April 19, 2012 1 Comment

The thing about Steve, pt. 2

Back in October ’11 I wrote a brief, belatedly respectful note about Steve Jobs death:

There’s been a lot written about the passing of Steve Jobs. Probably too much, from people who knew too little.

Not enough recognition has been given to the fact that a guy out of Silicon Valley built the most important animation studio since Disney and in doing so created a Hollywood powerhouse.

Brent Schlender at FastCompany continues the theme that Jobs’ defining years were the ones that many consider to have been spent in the wilderness. (Steve Jobs: Into the wild.)

Having been there myself I can state with some certainty that “the wilderness” isn’t anything of the sort. But one certainly gains new perspectives and a maturity that only comes from taking the time to truly reflect upon one’s purpose.
April 6, 2012

At its core, Groupon’s U.S. business is a receivables factoring business. They give loans to small businesses at a very steep rate (the price of the discount plus Groupon’s commission). Groupon is essentially a sub-prime lender that does zero risk assessment.

From Rocky Agrawal in his VentureBeat opinion piece, Why Groupon is poised for collapse.

I’ve talked before about how important it is for managers to understand the sector in which they’re really operating. This is no different for consumers looking to game a system, or entrepreneurs aiming to invent an entirely new one.

[Note: if you read the Rocky Agrawal piece, factor that he seems to have a philosophical opposition to group buying. Much of what he discusses in the article can be fixed via business model adjustments. Groupon is a work-in-progress, but it's also a stock I would never buy ... unless I intended to short it.]

The following two images form part of a set of 36 photographs from The Atlantic commemorating World Water Day on March 22. The captions are The Atlantic’s.

Polluted Jianhe River in Luoyang, China.
A journalist takes a sample of polluted red water from the Jianhe River in Luoyang, Henan province, China, on December 13, 2011. According to local media, the sources of the pollution were two illegal chemical plants discharging their production wastewater into the rain sewer pipes. (Reuters/China Daily)

Polluted Jianhe River in Luoyang, China.
A worker looks at a photographer from the door of a factory that manufactures screws and nuts, next to a polluted river in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, on March 15, 2012. China failed to meet its own targets for cleaning its air and water in 2011. (Reuters/Stringer)
March 22, 2012

Jobs helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. The output of this transformation was the following hits: iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes Store, Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention every Pixar film.

  1. Focus
  2. Simplify
  3. Take responsibility end-to-end
  4. When behind, leapfrog
  5. Put products before profits
  6. Don’t be a slave to focus groups
  7. Bend reality
  8. Impute
  9. Push for perfection
  10. Tolerate only ‘A’ players
  11. Engage face-to-face
  12. Know both the big picture and the details
  13. Combine the humanities with the sciences
  14. Stay hungry, stay foolish

Read Walter Isaacson’s article @ Harvard Business Review.

New York City Black and White

 

© 2012 “Obelix”, New York City Black and White.

Shout out to fellow Aussie Hugh Atkin @hmatkin, the genius behind this masterful mashup.

I admit I don’t understand or even appreciate all design works, but architecture fascinates me.

dupli.casa, designed by J Mayer H Architects, is a case in point: clinical yet welcoming, stark yet sympathetic to the environment. Quite remarkable work, although as one commenter on an architecture blog noted, “a house perfect for those who always wanted to live in an Apple product”.

  • dupli.casa J Mayer H
  • dupli.casa J Mayer H
  • dupli.casa J Mayer H