
A Business Lifeboat Strategy
In 1790, at about the inception of the US Constitution, the American lumber industry was centered in Maine, then part of Massachusetts. Overharvesting timber to meet the demands of a growing domestic market as well as a robust international market for ship masts, planking and other naval stores eventually started the industry’s westward migration, first to the […]
Some High-Tech Career Counseling Tips
I get a fair number of emails and calls from former colleagues and friends asking for career advice. I’m always happy to provide it and the process of doing so is both thought-provoking and fun. I have a learned a lot from having these conversations and have noticed a few patterns and principles in that […]

Writing Simply
Greg Mankiw writes about a carbon tax in the New York Times. Whether or not you agree with the economic arguments for the tax, it is easy to agree that Mankiw writes very well. Mankiw is a Professor at Harvard and was the Chief Economic Adviser to President George Bush. You would expect him to […]
Takeaways from Cloudforce, and a Bit More
At Cloudforce, New York last Friday, we heard a smattering of things we also got at Dreamforce. That was part of the plan because Salesforce bills its regional events as a chance to bring Dreamforce to the customer. As proof I heard that Marc Benioff and crew are off to Japan this week to do […]

Deciding the Future of Mobile?
The aftermath of the verdict from the patent infringement lawsuit between Apple and Samsung initially generated more heat than light. But the last few days have made up for the light that failed to emanate from the weekend’s id fest and Armageddon prediction Internet confab.

Jury Awards Apple a Giga-Buck
The headline in the New York Times brought what I had thought would be unambiguous good news or at the very least non-news to most people. A San Jose jury had found in favor of Apple in a patent infringement case against Samsung and awarded Apple one billion dollars in compensation. The suit involved infringement […]

China’s Incipient Recession
It was only a matter of time before slack demand in the rest of the world backed up into China, the world’s biggest manufacturer. According to an article in the New York Times finished goods have been piling up in Chinese warehouses, car dealers’ lots and in the spaces between other things in factories. China is […]

Multi-Tenancy Debate Won’t Go Away
Under more normal conditions I react to blogs on a low key basis. If I like something I might not even mention it and the same is true if I dislike or disagree with one. The blogosphere is a big place and it is unproductive to be running around all day saying “Yes, I like […]

MSFT loss, Changing the Rules of Engagement
What’s the world coming to? Microsoft lost money in the software business last quarter, the first loss in a decades long string of positive earnings from the world’s biggest software company. Sheesh! Yes, there were extenuating circumstances that you can read about here, but the loss signals the breadth and depth of the impact that […]