17 Feb 10 Do the Biggie’s have a war cabinet?
Hit first, hit hard, keep hitting
I always wonder do the big global multinationals have a war cabinet. And if so how do they operate? Who is the enemy? Who is the friend? Here I mean the big multinationals who are in the new economy and not the old economy of military hardware, manufacturing, energy etc. I mean more like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, IBM, Amazon, Dell, HP etc … Observe most of them are American.
Looking at the announcements from the likes of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google recently they seem to be at war with each other. Facebook trying to bring down Gmail, Google trying to beat Twitter and Facebook with Buzz, Apple trying to beat Microsoft and Google and so on … It really looks like a Mexican stand-off.
But in this war against each other how do they react to each others moves. With budgets as big as a small country they need to have strategies and thinking which is not too far from managing and defending a country.
I am an admirer of Admiral John (Jackie) Fisher – generally regarded as one of the greatest admirals in the British Navy. Fisher is primarily celebrated as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than a seagoing admiral. One of his quotes springs to mind here – “Hit first, hit hard and keep hitting“. Now I truly believe in doing that to your competition. It is not survival it’s winning I care about when running a company. So does any of these biggie’s have such strategies and do they have admirals like Jackie who think like this?
Tags: Amazon, Apple, competition, Dell, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, innovation, Microsoft, MySpace, Strategy, Twitter, War Cabinet
07 Nov 09 Lack of Leadership in Europe
The recent talk about President of Europe got me thinking. Europe consists of one of the richest countries in the world, with potential to possibly shape a lot of world events. Yet how many recognisable world leaders do we have? I am not just talking about political leadership but also business leaders.
The reason I am alluding to this is – I was annoyed by the mention that the president of Europe should be a less known figure. Well apart from 5 people in Europe guess we only have less known and and probably unknown figures who will have no influence and no way to take any issue forward with the huge and influential powers of US, China, Russia, India etc. Now why is it that Europe craves for unknowns. While I am no fan of Tony Blair, I am baffled about any other choice. Do we really want a leader who has never been in front of China, Russia and US to negotiate difficult issues. Does anyone think the likes of Belgian and Luxembourgian Prime Ministers can do much? Or as Angela Merkel suggests a Eastern European unknown leader.
I would like to take this political leadership issue further. Take for example the issue of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian men. Europe showed no leadership and turned its eye away from facts. It was only the US and UK which forced their way in and bombed Serbia to stop the Bosnian war. Why didn’t EU show leadership there? In it’s own backyard? Isn’t something seriously wrong?
This brings me to another point. We know a lot of business leaders in the US – Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos etc … the list is long. I am not sure many even in Europe can come up with such a list of business leaders in the EU countries. Why is this the case even with EU having some world class companies. Is EU obsessed with being average? Is leadership or talking about it seen as a sin? Is talking about vision and inspiring others to follow suit seen as an affront? Is it any wonder that most businesses have role models in the US rather than in Europe? In my opinion this is a very serious issue that we need to look at in order to question why we do not yet have a silicon valley in Europe. Europe needs to stop being a least common denominator continent and more of a go getter only then can people at the bottom aspire bigger and better things.
Tags: Buusiness, Europe, Leadership, Politics, US
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