Competition never sleeps

Summary : It is a basic principle of tactical awareness that the competition never sleeps. You must assume that they are always trying to find areas of competitive advantage and working to reverse any areas of competitive disadvantage. During the eighties, the ascent of Japan's semiconductor equipment industry was accompanied by high customer satisfaction with their tools and general dissatisfaction with tools made by western suppliers...

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The 3 business integrat ...

Of the three business integration models: Horizontal, Vertical, and Matrix, matrix is the most powerful but also the most difficult to execute... The matrix integration model is new. Samsung has built it. With ... See more

Intel’s Branding Strate ...

One of the most important Maxims of Hi-Tech is to never confuse customers with names. This is something Intel regularly does with its open code naming of technologies, obtuse names like Montevina. It is intenti ... See more

CEOs must make on-the-s ...

Advantest, JSR, and TEL: Why they were so successful when so many others failed. ... See more

Narratives – not earnin ...

It is a strategic error to focus too closely on the more predictable control of quarterly earnings results, while providing a stale narrative for where future earnings growth will come from. Earnings are just t ... See more

To be truly innovative, ...

While counterintuitive, the reason why big innovations are truly big is that they invariably have something stupid about them that keep less innovative people from attempting to innovate. It’s far easier and le ... See more

The company’s name is i ...

If you think you can lose a lot by misnaming your product, imagine what happens when you misname your company? Worse, it can have long term consequences. Apple rose above the crowd, when PCs were just called ... See more

It’s all about good man ...

During the late eighties execs had to sit through lectures about the superiority of Japanese management. After sitting through one, Jim Morgan, of Applied Materials replied ... ... See more

SALES versus MARKETING

"SALES is persuading the Customer to WANT what we HAVE. MARKETING is being sure we HAVE what the Customer NEEDS, (now and in the future)." — Peter Hanley ... See more

Forecasting is essentia ...

Forecasting is as much a philosophy of time and space as it is a series of methodologies. Understand the philosophy and you will understand how to forecast better, which methods to choose in different situatio ... See more

The need for alignment ...

Poor alignment strategy is a common failure mode in many businesses. Chip Making is a very interesting industry to study with respect to this, as much can be learned. Parts of it are very commoditized and oth ... See more