Ignore your competition

A few weeks ago I was flipping through a copy of the Australian Financial Review's magazine BOSS (which is not as dreary as it sounds). It contained a story about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com (perhaps you've heard of them?). It reminded me of seeing Bezos being interviewed by 60 Minutes back in the day when new web sites made it to mainstream media. I was impressed by his down-to-earth charm and nutty, un-self conscious laugh. At the time he also drove a humble Honda Accord to work (in spite of being worth 500 million).

In the BOSS article he made a remark I have been thinking about since: (paraphrased from memory):

Don't obsess about your competition. Obsess about your customers. After all when did your competition ever give you any money?

I don't think he was advocating operating in a vacuum. Obviously an airline needs to know about the weather as well as whether a passenger has a special dietary requirement or prefers Pinot Noir to Riesling.

Here's an interesting talk by Bezos at TED. Not a classic, but worth a look.

Comments

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

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