talent agency. “I saw it as the equivalent of signing up for Y Combinator,” he says. “I thought, I’m going to commit two to three years of my life to work for these people to learn everything that I possibly can.” He has since written three books, run the marketing department at American Apparel, and started his own marketing firm. He’s 27.
But investing in yourself doesn’t have to mean taking a pay cut. It’s about opportunities that will make you more valuable down the road. Vas Narasimhan, a trained physician and former McKinsey consultant who is now global head of development at Novartis, has pursued a wide range of roles in his seven years at the drug company. It’s been a nontraditional path—something people pointed out to him at every turn—but it allowed the 38-year-old exec to build broad expertise and differentiate himself as a leader who can adapt, he says.
Bet on who you want to work with, not on where
“Startups are ultimately a collection of great people,” says Jon Sakoda, a general partner at Menlo Park venture capital firm NEA. He advises job seekers to, as they do in the Valley’s money circles, invest in people, not ideas. That means pick the place you’re going to work for the people you’re going to work with. They’re the ones who will train you and lead you to other opportunities when the time comes. He says he owes his career as an entrepreneur and VC to others: “I was tricked into doing what I’m doing by people I fell in love with. I got seduced into working with great people.” Dan Portillo, talent partner at Greylock Partners, agrees. He says to ask yourself two questions before taking a job: “Who am I really working for? How much of an impact is this person going to have on my career?” He credits his former boss at Mozilla for developing him as an executive and his old startup buddies for bringing him there. Having a broader network helps too. After leaving his job as a biotech CEO in 2008, Dave Summa, a Procter & Gamble and McKinsey alum, was at a loss about what to do next. He found clarity by talking with his friends in the CEO Alliance, who helped him realize where his passion and expertise lie. He had long puzzled over why companies invest so heavily in R&D and product innovation and yet barely at all when it comes to improving business models. He founded his firm Business Model Innovation with a colleague earlier this year. “I was the last person to get it,” he says.
Find your >>special sauce<<
The No. 1 reason startups fail, according to a recent analysis by venture capital database CB Insights, is that there is no market need for them. In the entrepreneurial employment age, you too have to think about product-market fit. This may be one of the hardest challenges in the new economy. All of us have to become sophisticated market researchers. Thirty-year-old Angela Irizarry discovered this mostly by accident. The Cleveland native was in an unfulfilling role at an Ohio property-management company. She had liked some parts of her job—particularly her work with social media—but the fun stuff ended when she got promoted to assistant property manager. She joined oDesk (which merged with Elance in 2014) for the chance to moonlight and make some extra cash. Irizarry grandly called herself a “social media marketer,” but the jobs didn’t come. After her first 100 applications turned up nothing, she tried a different tack, studying competitors on the site: The aim was to see who was winning what jobs and why. Her discoveries led her to apply for smaller projects to build up experience and broaden her skills. The research paid off. Now Irizarry, who bills herself with the slightly grander title “integrated marketing specialist,” is freelancing at nearly four times her original hourly rate for clients all over the world.
Celebrate uncertainty
Startups are always iterating; things rarely go according to plan. You’re in “permanent beta” mode, say Hoffman and Casnocha. Sakoda, whose NEA firm was an early backer of Hearsay Social and Opower, echoes the thought. “When a startup shows me a five-year plan, the only thing I can be sure of is that it’s wrong,” he says. You can make the same bet for your career, so drink the West Coast Kool-Aid and “fail fast.” Seek feedback and adapt, and when things go off course, pivot. Consider 54-year-old Ed Dillon. Until he lost his job in a reorganization at a Chicago-based real estate firm a decade ago, he had no idea there were jobs he’d be better suited to. Trained as an accountant, he had reached the level of VP after a long, successful run in the industry. Losing his job was a blow, and for a few scrappy years he took assignments through agencies and tried to build up a consulting business of his own. Those projects led him to realize that he thrived doing more dynamic work. He now pitches himself to companies in transition—like the major law firm where he works today—and has a more fulfilling career managing organizational change.
Be public
Every startup has to sell itself. So do you—to co-workers, industry colleagues, and the wider world online. Join LinkedIn, of course, but think of this less as calculated branding than showing who you are and what you can do. It rarely hurts to engage, and it almost always helps to be helpful. (In this spirit, founders examine the ugly truths of their failed startups in digital postmortems.) “If you give away hard-won information and knowledge, you’ll get something back,” says Holiday, the 27-year-old writer and marketing pro.
Recruiting strategist Stacy Donovan Zapar, 41, has found this to be the case too. She started sharing job-searching tips on Twitter years ago. Her following grew, and she began blogging, a platform that has built her reputation online. “Just about every good thing that’s happened to me in the last decade of my career has been because of social media,” says Zapar, who claims to be “the most connected woman on LinkedIn.” She now works with big-name companies like Zappos and TripAdvisor.
And then, once again, there’s Nitin Julka. Last year he shared his career-transformation experience online—“How I got my first Valley-based product-management job in five weeks”—which has gotten him thinking about his personal brand. Now he wants to find an even bigger way (he uses the Valley term “scalable”) to help people feel more productive and less stressed. Admits Julka: “I feel stressed a lot of the time.” It may be the least surprising thing about him.
More: Your career path is all on you -- and that's a good thing
]]>value_propositions personal_branding via:enochko pitches self-assessment self-awareness Silicon_Valley gig_economy start_ups Managing_Your_Career Reid_Hoffman Ben_Casnocha slight_edge job_search discomforts uncertainty learning_agility transparency customer_growth self-employment Elance-oDesk TrustedPeer large_companies non-routine skills special_sauce free-agents WeWork product-market_fit preparation readiness torchbearers it's_up_to_me invest_in_yourself ambiguities intellectual_honesty platforms fetishization talent_development giving_value_first self-appraisal half-lives interview_preparation questions illuminating_questions DIY TAM traditional_pathshttps://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:fb9eef7bf252/Laurier initiative to separate the strong startups from the weak - The Globe and Mail2016-07-19T15:10:46+00:00
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/business-education/laurier-initiative-to-separate-the-strong-startups-from-the-weak/article30795173/
jerrykingbusiness_schools start_ups failure WLU scaling Communitech Colleges_&_Universities Kitchener-Waterloo large_companies brands Fortune_500 high-growth under-performing culling gazelles assessments_&_evaluations toolshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:a4db60e14c71/50 Smartest Companies 20162016-06-21T16:27:51+00:00
https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/companies/2016/intro/#amazon
jerrykingMIT lists start_ups large_companies innovation technology business_models job_search 23andMehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:2f661f49958f/The path to enlightenment and profit starts inside the office2016-04-07T14:25:54+00:00
https://notes.pinboard.in/u:jerryking/0810401ef621bcf117f4
jerryking> shape-shifting << environment? There are perhaps two (partial) answers.
The first is to do everything to understand the technological changes that are transforming the world, to identify the threats and opportunities early.
Gavin Patterson , chief executive of BT, the British telecoms group, says one of the functions of corporate leaders is to scan the horizon as never before. "As a CEO you have to be on the bridge looking outwards, looking for signs that something is happening, trying to anticipate it before it becomes a danger."
To that end, BT has opened innovation "scouting teams" in Silicon Valley and Israel, and tech partnerships with universities in China, the US, Abu Dhabi, India and the UK.
But even if you foresee the danger, it does not mean you can deal with it. After all, Kodak invented the first digital camera but failed to exploit the technology. **The >>incentive structures<< of many companies are to minimise risk rather than maximise opportunity.** Innovation is often a young company's game.
The second answer is that companies must look as intensively inwards as they do outwards (e.g. opposing actions). Well-managed companies enjoy many advantages: strong brands, masses of consumer data, valuable historic data sets, networks of smart people and easy access to capital. But what is often lacking is the ambition that marks out the new tech companies, their ability to innovate rapidly and their extraordinary connection with consumers. In that sense, the main competition of so many established companies lies within their own organisations.
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, constantly urges his employees to keep being radical. In his Founders' Letter of 2013, he warned that companies tend to grow comfortable doing what they have always done and only ever make incremental change. "This . . . leads to irrelevance over time," he wrote.
Google operates a 70/20/10 rule where employees are encouraged to spend 70 per cent of their time on their core business, 20 per cent on working with another team and 10 per cent on moonshots. How many traditional companies focus so much on radical ventures?
Vishal Sikka, chief executive of the Indian IT group Infosys, says that internal constraints can often be far more damaging than external threats. "The traditional definition of competition is irrelevant. We are increasingly competing against ourselves," he says.
Quoting Siddhartha by the German writer Hermann Hesse, Mr Sikka argues that companies remain the masters of their own salvation whatever the market pressures: "Knowledge can be communicated. Wisdom cannot." He adds: "Every company has to find its own unique wisdom." [This wisdom reference is reminiscent of Paul Graham's advice to do things that don't scale].
john.thornhill@ft.com
]]>innovation LBMA Mondelez competition risk-avoidance wisdom WhatsApp messaging incrementalism breakthroughs organizational_culture introspection ambitions uniqueness scouting moonshots BT complacency Infosys constraints threats peripheral_vision bureaucracies Fortune_500 radical staying_hungry irrelevance smart_people incentives mission-driven large_companies brands technological_change weaknesses tacit_knowledge Paul_Graham start_ups outward_looking unscalability opposing_actions digital_cameras digital_revolution historical_data shape-shifting flying_blind incentive_structureshttps://notes.pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c29bf73db68a/How to Get Big Companies to Buy Your Products and Services2016-03-01T14:56:05+00:00
http://leadssource.com/resources/articles/How-to-Penetrate-Big-Companies.pdf
jerrykinglarge_companies selling enterprise_clientshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:69f725fa3e43/Banks use ‘matchmaking service’ to link with fintech start-ups - FT.com2015-09-10T03:44:07+00:00
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/919e0168-4f08-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html#axzz3lGP1HOCO
jerrykingbanks fin-tech financial_services match-making large_companies brandshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:34714388f964/Why Small Businesses Are Starting to Win Again2015-01-25T08:36:02+00:00
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/small-bountiful-small-business-craft-beer?intcid=mod-latest
jerrykingsmall_business size scaling Tim_Wu Peter_Drucker differentiation trends breweries beers craftsmanship artisan_hobbies_&_crafts revenge_effects blind_spots personal_values market_segmentation mass_production decreasing_returns_to_scale aesthetics eco-friendly creating_demand food foodies gourmet large_companies portfolio_management Gulliver_strategies anti-formulaic formulaic standardization human_factor financial_assetshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:4696a34c79c6/If you want to be big in 2015, think big - The Globe and Mail2015-01-02T13:58:57+00:00
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/leadership-lab/if-you-want-to-be-big-in-2015-think-big/article22248627/
jerrykingpreparation growth small_business thought_leadership organizational_culture chutzpah large_companies individual_initiative thinking_big serving_othershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:c6137b233ed3/Big Firms Fill Funding Gap - The CFO Report - WSJ2014-11-20T14:00:09+00:00
http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2014/04/22/big-firms-fill-funding-gap/?KEYWORDS=Emily+Chasan+Crailar
jerrykinglarge_companies small_business funding alternative_lendinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:e7391924fdda/Peter Thiel on Why Big Companies Don’t Think Like Startups - WSJ - WSJ2014-11-18T17:25:45+00:00
http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-on-why-big-companies-dont-think-like-startups-1414962990?KEYWORDS=Berman+Thiel
jerrykinglarge_companies Peter_Thiel start_ups internal_politics Silicon_Valley valuations bubbles venture_capital founders risk-taking time_horizons vc office_politicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:21f37149b33d/The Risks of Mission-Driven Companies–Part 1 - Risk & Compliance - WSJ2014-10-10T14:46:15+00:00
http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2014/10/09/the-risks-of-mission-driven-companies-part-1-of-a-series/?mod=WSJ_mgmt_R%26C
jerrykingUnilever brands privately_held_companies Odwalla mission_statements Coca-Cola motivations values large_companies mission-driven cultural_clash books BEN_&_JERRY'Shttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:f2c5ee0c5ce0/The Big Data bounty: U.S. startups challenge agribusiness giants - The Globe and Mail2014-10-09T12:52:57+00:00
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farming-startups-idUSKCN0HX0C620141008
jerrykingmassive_data_sets farming agriculture start_ups agribusiness large_companieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:ec058beb0e60/Want to land a big client? Here are four important tips2014-08-12T21:37:16+00:00
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/leadership/four-important-tips-for-landing-a-major-client/article19887204/#dashboard/follows/
jerrykingmarketing business_development tips indispensable influence networking JCK due_diligence large_companies perseverance Communicating_&_Connecting value_propositions serving_others strategic_thinking client_development hard_work enterprise_clients hard_times office_politics Michael_McDerment the_right_people solutions solution-finders aspire_to_being_a_source_of_pleasure egocentrism what's_in_it_for_them?https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jerryking/b:877d50fed76f/