Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

A while back I introduced a simple metaphor I use to think about changes in the business world:

• Landscape and weather in the business world.

The idea is simple: some things, like Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, form the durable “landscape” of business, while others, like market fluctuations, should be regarded as temporary “weather.” Just like in real life, if you get caught in a hurricane, it could ruin you. But so long as you avoid the worst of the weather and abide by the realities of the landscape — don’t walk off a cliff, don’t try to build a skyscraper over the deep ocean — you’ve got a good chance to prosper.

These days, it seems to me that I see ever more news suggesting a wave of changes to the business landscape. The obvious ones — energy prices, the massive repricing of U.S. real estate — we’ve discussed before. But here are two more from today’s reading.

The average TV viewer is now out of the demo.

From Variety (via Darren Barefoot) — “TV viewers’ average age hits 50“:

According to a study released by Magna Global’s Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets’ average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That’s the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago — and the first time the nets’ median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.

One of my favorite adages in business is this: “If something can’t go on indefinitely, it won’t.” Sure, it seems obvious . . . except that people act contrary to this obvious truth all the time. As Darren rightly says in his post, “The writing seems to be on the wall for live television. As producers and advertisers react to this, expect some creative and hyper-irritating new advertising strategies.”

The only thing I might take issue with is “creative,” since I’ve been underwhelmed with the creativity coming out of the major networks in recent years. I might say “desperate” instead.

Microsoft no longer dictates your OS from on high.

From the NYT’s “Bits” blog (via James Fallows) — “Et Tu, Intel? Chip Giant Won’t Embrace Microsoft’s Windows Vista“:

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

Time was, Microsoft was the landscape of the desktop PC world, and it more or less dictated the weather as ewll. Any predictions of a steep decline in that realm would be premature, but it’s worth noting that previous versions of the Windows operating system, especially the NT and XP editions, rolled out and penetrated the market despite users’ objections.

Microsoft has long been in a position to say “Welcome to your new OS” whenever it rolled out a new version of Windows. But the wide backlash against Vista — which has been building for quite a while now — may indicate a change in that.

What other changes to the business landscape do you see?

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Related:

• Landscape and weather in the business world.
• Economic forecasting: How’s the weather for YOU?

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(Photo by jmagnusphoto.)