Comments on: When do you kill a business?

By: A tale of two tech giants: Motorola and Hewlett-Packard. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:37:49 +0000

[...] When do you kill a business? (See the last item in the post.) [...]

By: What should you do about weaknesses? -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

What should you do about weaknesses? -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:15:24 +0000

[...] asking because of a comment made by Devin, a business student who is one of this blog’s most devoted commenters. He was responding to [...]

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:05:33 +0000

Devin — SWOT analysis is highly useful, but note that, in very many cases, “You must find your weaknesses and discover how to make them strengths” is not only unfruitful, but in fact actively damaging to your potential.

By all means, you should identify your weaknesses so that you can minimize the damage they do to you. But in most contexts, trying to make something you’re bad into a strength is a fool’s errand.

This is not, by the way, an off-the cuff opinion of my own — it’s been studied extensively, e.g. by Marcus Buckingham.

I’ll write more about this in a follow-up post, because I think it’s a vital issue to explore and understand.

By: Devin @ CoolProducts

Devin @ CoolProducts — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:54:08 +0000

It’s all about SWOT analysis. Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat. You must find your weaknesses and discover how to make them strengths; find the threats looming out there, and figure out a way to convert that threat into an opportunity.

By: Telecom Solutions India

Telecom Solutions India — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:52:47 +0000

Yeah i very much agree ….
once the people actually realize where they belong … things do change for the good ….
but the actual realization is what takes time … and usually happens when there is another threat looming large…

By: Devin @ CoolProducts

Devin @ CoolProducts — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:48:58 +0000

“Maybe the reason newspapers could go out of business is because they think they’re in the newspaper business instead of the news gathering and dissemination business. To hang on to a two century old technology just because that’s the way we’ve always done it, that’s a recipe for failure.”

Hit the nail on the head. When television first came out, the movie industry was scrambling; they were about to be slaughtered by this new television tech and were panicking! How did they survive? They realized that they were not in the “movie” industry, but in the “entertainment” industry; thus allowing them to expand into new fields and survive to play another day.

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:47:29 +0000

The New York Times has actually made some pretty impressive investments in digital media and technology. It appears someone internally “gets it” but the lunatics in charge have too many sacred cows to slaughter and too much internal politics staying their hands.