We are in a vicious cycle. “Best practices” as regards how to navigate during a crisis suggest that a firm should not stop investing during a downturn; actually a firm should push innovation and investments so as to: – offer differencing / innovative products during the recession in order to justify a price premium – [...]
Filed under: business, thoughts | Tagged: business, cash scarcity, innovation, investment, LinkedIn, recession, upturn | 3 Comments »
Sometimes, (often?) I have ideas for products / ventures outside of my field of interest. Since I do not plan on executing them, I thought I might as well give them away here for free. No guarantee that they will always be great but you’ll never know. I’ll call this new category: Ich’sights I was [...]
Filed under: business, thoughts | Tagged: bailout, Banking, Business Idea, Consumer Lending, LinkedIn, Venture | 4 Comments »
I just finished “Improve your profit and worker productivity at NO COST!”. While I acknowledge that succeeding in limiting employee salaries is a very compelling promise, I wonder if there are no hidden costs, unbeknownst or not to the authors. In particular, I challenge the value of the “We should be happy to have a [...]
Filed under: business, thoughts | Tagged: business, corporate values, management, management books | 1 Comment »
So the economy is tanking. Consumers are depressed. Credit is scarce. The debt amount is daunting. The system is broken, with more Madoffs to come out of the box. Chrysler might go underwater, if not GM… Wow. Just writing about this is actually depressing me too… How did we get there? I think there is [...]
Filed under: thoughts | Tagged: American Dream, Consumer Sentiment, Economy, LinkedIn, Obama, Obama Policies, recession | 3 Comments »
As I was recently reviewing documents regarding a company’s financials, highlighting the gaps vs. plan and their suggested actions to close the gaps, one thing really struck me; all documents were showing that the numbers were below target across all regions, businesses etc. especially from an EBITDA perspective and the Management’s one and only response [...]
Filed under: thoughts | Tagged: business, Cost-cutting, leadership, management, Private Equity, Short-termism, Stupidity, Target, thoughts, Value Creation, Value Destruction | 1 Comment »
I have been sitting at Starbucks for the past four hours, setting-up my wordpress account and writing my first post, the now infamous Hello World (non copyrighted. yet…). As I was out for a smoke, I realized that in the past four hours or so, besides buying (twice) an AT&T Internet connection pass I had [...]
Filed under: thoughts | Tagged: business, business model, hospitality, recession, recession-proof, restaurant, starbucks | Leave a Comment »
