Since you’re reading this web log, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’ve spent enough time online to have noticed the banner ads that appear on most free-content sites. This morning, for example, the weather site I’ve been watching has banner ads for Maytag appliances and some company selling radio-controlled helicopters over the Internet. I’m not sure either of these companies have anything to do with the question of whether there will be weather later today, but I can’t say I care about these ads being there one way or another. I believe in the First Amendment as applied to advertising, and I don’t see anything wrong with free content providers attempting to make a little money on the side. What interests me is whether any of you do…
Some time ago, the nice people who provide me with this blog space added a tab called “monetize” to the dashboard I see when I log in. This turns out to be less hype than it is a scheme by which I allow them to put up banner ads in the sidebar (and probably top and bottom, too) of the page this blog appears on; if enough of you visit the blog and click on those banners, I get a very small amount of money; if you don’t, then it’s just another collection of annoying banner ads clogging up the Internet. Which leads me to the above-referenced ethics question: If you are already providing free content to your readers, do you also have an obligation to keep your web page free of advertising? Or is the trivial inconvenience of having to see ads for washing machines and radio-controlled helicopters too much to inflict on people (even assuming that they don’t just ignore the ads the way I do)?
Before you answer that, consider the other half of the relationship. The folks at Blogspot are providing this space to me, free of charge, and while it could be argued that this does not actually cost them anything, they do at least have to expend a certain amount of bandwidth and storage space to keep this blog operating. In return, however, I have been giving them absolutely nothing for the past two years. Do I have any ethical responsibility to allow them to make their cut on the display ads that would appear on my blog, if I were to monetize things? I should note here in passing that they haven’t made any effort whatsoever to suggest that I do so; they didn’t even email me when they put the “monetize” tab onto the dashboard…
Of course, one could argue that since Blogspot is a service of Google, it’s therefore not exactly a financial burden on anyone. In fact, it’s probably true that Google benefits just from having the largest possible community of bloggers writing on the site they provide, which helps to explain why there is no charge for having a web log here and no pressure to put advertising on your blog page. Still, I have to wonder if any of that matters from a truly ethical sense. Put simply, do I have an obligation to my readers (to keep this blog page ad-free) or to my host company (to allow them to make money in exchange for hosting my blog for free)? Since the odds of getting enough traffic through this page for me to make anything are effectively nil, serving my own interests is not really an issue; the question is, whose interests should come first?
It’s worth thinking about…
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Grad School Diaries: The Kingsfield Principle
Had I been expecting to have an easy, simple passage through the doctoral program, my hopes would have been dashed on the first week of classes, when I had my first quantitative class. As it happens, I had actually been listening when the literally dozens of scholars told me about the process, and thus I was not even mildly surprised at the life-or-death struggle into which I had fallen – but on that first class meeting there were a number of events that confirmed that things were as bad as I had anticipated they would be. Beginning with meeting our instructor in a professional setting for the first time…
Older readers and any film students reading this post will probably remember a 1973 movie called “The Paper Chase” , but for anyone who doesn’t, the film is the story of a first-year law student, ostensibly at Harvard, who is attempting to survive what was at the time still considered to be the best – and the toughest – law program in the world. While the protagonist suffers from some classic callow youth issues, and is actually up against a course of study that has defeated a lot of good people, his single largest problem isn’t a class or a concept, but rather the legendary Professor Kingsfield, in whose class he is floundering…
Although there are a number of sub-plots( and even a romantic sub-plot) in the film, it’s really more of a coming-of-age story than anything else. Over the course of the movie, it becomes clear that while the professor can be sardonic, acerbic, and occasionally over-the-top, he can’t really be seen as evil or malevolent, even by the young man who is having a difficult year in his class. Kingsfield’s function is to make sure that the standards of the school are upheld – that everyone who receives a law degree from his institution, and profits from the reputations of all of those who have gone before, is actually deserving of that reputation and likely to contribute to it in the future…
Students of business will recognize this as part of what we usually call branding – the process of establishing the reputation of your product and the company that produces it. What you may not realize (I didn’t until a certain highly-ranked academic explained it to me) is that all professional schools and most doctoral programs have such a person. And while this individual is sometimes dismissed as a sadist, an egomaniac, or an ivory-tower egghead with no connection to the real world, his or her job is actually to make sure that all of the new candidates for a doctorate are actually good enough to make it through the program, take up a position in the world of academia, and carry on the work being done in the field without embarrassing the school that awarded their degrees…
Because while no one will actually say so, the truth is that this is an apprenticeship as much as it is a professional school, and that means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to make the judgment call about every one of us: do we really have what it takes? And the professor who takes on that responsibility is usually one of the most experienced members of the faculty; someone who really can tell the poseurs from the real thing, and the bright young hopefuls who aren’t worth the price of an e-mail telling them to quit from the ones who might, one day, actually contribute to the discipline we are attempting to join. It’s an impossible job that has absolutely no upside. Do it right and people will think terrible things about you; do it wrong, and your program’s reputation will go right down the drain, followed by your school and eventually the entire University. But the cost of NOT doing it at all is too horrible even to consider. It’s the Kingsfield Principle, and it’s what makes all of us who we are – or at least who we are trying to be…
And this week we met our own school's answer to Kingsfield in class for the first time. We are only 5 days into this odyssey so far, but if this class was any indication of things to come, I can honestly say that any of us who survive to be called "Professor" ourselves will have earned that honor...
Older readers and any film students reading this post will probably remember a 1973 movie called “The Paper Chase” , but for anyone who doesn’t, the film is the story of a first-year law student, ostensibly at Harvard, who is attempting to survive what was at the time still considered to be the best – and the toughest – law program in the world. While the protagonist suffers from some classic callow youth issues, and is actually up against a course of study that has defeated a lot of good people, his single largest problem isn’t a class or a concept, but rather the legendary Professor Kingsfield, in whose class he is floundering…
Although there are a number of sub-plots( and even a romantic sub-plot) in the film, it’s really more of a coming-of-age story than anything else. Over the course of the movie, it becomes clear that while the professor can be sardonic, acerbic, and occasionally over-the-top, he can’t really be seen as evil or malevolent, even by the young man who is having a difficult year in his class. Kingsfield’s function is to make sure that the standards of the school are upheld – that everyone who receives a law degree from his institution, and profits from the reputations of all of those who have gone before, is actually deserving of that reputation and likely to contribute to it in the future…
Students of business will recognize this as part of what we usually call branding – the process of establishing the reputation of your product and the company that produces it. What you may not realize (I didn’t until a certain highly-ranked academic explained it to me) is that all professional schools and most doctoral programs have such a person. And while this individual is sometimes dismissed as a sadist, an egomaniac, or an ivory-tower egghead with no connection to the real world, his or her job is actually to make sure that all of the new candidates for a doctorate are actually good enough to make it through the program, take up a position in the world of academia, and carry on the work being done in the field without embarrassing the school that awarded their degrees…
Because while no one will actually say so, the truth is that this is an apprenticeship as much as it is a professional school, and that means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to make the judgment call about every one of us: do we really have what it takes? And the professor who takes on that responsibility is usually one of the most experienced members of the faculty; someone who really can tell the poseurs from the real thing, and the bright young hopefuls who aren’t worth the price of an e-mail telling them to quit from the ones who might, one day, actually contribute to the discipline we are attempting to join. It’s an impossible job that has absolutely no upside. Do it right and people will think terrible things about you; do it wrong, and your program’s reputation will go right down the drain, followed by your school and eventually the entire University. But the cost of NOT doing it at all is too horrible even to consider. It’s the Kingsfield Principle, and it’s what makes all of us who we are – or at least who we are trying to be…
And this week we met our own school's answer to Kingsfield in class for the first time. We are only 5 days into this odyssey so far, but if this class was any indication of things to come, I can honestly say that any of us who survive to be called "Professor" ourselves will have earned that honor...
Friday, May 29, 2009
Was That A Goat?
Back in the day, it was commonplace to see some completely whacky promotional concepts used to attract potential customers to automobile dealerships in order to sell cars. One dealer operating in Southern California would offer potential customers 10,000 Blue-Chip Stamps just to test-drive one of their vehicles, and over the years we saw offers of a free toaster, food and/or drink, sports tickets, team merchandise, trips to amusement parks, even free elephant rides, just for coming into the dealership and test-driving one of the vehicles that the dealer was having trouble unloading on its own merits. In recent years, we’ve seen even more elaborate rewards offered for actually purchasing one of these cars, including offers of free maintenance for life, three years of reduced-cost gasoline, or even offers to buy the car back if you don’t want it/can’t afford it anymore. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen livestock appear in such an offer…
A story being reported this week in the Courier & Mail of Queensland, Australia, indicates that Mitsubishi Motors is offering a free goat to any customer in New Zealand who purchases one of its new Triton utility vehicles. The idea here being that goats are also tough, hearty, useful things that can go over any terrain and are helpful to farmers. Apparently, people in New Zealand like goats a whole lot more than we had realized. Of course, for those who don’t live on a farm (or already have a sufficient number of goats), the company is also offering a “no-goat” option that includes such extras as a 5-year/100,000 km warranty and $500 worth of accessories. Since each of the elements offered in the “no-goat” package costs more than an actual goat does, we should probably conclude that the goat offer is a joke…
Which is not to say, of course, that Mitsubishi wouldn’t give you an actual goat if you wanted one; I suspect that at least some of their customers from more rural parts of the country will request the goat option, if only for the fun of watching their local dealer go down to the nearest goat farm and actually purchase a goat. And it’s important to note that in the current day, most auto makers have some form of incentive for purchasing one of their vehicles, even if that’s just an extended warranty or a roadside assistance program. All Mitsubishi is actually doing here is using a common form of business promotion to make a most uncommon offer – and hopefully draw your attention…
In the average week, you’ll probably see dozens of ads for different kinds of cars – possibly thousands or millions of them, if you are watching sports on television for any significant part of the week. This huge amount of clutter, or “noise,” will tend to keep you from paying attention to any one specific ad, even if you are actually in the market to purchase a new vehicle. If the goat ad cuts through the clutter and draws your attention despite the mass of background noise, then the while promotion has served its purpose; if you actually buy the goat-car, so much the better…
And since an actual goat typically costs $100 to $300, while the “no-goat” package has at least $1,000 worth of goods and services, and automobile “rebate” programs can sometimes reach into the $5,000 to $10,000 range, Mitsubishi would probably be quite happy to have its local dealer go out and buy you a goat. Assuming that you want one, of course…
A story being reported this week in the Courier & Mail of Queensland, Australia, indicates that Mitsubishi Motors is offering a free goat to any customer in New Zealand who purchases one of its new Triton utility vehicles. The idea here being that goats are also tough, hearty, useful things that can go over any terrain and are helpful to farmers. Apparently, people in New Zealand like goats a whole lot more than we had realized. Of course, for those who don’t live on a farm (or already have a sufficient number of goats), the company is also offering a “no-goat” option that includes such extras as a 5-year/100,000 km warranty and $500 worth of accessories. Since each of the elements offered in the “no-goat” package costs more than an actual goat does, we should probably conclude that the goat offer is a joke…
Which is not to say, of course, that Mitsubishi wouldn’t give you an actual goat if you wanted one; I suspect that at least some of their customers from more rural parts of the country will request the goat option, if only for the fun of watching their local dealer go down to the nearest goat farm and actually purchase a goat. And it’s important to note that in the current day, most auto makers have some form of incentive for purchasing one of their vehicles, even if that’s just an extended warranty or a roadside assistance program. All Mitsubishi is actually doing here is using a common form of business promotion to make a most uncommon offer – and hopefully draw your attention…
In the average week, you’ll probably see dozens of ads for different kinds of cars – possibly thousands or millions of them, if you are watching sports on television for any significant part of the week. This huge amount of clutter, or “noise,” will tend to keep you from paying attention to any one specific ad, even if you are actually in the market to purchase a new vehicle. If the goat ad cuts through the clutter and draws your attention despite the mass of background noise, then the while promotion has served its purpose; if you actually buy the goat-car, so much the better…
And since an actual goat typically costs $100 to $300, while the “no-goat” package has at least $1,000 worth of goods and services, and automobile “rebate” programs can sometimes reach into the $5,000 to $10,000 range, Mitsubishi would probably be quite happy to have its local dealer go out and buy you a goat. Assuming that you want one, of course…
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Let’s Go To Newark!
“Why,” I hear some of you asking, “Would we want to go to Newark?” Well, probably you wouldn’t want to, unless you were going to catch an airplane from there to somewhere else, or perhaps continue on into New York, which is just the other side of the river. And even if you were, you’d be more likely to fly into one of the two New York airports (Kennedy or La Guardia) and take a cab from there – unless you live in a small town in Mid-Michigan, from which you can’t get a direct flight to anywhere in the New York City area without first flying to Chicago or Detroit. Until now, that is…
I was most interested to note that the latest iteration of the ultra-cheap no-frills airline that charges extra for absolutely everything except the actual seats is going to be connecting Lansing, Michigan with Newark’s Liberty Airport. Jet America is going to be operating what is actually a public charter service, not an airline, connecting Lansing and two other underserved Midwest cities with Newark and also to Melbourne/Vero Beach, Florida. According to the USA Today article referenced above, most of the flights will be around $69 until the price of jet gas rises again, but there will also be a certain number of promotional fares at just $9 available when the carrier has unsold seats available. Which is probably less than the cab ride to or from the airport is going to cost you…
Readers who were with us for the discussions of loss-leader offers over the past few years will recognize these $9 fares as a similar concept; it doesn’t matter if the airline makes nothing (or even loses money) on those tickets, provided that it gets new customers familiar with their service and convinces them to come back and purchase real tickets at some later date. A much more disturbing issue is that we’ve seen this particular loss-leader program before – last year, when Skybus Charter, out of Columbus, Ohio, was offering $10 promotional tickets until the high price of jet fuel put them out of business in April 2008. It wouldn’t be much of a worry, except the price of regular unleaded gasoline has risen $1.20 in the past four months – and the entrepreneur behind Jet America is the same guy who founded Skybus in 2007…
So anyone from Lansing – or Toledo, South Bend or Melbourne/Vero Beach, for that matter – who wants to take advantage of rare low prices and ever rarer direct service to Newark would be well-advised to cash in on this offer quickly, before the company folds or the airplane they’re using (it’s a single chartered 737 as of this posting) starts to develop mechanical issues. If enough people do, the carrier might even survive long enough to honor your tickets and give you the chance to visit moderately distant places on a reasonable budget before they ship a defective oxygen generator, fail to de-ice the wings, employ chatty flight crew with insufficient flight experience on a hazardous route, or simply discover that the old line about insanity being defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result is more sad than funny, but is still quite true…
Meanwhile, I’m going to look into investing in bus companies…
I was most interested to note that the latest iteration of the ultra-cheap no-frills airline that charges extra for absolutely everything except the actual seats is going to be connecting Lansing, Michigan with Newark’s Liberty Airport. Jet America is going to be operating what is actually a public charter service, not an airline, connecting Lansing and two other underserved Midwest cities with Newark and also to Melbourne/Vero Beach, Florida. According to the USA Today article referenced above, most of the flights will be around $69 until the price of jet gas rises again, but there will also be a certain number of promotional fares at just $9 available when the carrier has unsold seats available. Which is probably less than the cab ride to or from the airport is going to cost you…
Readers who were with us for the discussions of loss-leader offers over the past few years will recognize these $9 fares as a similar concept; it doesn’t matter if the airline makes nothing (or even loses money) on those tickets, provided that it gets new customers familiar with their service and convinces them to come back and purchase real tickets at some later date. A much more disturbing issue is that we’ve seen this particular loss-leader program before – last year, when Skybus Charter, out of Columbus, Ohio, was offering $10 promotional tickets until the high price of jet fuel put them out of business in April 2008. It wouldn’t be much of a worry, except the price of regular unleaded gasoline has risen $1.20 in the past four months – and the entrepreneur behind Jet America is the same guy who founded Skybus in 2007…
So anyone from Lansing – or Toledo, South Bend or Melbourne/Vero Beach, for that matter – who wants to take advantage of rare low prices and ever rarer direct service to Newark would be well-advised to cash in on this offer quickly, before the company folds or the airplane they’re using (it’s a single chartered 737 as of this posting) starts to develop mechanical issues. If enough people do, the carrier might even survive long enough to honor your tickets and give you the chance to visit moderately distant places on a reasonable budget before they ship a defective oxygen generator, fail to de-ice the wings, employ chatty flight crew with insufficient flight experience on a hazardous route, or simply discover that the old line about insanity being defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result is more sad than funny, but is still quite true…
Meanwhile, I’m going to look into investing in bus companies…
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A Time to Worry?
Sometimes there are things in the news online that just make you cringe. Well, that make me cringe, anyway. Times when a specific story is reporting bad news, without even realizing that the fact this is being reported is bad news in itself. A good example turned up on the Wall Street Journal online site today. This story is talking about how rap performers are being forced to downscale their more outrageous displays of conspicuous consumption by purchasing fewer and smaller items of jewelry. It’s bad news, in the sense that these individuals are a bellwether for American consumer behavior in general; lower budgets for any large community of pop artists indicates that people all over the country (and possibly all over the world) are spending less money on entertainment, and this does not bode well for purchases of larger goods. But it’s even worse that this is being reported on at all…
Consider some of the other things that could be occupying an investigative reporter’s time in the current economic climate. Granted that there’s already enough ink (real and electronic) being spilled about the automotive industry bailouts, there are still thousands of American companies living on a razor-thin margin of survival, millions of Americans who are fighting to afford the basic necessities of life, and hundreds of financial institutions that have effectively defrauded their customers or the government (or both), all of which we haven’t heard about yet. But that’s not the worst part; the worst of it is that this story really is an indicator of just how bad things are getting. As silly as it might sound for members of the rap and hip-hop community to be questioning each other’s authenticity because of the amount of ugly, heavy gold and diamond jewelry they’re wearing (or aren’t), this one story foretells its own far-reaching impacts…
Consider, for example, all of the people who work for the record companies that are drawing less business. Yes, the handful of people at the top may be offensively rich vultures who are getting what they deserve, but all of the people who work for them are going to be impacted by this, too, and most of them are working for low basic wages. Then we have the independent record companies, most of which are entrepreneurial firms run by a small team (or even a single person) who never had huge cash reserves in the first place. The same comments apply to the people who import, design, produce and sell the jewelry in question; the people at the top may not be harmed by this downturn, but all of the people who count on those companies for their living are going to get hurt – and so are all of the people who work for the vendors that supply those companies…
I know it’s a long way around to get to this point, but I think it was worth the trip (or I wouldn’t have wasted your time with it). You’ve heard the old saying about “A rising tide raises all boats?” Let me suggest that the converse is also true; something that is bad for the economy is bad for all of us, no matter how far removed we happen to be from the people who are being directly affected by the bad news…
And I’d still really like to have someone go and ask why nobody thought to stop “adjusting” all of the adjustable rate mortgages BEFORE they managed to put the entire U.S. real estate market into the tank…
Consider some of the other things that could be occupying an investigative reporter’s time in the current economic climate. Granted that there’s already enough ink (real and electronic) being spilled about the automotive industry bailouts, there are still thousands of American companies living on a razor-thin margin of survival, millions of Americans who are fighting to afford the basic necessities of life, and hundreds of financial institutions that have effectively defrauded their customers or the government (or both), all of which we haven’t heard about yet. But that’s not the worst part; the worst of it is that this story really is an indicator of just how bad things are getting. As silly as it might sound for members of the rap and hip-hop community to be questioning each other’s authenticity because of the amount of ugly, heavy gold and diamond jewelry they’re wearing (or aren’t), this one story foretells its own far-reaching impacts…
Consider, for example, all of the people who work for the record companies that are drawing less business. Yes, the handful of people at the top may be offensively rich vultures who are getting what they deserve, but all of the people who work for them are going to be impacted by this, too, and most of them are working for low basic wages. Then we have the independent record companies, most of which are entrepreneurial firms run by a small team (or even a single person) who never had huge cash reserves in the first place. The same comments apply to the people who import, design, produce and sell the jewelry in question; the people at the top may not be harmed by this downturn, but all of the people who count on those companies for their living are going to get hurt – and so are all of the people who work for the vendors that supply those companies…
I know it’s a long way around to get to this point, but I think it was worth the trip (or I wouldn’t have wasted your time with it). You’ve heard the old saying about “A rising tide raises all boats?” Let me suggest that the converse is also true; something that is bad for the economy is bad for all of us, no matter how far removed we happen to be from the people who are being directly affected by the bad news…
And I’d still really like to have someone go and ask why nobody thought to stop “adjusting” all of the adjustable rate mortgages BEFORE they managed to put the entire U.S. real estate market into the tank…
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Watch This Space
I suppose it’s an occupational hazard, rather like a lawyer seeing the legal ramifications of everything, or a lighting technician spotting all of the shadows and glare where shadows and glare are not supposed to be, or a graphics designer noticing all of the places where the font looks really ugly. I’m a strategy scholar and for years was a management consultant working with small businesses, and I notice empty store fronts and wonder what type of business should go in there…
Last year, of course, I was speculating about the new business that might go into the corner lot in Westwood, near UCLA; today I found myself speculating about an empty store front near our current breakfast place in East Lansing. Based on the detritus visible through the window, the store was at some point an A & P market, but as we never saw it in operation, I can’t say for sure. A quick check of their website shows that the company has no presence in the area (there are no store locations within 30 miles of the East Lansing zip code, for example) and does not appear to be expanding in this direction…
In any case, it’s probably not a good place for a small market or convenience store. The same strip mall includes a Rite Aid (which sells food, beverages and sundries) and several food-service businesses, including the Grand Traverse Pie Company where we take our breakfasts. Even worse, in terms of this market segment, is the Quality Dairy location a few blocks up, which covers most of the same product categories. There are other markets in the area, as well, including two Meijer hypermarkets within a five-mile radius; clearly this is a problematic place for a supermarket. But that only considers what you shouldn’t put there; let’s consider what might actually work, instead…
The obvious choice would be a retail store of some kind; preferably something that could appeal to the huge population of MSU students living (literally) all around it. I’d like an Apple Store, since the nearest one is over an hour away without traffic, but I’m not sure there are enough people with enough disposable income in the area to make it viable. Any of the clothing store chains that cater to college-age people might be able to make a go of the location, although that would probably not do me any good personally. A store selling computer games and/or video games might do well there, if it can compete with the Blockbuster down the road and a couple of other potential competitors. Inexpensive food service might work, if you can think of a format that isn’t already available on that part of Grand River Avenue that college students would like…
Alternately, you might consider what kinds of products or services people in the area would like but don’t already have available. Students living in the residence halls need any number of house wares they may not have brought with them from home (or which their roommates may have stolen and sold for beer money); homeowners in the neighborhood might appreciate a hardware store or auto-parts supply store; people in the area who do arts and crafts might appreciate a studio providing instruction in various kinds of craft projects or a “craft mall” where you can sell your work on consignment; any number of specialty stores could work depending on the demographic (candles, aromatherapy, collectables and memorabilia, sporting goods, guns and gunsmith services, signs and banners, audio/visual services and equipment, etc.), but you’d want to be sure there were enough potential customers in the area to make it work…
I’ll keep you posted, of course. But that space was empty when we rolled into East Lansing eleven months ago, and there’s no indication that anything is going to change any time soon…
Last year, of course, I was speculating about the new business that might go into the corner lot in Westwood, near UCLA; today I found myself speculating about an empty store front near our current breakfast place in East Lansing. Based on the detritus visible through the window, the store was at some point an A & P market, but as we never saw it in operation, I can’t say for sure. A quick check of their website shows that the company has no presence in the area (there are no store locations within 30 miles of the East Lansing zip code, for example) and does not appear to be expanding in this direction…
In any case, it’s probably not a good place for a small market or convenience store. The same strip mall includes a Rite Aid (which sells food, beverages and sundries) and several food-service businesses, including the Grand Traverse Pie Company where we take our breakfasts. Even worse, in terms of this market segment, is the Quality Dairy location a few blocks up, which covers most of the same product categories. There are other markets in the area, as well, including two Meijer hypermarkets within a five-mile radius; clearly this is a problematic place for a supermarket. But that only considers what you shouldn’t put there; let’s consider what might actually work, instead…
The obvious choice would be a retail store of some kind; preferably something that could appeal to the huge population of MSU students living (literally) all around it. I’d like an Apple Store, since the nearest one is over an hour away without traffic, but I’m not sure there are enough people with enough disposable income in the area to make it viable. Any of the clothing store chains that cater to college-age people might be able to make a go of the location, although that would probably not do me any good personally. A store selling computer games and/or video games might do well there, if it can compete with the Blockbuster down the road and a couple of other potential competitors. Inexpensive food service might work, if you can think of a format that isn’t already available on that part of Grand River Avenue that college students would like…
Alternately, you might consider what kinds of products or services people in the area would like but don’t already have available. Students living in the residence halls need any number of house wares they may not have brought with them from home (or which their roommates may have stolen and sold for beer money); homeowners in the neighborhood might appreciate a hardware store or auto-parts supply store; people in the area who do arts and crafts might appreciate a studio providing instruction in various kinds of craft projects or a “craft mall” where you can sell your work on consignment; any number of specialty stores could work depending on the demographic (candles, aromatherapy, collectables and memorabilia, sporting goods, guns and gunsmith services, signs and banners, audio/visual services and equipment, etc.), but you’d want to be sure there were enough potential customers in the area to make it work…
I’ll keep you posted, of course. But that space was empty when we rolled into East Lansing eleven months ago, and there’s no indication that anything is going to change any time soon…
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Ethics of Franchises
With all of the auto dealerships being closed down lately, we’ve been hearing a lot of commentary on the news about how one or the other of the Big Three automakers has pulled someone’s franchise after sixty years; about the three generations of the family that have given their lives to this business; about all of the things that the owners, their families, their communities, even their states have done for the company, and how it isn’t right that they’re being let go without warning – and apparently without rhyme or reason, in some cases. I’m not going to comment on the closures themselves, or the strategy which is driving them, since without a detailed examination of the companies’ financial and sales records, I really don’t know if these are good moves or foolish ones. But the elimination of dealerships by cancelling (or failing to renew) franchise agreements raises some interesting ethical questions, and I thought we should take a closer look…
First of all, it’s important to note that most auto dealers are, in fact, franchised businesses, operating under a contractual agreement with one or more divisions of a major automaker. As such, they pay a franchise fee to the parent corporation each year, and are required to both purchase product from the franchisor and also operate according to the standards of that company. It’s an arrangement that usually works well for both parties; the franchisee gets to sell (and service and lease and so on) automobiles without the impossible challenge of starting their own car company, and the automakers get to sell their product through a huge network of retail locations without actually having to hire, employ or train any of the people involved, purchase or maintain any of the facilities, operate any of the service departments, and so on. Both parties are, in effect, using the other’s assets and capital to base their operations, and specializing their own business operations to only a part of the total operation. Just as happens with pizzas, hamburgers, and convenience stores…
Of course, since this is a contractual relationship, it is in the interests of both parties to deal fairly with the other. If the automaker feels a franchise is not making enough money (e.g. not contributing enough money to their total operations) they are perfectly within their legal rights to cancel – or at least not renew – the franchise contract. By the same token, if the dealer feels that they are not being treated well by the company, they are entirely within their rights to opt out of (or not renew) their contract, and find another brand of cars to sell. The real question is, do these partners have any ethical responsibilities, to each other or to the large communities in which they operate, to act in the other company’s best interests?
It has been argued, for example, that the automakers have a responsibility to the dealers who have remained loyal to their parent companies throughout the years, despite incursions by foreign car makers and gasoline crises, and still do their best to sell the franchisor’s cars. Some dealers have gone so far as to claim that the automakers have a responsibility to the communities where the dealership provides jobs, puts money into the local economies, supports local charities, and so on. But does that mean the dealers have a responsibility to the parent corporations, as well? If their performance is costing the parent company money, and increasing the chance that their franchisor will go under, taking tens of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars worth of the national economy with it, don’t they have an obligation to surrender their franchises and go do something else?
Normally we expect the larger company to make sacrifices on behalf of their franchisees and the local economies those franchise holders represent. But if the time has actually come when the franchisors have to back out of the relationship in order to stay afloat, do the dealerships have any obligation to cooperate with these moves? Or should they only be responsible to their own communities, employees, and owners?
It’s worth thinking about…
First of all, it’s important to note that most auto dealers are, in fact, franchised businesses, operating under a contractual agreement with one or more divisions of a major automaker. As such, they pay a franchise fee to the parent corporation each year, and are required to both purchase product from the franchisor and also operate according to the standards of that company. It’s an arrangement that usually works well for both parties; the franchisee gets to sell (and service and lease and so on) automobiles without the impossible challenge of starting their own car company, and the automakers get to sell their product through a huge network of retail locations without actually having to hire, employ or train any of the people involved, purchase or maintain any of the facilities, operate any of the service departments, and so on. Both parties are, in effect, using the other’s assets and capital to base their operations, and specializing their own business operations to only a part of the total operation. Just as happens with pizzas, hamburgers, and convenience stores…
Of course, since this is a contractual relationship, it is in the interests of both parties to deal fairly with the other. If the automaker feels a franchise is not making enough money (e.g. not contributing enough money to their total operations) they are perfectly within their legal rights to cancel – or at least not renew – the franchise contract. By the same token, if the dealer feels that they are not being treated well by the company, they are entirely within their rights to opt out of (or not renew) their contract, and find another brand of cars to sell. The real question is, do these partners have any ethical responsibilities, to each other or to the large communities in which they operate, to act in the other company’s best interests?
It has been argued, for example, that the automakers have a responsibility to the dealers who have remained loyal to their parent companies throughout the years, despite incursions by foreign car makers and gasoline crises, and still do their best to sell the franchisor’s cars. Some dealers have gone so far as to claim that the automakers have a responsibility to the communities where the dealership provides jobs, puts money into the local economies, supports local charities, and so on. But does that mean the dealers have a responsibility to the parent corporations, as well? If their performance is costing the parent company money, and increasing the chance that their franchisor will go under, taking tens of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars worth of the national economy with it, don’t they have an obligation to surrender their franchises and go do something else?
Normally we expect the larger company to make sacrifices on behalf of their franchisees and the local economies those franchise holders represent. But if the time has actually come when the franchisors have to back out of the relationship in order to stay afloat, do the dealerships have any obligation to cooperate with these moves? Or should they only be responsible to their own communities, employees, and owners?
It’s worth thinking about…
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Grad School Diaries: The Odysseus Factor
So here I am, 43 years old, with jackscrews in my neck and almost no hair left on the top of my head, going back to school like it was the most natural thing in the world. I’m a doctoral student, at an age when most men have given up and started counting down the days until retirement, their minds never further from the mundane than their dreams of a larger bass boat, a shiny new sports car, or a better golf game, or perhaps all of the above. Never even realizing that they have given up; that the only appreciable change left in their lives between now and the grave is the day they leave their mind-numbing jobs for an even less engaging life as retirees with nothing to occupy their time at all. Which goes a long way toward explaining why I’ve become a grad student again, actually…
So I quit my safe, steady, well-paying job at UCLA Extension, left the South Bay (the place I love most in this world), convinced my wife to quit her job and sell our house and come with me to central Michigan, a place neither of us knew anything about, and helped to pack up our things and go. A few months later we found ourselves here, in East Lansing, home of Michigan State University (hereinafter MSU), and the Broad School of Business – easily the best of the three graduate programs that accepted me. It’s not really as dramatic as it sounds; it’s not like we can’t go home again (if LA is still home) in a few hours by airplane, or like East Lansing isn’t a beautiful place, with many new things to see and experience and learn about. It’s not even as if we weren’t both ready for a new challenge and a new stage of life. That’s not it…
I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding this path, afraid that I didn’t have the patience to be a teacher, or the work ethic to survive several years of insanely difficult effort, or (it will out!) even the intellectual ability to operate at this level. It’s not easy to admit, even to myself, even to this blank white space; I’m generally considered to be afraid of nothing, and I’ve worked hard to live up to that reputation for most of my life. But I have been afraid of this, for many long years, and the white-hot adrenaline burn I keep feeling in my gut is a reminder that along with all of the other emotions of transition, and challenge, and alienation, and anxiety, I’m also worried sick. And I find myself reverting to a much older and simpler aspect of my being…
It was never supposed to be Odysseus who was the central figure of the Homeric epics. It’s only because the Odyssey and the Iliad are the only books of the cycle to have survived that we know him the best of all of the heroes of myth. I can’t even begin to speculate about how different our world and our Western culture would be with Ajax, or Achilles, or Agamemnon as the archetype of the warrior/adventurer, the hero we all want to be when things get difficult. Perhaps we would all want to be bold, fearless warriors, who laugh in the face of certain death, regard pain as a problem that befalls lesser creatures, and concern ourselves only with honor, courage and duty as we charge directly after what we want…
But none of those things came to pass. Instead, the foundational story for our entire culture, or at least all of the heroic and epic adventures it contains, became the story of the cleverest, slickest, trickiest man of his time – and perhaps of all times. Instead, all of us want (in some way, at some level) to be Odysseus; the great strategist, the trickster, the man who can outrun any threat, outthink any foe, outwit the gods themselves. The man who can always find a way; the hero that we know, deep in our hearts, can always bring us home, safely, if we would only let him…
It’s the reason why we love Indiana Jones so much. And James Bond, and Tom Sawyer, and Captains Kirk, Picard, Cisco, Janeway, and Archer, and Han Solo, and a thousand others just like them. It’s why the hero in our stories isn’t just the biggest, or the toughest, or even the smartest, but rather the fastest, the slickest, the trickiest man there is. He may be the best shot, or throw the best punch, or command god-like powers or fantastic technologies, but when the crisis comes, what we all want to see is our hero outwitting the antagonist, whoever or whatever it is, and winning without any of those great advantages at all; winning just because he has that gift. Because if he can, then maybe we can, too; maybe we can find that sudden flash of brilliant insight, that moment of clarity, that one great trick that will enable us to save the day and survive the crisis, even though we don’t have a killer left hook, a god-like power or a bottomless bag of high-tech gadgets. It’s the Odysseus factor, and all of us want it, on those days when we are overmatched, overextended, and over our heads…
And if I have to explain to you why this would have occurred to me on the week when I began what has to be the most insane, reckless, all-or-nothing, death-or-glory stunt of my entire life to date, then you really haven’t been paying attention. Just like everyone else, when the crisis comes, I want to be the slickest and smartest hero of them all: strategist, tactician, adventurer, fighter, and trickster. Because, at some level, all of us have to become Odysseus to those we will lead into the fire, even when when that's just ourselves; all of us must accept that role, and the primal attitude that comes with it - as I must now, if I am to make it through this passage. The odds do not favor my success, but I must not care; I must never back down, never give up - and failure is for other men. One day, perhaps, the odds will catch up with me, and on that day I will die…
But today is not that day. Today is Day 1, and I have work to do…
So I quit my safe, steady, well-paying job at UCLA Extension, left the South Bay (the place I love most in this world), convinced my wife to quit her job and sell our house and come with me to central Michigan, a place neither of us knew anything about, and helped to pack up our things and go. A few months later we found ourselves here, in East Lansing, home of Michigan State University (hereinafter MSU), and the Broad School of Business – easily the best of the three graduate programs that accepted me. It’s not really as dramatic as it sounds; it’s not like we can’t go home again (if LA is still home) in a few hours by airplane, or like East Lansing isn’t a beautiful place, with many new things to see and experience and learn about. It’s not even as if we weren’t both ready for a new challenge and a new stage of life. That’s not it…
I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding this path, afraid that I didn’t have the patience to be a teacher, or the work ethic to survive several years of insanely difficult effort, or (it will out!) even the intellectual ability to operate at this level. It’s not easy to admit, even to myself, even to this blank white space; I’m generally considered to be afraid of nothing, and I’ve worked hard to live up to that reputation for most of my life. But I have been afraid of this, for many long years, and the white-hot adrenaline burn I keep feeling in my gut is a reminder that along with all of the other emotions of transition, and challenge, and alienation, and anxiety, I’m also worried sick. And I find myself reverting to a much older and simpler aspect of my being…
It was never supposed to be Odysseus who was the central figure of the Homeric epics. It’s only because the Odyssey and the Iliad are the only books of the cycle to have survived that we know him the best of all of the heroes of myth. I can’t even begin to speculate about how different our world and our Western culture would be with Ajax, or Achilles, or Agamemnon as the archetype of the warrior/adventurer, the hero we all want to be when things get difficult. Perhaps we would all want to be bold, fearless warriors, who laugh in the face of certain death, regard pain as a problem that befalls lesser creatures, and concern ourselves only with honor, courage and duty as we charge directly after what we want…
But none of those things came to pass. Instead, the foundational story for our entire culture, or at least all of the heroic and epic adventures it contains, became the story of the cleverest, slickest, trickiest man of his time – and perhaps of all times. Instead, all of us want (in some way, at some level) to be Odysseus; the great strategist, the trickster, the man who can outrun any threat, outthink any foe, outwit the gods themselves. The man who can always find a way; the hero that we know, deep in our hearts, can always bring us home, safely, if we would only let him…
It’s the reason why we love Indiana Jones so much. And James Bond, and Tom Sawyer, and Captains Kirk, Picard, Cisco, Janeway, and Archer, and Han Solo, and a thousand others just like them. It’s why the hero in our stories isn’t just the biggest, or the toughest, or even the smartest, but rather the fastest, the slickest, the trickiest man there is. He may be the best shot, or throw the best punch, or command god-like powers or fantastic technologies, but when the crisis comes, what we all want to see is our hero outwitting the antagonist, whoever or whatever it is, and winning without any of those great advantages at all; winning just because he has that gift. Because if he can, then maybe we can, too; maybe we can find that sudden flash of brilliant insight, that moment of clarity, that one great trick that will enable us to save the day and survive the crisis, even though we don’t have a killer left hook, a god-like power or a bottomless bag of high-tech gadgets. It’s the Odysseus factor, and all of us want it, on those days when we are overmatched, overextended, and over our heads…
And if I have to explain to you why this would have occurred to me on the week when I began what has to be the most insane, reckless, all-or-nothing, death-or-glory stunt of my entire life to date, then you really haven’t been paying attention. Just like everyone else, when the crisis comes, I want to be the slickest and smartest hero of them all: strategist, tactician, adventurer, fighter, and trickster. Because, at some level, all of us have to become Odysseus to those we will lead into the fire, even when when that's just ourselves; all of us must accept that role, and the primal attitude that comes with it - as I must now, if I am to make it through this passage. The odds do not favor my success, but I must not care; I must never back down, never give up - and failure is for other men. One day, perhaps, the odds will catch up with me, and on that day I will die…
But today is not that day. Today is Day 1, and I have work to do…
Friday, May 22, 2009
Cats and Dogs
So the kids are visiting from Atlanta, and they brought their dog with them, which makes for a certain amount of traffic control problems, as our house isn’t really set up for canine inhabitants. In particular, the living room furniture isn’t dog-proof; there’s a fair amount of stuff in our basement that would not take well to being chewed or otherwise played with, and of course we have a rather crotchety old cat who, as far as we can tell, has never spent any time around dogs. So before the arrival of our guests, I went around the corner to the Meijer hypermarket to see if I could find a couple of baby gates…
This did not prove difficult, as the Meijer has an entire section devoted to what Dave Barry calls “baby fixin’s” – everything from clothing to major pieces of indoor-outdoor furniture considerably more elaborate than my first apartment. Included in this inventory were a bewildering array of baby gates, ranging from small pieces of wicker that a healthy gerbil could push over to stainless steel and hardwood contraptions that would stop anyone under 6 feet tall/220 pounds and could be padlocked for added security. What, exactly, these are supposed to stop a baby from doing is a mystery to me; so is one line of baby gates that are so elaborate that the back of the box describes the 9 (yes, NINE!) different models the company produces and explains the features (out of a dozen or so) that different models include…
I’ve seen lines of television sets and home computers with fewer models – and fewer features to choose form. I’ve also seen cheaper television sets than some of these gates; in fact, there’s one in our bedroom right now. Feeling somewhat out of my depth, I went over to the pet section to see if there were any alternatives there. Sure enough, they carried two models of pet gate; a large (six-panel) item that can be used for a quick indoor pen or dog run, and a simple two-panel gate that can be wedged into doorways or other openings without hardware or installation. The smaller model was ideal for my purposes, and I was gratified to see that while it was a few dollars more than the cheapest baby gate, it was also much studier and better made. The equivalent product, on the baby aisle, would have been at least $15 more…
Not that this is surprising, of course. People are much more concerned with their children’s wellbeing than with that of any pet, and since most people will automatically assume that a better product must also be more expensive, it’s easy to get them to pay the extra $15 for a product that says “baby gate” on the package, even if it’s exactly the same as the product marketed in a package marked “pet gate” for structural, material, or engineering purposes. I can’t decide whether this represents a discount for pet owners or a mark-up for people with small children, but I can tell you this much: if you want to make the highest possible profit from your manufacturing activities, you should probably make products oriented toward creatures which actually HAVE money. Or at least, towards the needs of their offspring…
Now if we can just convince the cat to stop attacking the dog…
This did not prove difficult, as the Meijer has an entire section devoted to what Dave Barry calls “baby fixin’s” – everything from clothing to major pieces of indoor-outdoor furniture considerably more elaborate than my first apartment. Included in this inventory were a bewildering array of baby gates, ranging from small pieces of wicker that a healthy gerbil could push over to stainless steel and hardwood contraptions that would stop anyone under 6 feet tall/220 pounds and could be padlocked for added security. What, exactly, these are supposed to stop a baby from doing is a mystery to me; so is one line of baby gates that are so elaborate that the back of the box describes the 9 (yes, NINE!) different models the company produces and explains the features (out of a dozen or so) that different models include…
I’ve seen lines of television sets and home computers with fewer models – and fewer features to choose form. I’ve also seen cheaper television sets than some of these gates; in fact, there’s one in our bedroom right now. Feeling somewhat out of my depth, I went over to the pet section to see if there were any alternatives there. Sure enough, they carried two models of pet gate; a large (six-panel) item that can be used for a quick indoor pen or dog run, and a simple two-panel gate that can be wedged into doorways or other openings without hardware or installation. The smaller model was ideal for my purposes, and I was gratified to see that while it was a few dollars more than the cheapest baby gate, it was also much studier and better made. The equivalent product, on the baby aisle, would have been at least $15 more…
Not that this is surprising, of course. People are much more concerned with their children’s wellbeing than with that of any pet, and since most people will automatically assume that a better product must also be more expensive, it’s easy to get them to pay the extra $15 for a product that says “baby gate” on the package, even if it’s exactly the same as the product marketed in a package marked “pet gate” for structural, material, or engineering purposes. I can’t decide whether this represents a discount for pet owners or a mark-up for people with small children, but I can tell you this much: if you want to make the highest possible profit from your manufacturing activities, you should probably make products oriented toward creatures which actually HAVE money. Or at least, towards the needs of their offspring…
Now if we can just convince the cat to stop attacking the dog…
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Again, Unintended Consequences
Here’s another follow-up on a story from last year. You may recall that almost a year ago I wrote a post about the financial and economic potential of the attempt to legalize same-sex marriage in the state of California. As you probably know, the state’s Supreme Court struck down the legal provisions against such marriages, only to have them re-imposed by a ballot initiative (of possibly dubious legality) in November. At the time, analysts were suggesting that the availability of same-sex marriages could contribute as much as $370 million, although the time-frame involved was a bit nebulous. Given how badly the state’s economy has been hit by the current downturn, however, it seems likely that Californians would be happy about even $23 million a year in increased business…
Which is exactly what has happened in Massachusetts. A story being reported by the Associated Press indicates that over the past 5 years, since same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, approximately $111 million has been introduced into the state’s economy through industries that support such ceremonies. According to a study conducted at UCLA, roughly 12,000 same-sex couples have held weddings in Massachusetts, at an average cost of just under $10,000 during this period, although the researchers concede that there is a great deal of variance in the amounts spent. The implication, however, is that California, with nearly six times the population, would be likely to achieve a considerably larger effect…
Now, I’m not suggesting that such an effect, if it really happened, would be any substitute for development of new industries or business units in California; there are only so many same-sex couples with money to spend, and eventually all of the other states are going to pass similar laws, if only to cash in on the effect. Still, it is difficult to argue that the state would not benefit from $120 million a year, if only for a few years; it’s also unknown if there would be collateral effects in other business sectors not directly connected to the industry (e.g. hotels and airfare for guests at these weddings, tourism from wedding guests deciding to spend a few extra days on the Coast while they’re out for the wedding, honeymoon and anniversary trips), although it seems likely…
As in my previous post, I’m going to leave all considerations about the morality of such unions to those better equipped to carry such on arguments, so please don’t flame me over points of whether these weddings should be happening at all. The point I am trying to make here is that, as businesspeople, we would already be considered idiots (and bigoted idiots, at that, assuming there’s a difference) for rejecting someone’s business because of their race, religion, or country of origin. I can’t imagine what is any more intelligent about rejecting someone’s business because of whom they want to marry – especially in a place like California, where ANY increase in business would be a very welcome thing these days…
Decades ago, someone commented that in business, black, white, red, yellow and brown are all irrelevant; the only color we should really be concerning ourselves with is green. Maybe it’s time we added pink to that list. If the numbers coming out of Massachusetts are anywhere close to correct, we’d be idiots not to…
Which is exactly what has happened in Massachusetts. A story being reported by the Associated Press indicates that over the past 5 years, since same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, approximately $111 million has been introduced into the state’s economy through industries that support such ceremonies. According to a study conducted at UCLA, roughly 12,000 same-sex couples have held weddings in Massachusetts, at an average cost of just under $10,000 during this period, although the researchers concede that there is a great deal of variance in the amounts spent. The implication, however, is that California, with nearly six times the population, would be likely to achieve a considerably larger effect…
Now, I’m not suggesting that such an effect, if it really happened, would be any substitute for development of new industries or business units in California; there are only so many same-sex couples with money to spend, and eventually all of the other states are going to pass similar laws, if only to cash in on the effect. Still, it is difficult to argue that the state would not benefit from $120 million a year, if only for a few years; it’s also unknown if there would be collateral effects in other business sectors not directly connected to the industry (e.g. hotels and airfare for guests at these weddings, tourism from wedding guests deciding to spend a few extra days on the Coast while they’re out for the wedding, honeymoon and anniversary trips), although it seems likely…
As in my previous post, I’m going to leave all considerations about the morality of such unions to those better equipped to carry such on arguments, so please don’t flame me over points of whether these weddings should be happening at all. The point I am trying to make here is that, as businesspeople, we would already be considered idiots (and bigoted idiots, at that, assuming there’s a difference) for rejecting someone’s business because of their race, religion, or country of origin. I can’t imagine what is any more intelligent about rejecting someone’s business because of whom they want to marry – especially in a place like California, where ANY increase in business would be a very welcome thing these days…
Decades ago, someone commented that in business, black, white, red, yellow and brown are all irrelevant; the only color we should really be concerning ourselves with is green. Maybe it’s time we added pink to that list. If the numbers coming out of Massachusetts are anywhere close to correct, we’d be idiots not to…
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
You’re Mocking Me, Aren’t You?
There are times when you encounter a news story where someone clearly is mocking somebody else, but it’s unusual to find those cases on the Business Page. It’s especially unusual to find cases of someone who is opening making fun of the people who are, at least ostensibly, his or her clients; most people do not take well to being mocked, let alone having to pay for the privilege. Although, in this case, it could be difficult to say exactly whom the joke is on…
A story being reported in the Orlando Sentinel web site tells the unlikely story of a man who is offering to carry cards and letters to those “left behind” after the Rapture for those pious soul who clearly will not be in any position to extend their own greetings (and best wishes?) following the event. His rates are apparently quite reasonable (about $5 per item), and he assures his customers that all of the funds received will be spent to support his “debauched” lifestyle and ensure that he will be “left behind” to carry out his duties…
Regular readers of this space (if there are any) will recall that last year I did a post on a service called You’ve Been Left Behind.com , which was also offering to deliver messages (and financial information, if you like) to those you care about but don’t believe are quite pious enough to be taken when the Rapture arrives. What sets the fellow in our story apart is that he is offering to carry hard-copy messages across the post-apocalyptic landscape to whomever you have designated, which frankly seems like a tall order, given the plagues of insects, frogs, cattle disease, rivers of blood, boils, telemarketers and other post-apocalyptic horrors will be attempting to destroy him during the few days left before the end of the Universe…
And, of course, the fact that he is openly mocking his clients. A self-described atheist, Mr. Witter not only believes that there will never be any such thing as the Rapture, but he is also more than willing to say so publically. Nor is he making any offers to refund your money if he dies before the Rapture arrives, or if it turns out that you are mistaken about being saved in the first place, although in the latter case it must be conceded that you will probably have more immediate problems than getting your $5 back from the messenger service…
It’s the only case I can ever remember in which a business is both accepting people’s money and mocking them for it at the same time. Even in the case of the web service mentioned above, one could never be sure if they were serious or not; and in either case, they were clearly not mocking your belief in the Rapture, assuming you had one. At least, not as long as you were willing to pay for their services. All things considered, I doubt it’s a business model that could be adapted to any other service, or duplicated in any quantity, but if Mr. Witter is successful in his enterprise, then perhaps we must re-evaluate our ideas about customer service…
A story being reported in the Orlando Sentinel web site tells the unlikely story of a man who is offering to carry cards and letters to those “left behind” after the Rapture for those pious soul who clearly will not be in any position to extend their own greetings (and best wishes?) following the event. His rates are apparently quite reasonable (about $5 per item), and he assures his customers that all of the funds received will be spent to support his “debauched” lifestyle and ensure that he will be “left behind” to carry out his duties…
Regular readers of this space (if there are any) will recall that last year I did a post on a service called You’ve Been Left Behind.com , which was also offering to deliver messages (and financial information, if you like) to those you care about but don’t believe are quite pious enough to be taken when the Rapture arrives. What sets the fellow in our story apart is that he is offering to carry hard-copy messages across the post-apocalyptic landscape to whomever you have designated, which frankly seems like a tall order, given the plagues of insects, frogs, cattle disease, rivers of blood, boils, telemarketers and other post-apocalyptic horrors will be attempting to destroy him during the few days left before the end of the Universe…
And, of course, the fact that he is openly mocking his clients. A self-described atheist, Mr. Witter not only believes that there will never be any such thing as the Rapture, but he is also more than willing to say so publically. Nor is he making any offers to refund your money if he dies before the Rapture arrives, or if it turns out that you are mistaken about being saved in the first place, although in the latter case it must be conceded that you will probably have more immediate problems than getting your $5 back from the messenger service…
It’s the only case I can ever remember in which a business is both accepting people’s money and mocking them for it at the same time. Even in the case of the web service mentioned above, one could never be sure if they were serious or not; and in either case, they were clearly not mocking your belief in the Rapture, assuming you had one. At least, not as long as you were willing to pay for their services. All things considered, I doubt it’s a business model that could be adapted to any other service, or duplicated in any quantity, but if Mr. Witter is successful in his enterprise, then perhaps we must re-evaluate our ideas about customer service…
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
At the Fair
My wife and I went to the 44th Annual East Lansing Art Fair over the weekend, because we’re the sort of people who enjoy outdoor arts & crafts fairs and because we were curious about how this one would stack up against the Hermosa Beach and West Los Angeles art fairs we used to attend back in California. It was a good time, and I can honestly say that if you’re going to be in the Greater Lansing area this time next year, I recommend you stop by; just make sure you come early if you want to get a really good parking space. But rather unexpectedly, there turned out to be a couple of business lessons to be had there among the various displays…
First, let me call to your attention the metal sculpture work done by Wisconsin artist Dick Cooley. If only because the man’s work is amazing; you can find his website here if you’d like to. As someone of a relatively whimsical personality, I found his work to be enormously entertaining as well as aesthetically interesting, and it’s clear from meeting Mr. Cooley in person that he genuinely enjoys his work – and people’s reactions to his creations. I’m not sure there’s a wrong way to work a craft show, but he’s definitely doing it right. But even more than a great example of how to interact with your customers (how to work a crowd, in fact), this gentleman is also providing the best example I’ve ever seen of repurposing things you can find…
In management texts it’s referred to as bricolage: something put together out of bits and pieces of whatever comes to hand, and used for a new purpose. In our readings on entrepreneurship this spring we encountered examples of multinational corporations based entirely on this relatively simple concept, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a better example of creating treasure out of discarded materials. It’s enough to make you wonder if any of the stuff you’ve got in inventory (carried on the books because it hasn’t been amortized yet, or just because you can’t afford to have it hauled to the dump) could be used as the basis for a new line of products…
The other example I wanted to call to your attention were two Michigan artists named Mike and Dee Miller, and their products, which are vases and artificial flowers made entirely out of wood. You can find their site here if you’d like. We’ve all seen fake flowers before – usually silk, but occasionally plastic or paper – and while most of these are as lame as you would expect from fake vegetation, I’ve also seen arrangements that you’d have to examine closely to determine aren’t the real thing. What is remarkable about these wooden flowers isn’t how lifelike they are – although you might have trouble telling the difference from more than a few feet away – but rather that they are individual, hand-crafted works of art that are beautiful in their own right. The fact that they will never fade, wilt or die is just an added bonus…
We should also note that if you’re not near an art fair, the Millers will wrap up and ship any of their creations to anywhere in the world at a surprisingly reasonable price. So if there’s someone you’d like to send flowers to who happens to be allergic to real flowers (and opposed to fake ones), this company provides you with an interesting alternative. It’s an excellent example of changing the boundary conditions for a product classification – usually bastardized as “thinking outside the box” in the popular press – and also a lesson worth thinking about. Is there something new you could produce for sale using your current resources? Maybe you should give it some thought...
First, let me call to your attention the metal sculpture work done by Wisconsin artist Dick Cooley. If only because the man’s work is amazing; you can find his website here if you’d like to. As someone of a relatively whimsical personality, I found his work to be enormously entertaining as well as aesthetically interesting, and it’s clear from meeting Mr. Cooley in person that he genuinely enjoys his work – and people’s reactions to his creations. I’m not sure there’s a wrong way to work a craft show, but he’s definitely doing it right. But even more than a great example of how to interact with your customers (how to work a crowd, in fact), this gentleman is also providing the best example I’ve ever seen of repurposing things you can find…
In management texts it’s referred to as bricolage: something put together out of bits and pieces of whatever comes to hand, and used for a new purpose. In our readings on entrepreneurship this spring we encountered examples of multinational corporations based entirely on this relatively simple concept, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a better example of creating treasure out of discarded materials. It’s enough to make you wonder if any of the stuff you’ve got in inventory (carried on the books because it hasn’t been amortized yet, or just because you can’t afford to have it hauled to the dump) could be used as the basis for a new line of products…
The other example I wanted to call to your attention were two Michigan artists named Mike and Dee Miller, and their products, which are vases and artificial flowers made entirely out of wood. You can find their site here if you’d like. We’ve all seen fake flowers before – usually silk, but occasionally plastic or paper – and while most of these are as lame as you would expect from fake vegetation, I’ve also seen arrangements that you’d have to examine closely to determine aren’t the real thing. What is remarkable about these wooden flowers isn’t how lifelike they are – although you might have trouble telling the difference from more than a few feet away – but rather that they are individual, hand-crafted works of art that are beautiful in their own right. The fact that they will never fade, wilt or die is just an added bonus…
We should also note that if you’re not near an art fair, the Millers will wrap up and ship any of their creations to anywhere in the world at a surprisingly reasonable price. So if there’s someone you’d like to send flowers to who happens to be allergic to real flowers (and opposed to fake ones), this company provides you with an interesting alternative. It’s an excellent example of changing the boundary conditions for a product classification – usually bastardized as “thinking outside the box” in the popular press – and also a lesson worth thinking about. Is there something new you could produce for sale using your current resources? Maybe you should give it some thought...
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Ethics of Amazon
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past decade, you’re probably already aware of the Internet’s best known retailer, Amazon.com. In fact, if you’re reading a web log in the first place, you’ve probably also done business with Amazon; you might even use it as the starting point for Internet searches for specific needs (what do you get someone for their 8th Anniversary?) or specific kinds of merchandise (what unusual gifts can you find that are made out of bronze – the traditional 8th anniversary present?). What you may not have realized that you’re also helping to determine which e-commerce sites live or die in the process…
Comparisons between Amazon and large brick-and-mortar mega-retailers like Wal-Mart and Meijer began almost as soon as the Internet site went online, and they do hold some weight; Amazon does prevent a lot of potential customers from seeking out smaller retailers because of their relative convenience. Even worse, however, is what is called the legitimacy issue in the Management literature. Internet retailing (and most other forms of e-commerce, in fact) as still in their early stages, and when you do business with some site you’ve never heard of before, you’re never really sure if you will get what the website described, or if the merchandise that will arrive will be defective, inferior, or just stolen during the delivery process. Whereas Amazon, with millions of transactions every year and a hard-won reputation to defend, is not likely to pull any shenanigans with your order…
Now, most people had had at least one problem with Amazon over the years; it’s a very large operation and there are a huge number of things that can go wrong with their system. It’s very much the same situation you would encounter with a mega-retailer like Wal-Mart in the real world: they’re easy to find, and you can be relatively sure that the store will still be there next week if you have a problem with your purchase – but there’s no guarantee that you WON’T have such a problem. Whereas with a small retailer or a small web site, you might get personalized service and a specialized product selection that actually addresses your needs, but you’ll have trouble finding the site/store in the first place, and there’s no way to be sure that they’ll still be around when/if you have a problem…
We’ve all seen small retailers (and sometimes coalitions of retailers, or even some towns) claiming that Wal-Mart destroys local retailers with their low (volume-buying) prices and convenience, but this fails to consider that a Wal-Mart location is also a much larger investment on the part of the company, and if they don’t get literally thousands of details exactly right, that particular store will end up costing the corporation money. Too many failures of that type, and even mighty Wal-Mart will go under…
My point here is that Amazon represents the same set of business issues online that Wal-Mart does in the real world. This afternoon, for example, I was trying to purchase a specialty item on a small website, but they were having some kind of problem with their merchant software, and I couldn’t get their server to complete the sale. So I sent them an unkind email message and logged onto Amazon, where I found the same gift item in about thirty seconds, and purchased it in another thirty. You could argue that this was the smaller site’s own fault, but the fact remains that if there was no Amazon, I might have waited until Monday morning, called the company’s toll-free number, and completed my purchase. Instead they lost the sale – and probably any other sales they would have made this weekend…
So here’s the question: does Amazon – or any other large and powerful retailer – have any ethical responsibility to their competition to maintain a level playing field? Or is this superseded by their responsibility to their own customers (to provide the desired merchandise at the best price)? For that matter, do we as consumers have any responsibility to attempt to do business with small retailers who are making it both harder and more expensive for us to do business with them, or should we just protect our own interests and go where the goods we want are cheaper and more convenient?
It’s worth thinking about…
Comparisons between Amazon and large brick-and-mortar mega-retailers like Wal-Mart and Meijer began almost as soon as the Internet site went online, and they do hold some weight; Amazon does prevent a lot of potential customers from seeking out smaller retailers because of their relative convenience. Even worse, however, is what is called the legitimacy issue in the Management literature. Internet retailing (and most other forms of e-commerce, in fact) as still in their early stages, and when you do business with some site you’ve never heard of before, you’re never really sure if you will get what the website described, or if the merchandise that will arrive will be defective, inferior, or just stolen during the delivery process. Whereas Amazon, with millions of transactions every year and a hard-won reputation to defend, is not likely to pull any shenanigans with your order…
Now, most people had had at least one problem with Amazon over the years; it’s a very large operation and there are a huge number of things that can go wrong with their system. It’s very much the same situation you would encounter with a mega-retailer like Wal-Mart in the real world: they’re easy to find, and you can be relatively sure that the store will still be there next week if you have a problem with your purchase – but there’s no guarantee that you WON’T have such a problem. Whereas with a small retailer or a small web site, you might get personalized service and a specialized product selection that actually addresses your needs, but you’ll have trouble finding the site/store in the first place, and there’s no way to be sure that they’ll still be around when/if you have a problem…
We’ve all seen small retailers (and sometimes coalitions of retailers, or even some towns) claiming that Wal-Mart destroys local retailers with their low (volume-buying) prices and convenience, but this fails to consider that a Wal-Mart location is also a much larger investment on the part of the company, and if they don’t get literally thousands of details exactly right, that particular store will end up costing the corporation money. Too many failures of that type, and even mighty Wal-Mart will go under…
My point here is that Amazon represents the same set of business issues online that Wal-Mart does in the real world. This afternoon, for example, I was trying to purchase a specialty item on a small website, but they were having some kind of problem with their merchant software, and I couldn’t get their server to complete the sale. So I sent them an unkind email message and logged onto Amazon, where I found the same gift item in about thirty seconds, and purchased it in another thirty. You could argue that this was the smaller site’s own fault, but the fact remains that if there was no Amazon, I might have waited until Monday morning, called the company’s toll-free number, and completed my purchase. Instead they lost the sale – and probably any other sales they would have made this weekend…
So here’s the question: does Amazon – or any other large and powerful retailer – have any ethical responsibility to their competition to maintain a level playing field? Or is this superseded by their responsibility to their own customers (to provide the desired merchandise at the best price)? For that matter, do we as consumers have any responsibility to attempt to do business with small retailers who are making it both harder and more expensive for us to do business with them, or should we just protect our own interests and go where the goods we want are cheaper and more convenient?
It’s worth thinking about…
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Too Easy Again
From time to time I call to your attention a story from the world of business that is just too easy – something that I could have a lot of fun mocking, pointing out the weakness of, or making suggestions about, but it’s just too easy. It’s days like this when I like to say that this blog practically writes itself, or at least it would if all I did was make snarky comments about business-related moves of dubious intelligence. But this time, at least, it seems MSNBC agrees with me…
In a story being reported by the MSNBC Technology page we find the curious new marketing site launched by Dell Computers. Called “Della” for reasons probably best left unexamined, this site is attempting to market a new class of notebook computers, called “netbooks” to a female audience. There’s nothing wrong with the idea, of course; women have disposable incomes, too, and they might like a highly-portable, extremely capable new computer as much as men would. It’s just that Della is marketing these units to women on the basis of the netbooks being “cute” and “fashionable” rather than powerful or capable – and they’re using ad copy right out of the 1950s…
I’d mock Dell for this, but there isn’t much left to say after the MSNBC article, and even if you didn’t follow that link, I’m not sure there’s much I can add to what Dell’s copywriters have come up with for the Della site. It’s not just that they’re marketing these lightweight computers in the same terms you would use for handbags and scarves, or even that they’re suggesting that grown women would be attracted to these machines because of how “cute” they (the computers, not the women) are. It’s the condescension in the add copy; the suggestion that their female customers have never considered that there might be some use for a personal computer beyond email and instant messenger functions…
Now, I understand that it’s usually too much to expect logic from the people who brought you microscopic women flying up your nose on jetpacks . But unless we are willing to believe that there were no women involved in the “Della” project – or that all of them have the mentality of housewives from a 1950s sitcom – then you would think somebody would have mentioned the inherent problem with this approach. I suppose we should acknowledge the possibility that the whole thing is some kind of self-referential joke – using the copy as an ironic commentary on what people from earlier times (and unenlightened ones from this time) would expect to see women doing with portable computers – but if so, I regret to say that the humor is too subtle for me…
Of course, it’s possible that this is yet another case of any publicity being good publicity; that the people at Dell knew this reaction would happen and that they are intentionally using the outrage, mockery and just plain amusement to generate a word-of-mouth buzz for their new site. Certainly, I wouldn’t have heard about it otherwise (I don’t buy Dell products anymore following my experiences with the “Doorstop 3200” notebook I purchased from Dell in 2001, and thus I’d have no reason to go to their website), and it could be argued that this approach has reached all of the people on MSNBC yesterday and all of the people like you who are reading blog posts about this site, all of whom are now thinking about Dell products. But even if that is the strategy being employed, I have to question whether this is really the best way to sell a consumer product…
In a story being reported by the MSNBC Technology page we find the curious new marketing site launched by Dell Computers. Called “Della” for reasons probably best left unexamined, this site is attempting to market a new class of notebook computers, called “netbooks” to a female audience. There’s nothing wrong with the idea, of course; women have disposable incomes, too, and they might like a highly-portable, extremely capable new computer as much as men would. It’s just that Della is marketing these units to women on the basis of the netbooks being “cute” and “fashionable” rather than powerful or capable – and they’re using ad copy right out of the 1950s…
I’d mock Dell for this, but there isn’t much left to say after the MSNBC article, and even if you didn’t follow that link, I’m not sure there’s much I can add to what Dell’s copywriters have come up with for the Della site. It’s not just that they’re marketing these lightweight computers in the same terms you would use for handbags and scarves, or even that they’re suggesting that grown women would be attracted to these machines because of how “cute” they (the computers, not the women) are. It’s the condescension in the add copy; the suggestion that their female customers have never considered that there might be some use for a personal computer beyond email and instant messenger functions…
Now, I understand that it’s usually too much to expect logic from the people who brought you microscopic women flying up your nose on jetpacks . But unless we are willing to believe that there were no women involved in the “Della” project – or that all of them have the mentality of housewives from a 1950s sitcom – then you would think somebody would have mentioned the inherent problem with this approach. I suppose we should acknowledge the possibility that the whole thing is some kind of self-referential joke – using the copy as an ironic commentary on what people from earlier times (and unenlightened ones from this time) would expect to see women doing with portable computers – but if so, I regret to say that the humor is too subtle for me…
Of course, it’s possible that this is yet another case of any publicity being good publicity; that the people at Dell knew this reaction would happen and that they are intentionally using the outrage, mockery and just plain amusement to generate a word-of-mouth buzz for their new site. Certainly, I wouldn’t have heard about it otherwise (I don’t buy Dell products anymore following my experiences with the “Doorstop 3200” notebook I purchased from Dell in 2001, and thus I’d have no reason to go to their website), and it could be argued that this approach has reached all of the people on MSNBC yesterday and all of the people like you who are reading blog posts about this site, all of whom are now thinking about Dell products. But even if that is the strategy being employed, I have to question whether this is really the best way to sell a consumer product…
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Grad School Diaries: Introduction
Starting this week I’m going to be posting an occasional series of reflections, complaints, rants, ravings, epiphanies, bad jokes, social/political commentary and occasional running gags that collectively represent my notes for a work in progress, tentatively called The Grad School Diaries, chronicling my time in this very odd passage known as graduate school. It’s a departure from our regular content, which is (usually) business-related and attempts to be a fair, balanced, or at least interesting view of topics which come up in that context – except that the doctoral program in which I find myself is a business school, and that colors everything else about this experience…
If anyone is still reading this blog, I invite you to leave me a comment (using the comments function, below) and let me know what you think. If you don’t want your comment published, just indicate that and I’ll delete it after I read it. I don’t pretend that I will have anything especially profound to say about the process in question; I also can’t promise that the persona you will encounter in these ramblings will be any closer to the “real” me than the narrative “voice” you’ve come to know over the last 300-plus short essays. But that said, I have noticed a few things during the first year of this journey that I think might be worth listening to – and part of keeping a web log is that you don’t ever know who might be listening…
So let’s start with projections, since (if anybody is actually out there) somebody is probably already projecting their feelings about going back to school and/or changing careers in early middle age onto me right now. I had no clear expectations when I began this mad quest; getting a Ph.D. was never a particular dream of mine, nor was being a professor or even a teacher. For years I shied away from (ran away and hid from, if you want the truth) the idea of becoming a teacher, saying I didn’t have the patience. And yet, nearly every management job in the world involves teaching people how to do something, and coaching them on how to do it better – and I love the manager’s role; I always have. When you consider that I have been curious about absolutely everything for as long as I can remember, and that I really enjoy watching the (metaphorical) light bulb come on over someone’s head when you teach them something, it seems likely that I really should have figured out that I wanted to do this earlier than I did…
It was only after coming here, settling into this new role, and trying to make it in one of the best strategic management programs in the world that I came face-to-face with the real reason I’ve hidden from this for so long. It has been said that the only thing I’m arrogant about is my intellect; I try not to be that way, but I grew up with everyone telling me what a genius I'm supposed to be, and I suppose I have developed sort of a blind spot in that I don't really believe anything is impossible if you have enough time (and are willing to put in the effort). I’ve refused to do things, decided that some things were too much work, convinced myself that some things are not worth the years of effort it would take me to accomplish them, even employed the “jock” thought pattern of dismissing anything that does not interest me as “stupid” – but I never really believed I could fail at anything if I tried hard enough. Eventually it occured to me that I was just avoiding any challenge I couldn't easily overcome…
Until now, that is. Over the course of these ramblings you are going to learn a lot more about the motivations and thought processes that brought me to this place, but let me just admit up front that one part was finally confronting my own intellectual laziness, and realizing that if I didn’t take this chance I was going to die a mid-level manager who never accomplished anything beyond thinking some relatively deep thoughts, dreaming some naïve adolescent dreams, and making a few snarky comments on business topics as one of 100,000,000 bloggers nobody ever reads…
If anyone is still reading this blog, I invite you to leave me a comment (using the comments function, below) and let me know what you think. If you don’t want your comment published, just indicate that and I’ll delete it after I read it. I don’t pretend that I will have anything especially profound to say about the process in question; I also can’t promise that the persona you will encounter in these ramblings will be any closer to the “real” me than the narrative “voice” you’ve come to know over the last 300-plus short essays. But that said, I have noticed a few things during the first year of this journey that I think might be worth listening to – and part of keeping a web log is that you don’t ever know who might be listening…
So let’s start with projections, since (if anybody is actually out there) somebody is probably already projecting their feelings about going back to school and/or changing careers in early middle age onto me right now. I had no clear expectations when I began this mad quest; getting a Ph.D. was never a particular dream of mine, nor was being a professor or even a teacher. For years I shied away from (ran away and hid from, if you want the truth) the idea of becoming a teacher, saying I didn’t have the patience. And yet, nearly every management job in the world involves teaching people how to do something, and coaching them on how to do it better – and I love the manager’s role; I always have. When you consider that I have been curious about absolutely everything for as long as I can remember, and that I really enjoy watching the (metaphorical) light bulb come on over someone’s head when you teach them something, it seems likely that I really should have figured out that I wanted to do this earlier than I did…
It was only after coming here, settling into this new role, and trying to make it in one of the best strategic management programs in the world that I came face-to-face with the real reason I’ve hidden from this for so long. It has been said that the only thing I’m arrogant about is my intellect; I try not to be that way, but I grew up with everyone telling me what a genius I'm supposed to be, and I suppose I have developed sort of a blind spot in that I don't really believe anything is impossible if you have enough time (and are willing to put in the effort). I’ve refused to do things, decided that some things were too much work, convinced myself that some things are not worth the years of effort it would take me to accomplish them, even employed the “jock” thought pattern of dismissing anything that does not interest me as “stupid” – but I never really believed I could fail at anything if I tried hard enough. Eventually it occured to me that I was just avoiding any challenge I couldn't easily overcome…
Until now, that is. Over the course of these ramblings you are going to learn a lot more about the motivations and thought processes that brought me to this place, but let me just admit up front that one part was finally confronting my own intellectual laziness, and realizing that if I didn’t take this chance I was going to die a mid-level manager who never accomplished anything beyond thinking some relatively deep thoughts, dreaming some naïve adolescent dreams, and making a few snarky comments on business topics as one of 100,000,000 bloggers nobody ever reads…
Friday, May 15, 2009
There Ought To Be A Law
I try not to be one of those people who goes around demanding legislative action to correct every unfortunate event he sees on the news; by and large, there are laws on the books that already address most of these situations, and either there isn’t enough enforcement/prosecution, or people are much stupider than was believed at the time the law was passed. The best legal minds I have ever known will all tell you that laws passed to correct a single event are almost always a bad idea – and will generally serve only to make a bad situation worse. But I have to admit that I’m almost ready to make an exception for a case I saw the other day…
A story being reported on ABC News Online this week tells the story of a family whose toddler crawled out a doggie door and drowned in their pool, who are outraged that the doggie door was sold without a warning that small children can egress through such an opening, and are suing the manufacturer. In this particular case, I don’t know if Florida has a law requiring that swimming pools be fenced in to prevent accidents of this kind (not all states do), and I don’t actually know if state laws governing child endangerment would apply, but I’d like to suggest a law criminalizing lawsuits of this type. That is, if a jury of your peers decides that you are only filing suit to deflect blame or attention away from the fact that you are apparently too stupid to realize that (A) small children will crawl through ANY small opening they find and (B) that a doggie door IS a door leading to the outside, you deserve some form of legal sanction…
Now, I’m sure some of you are going to get upset with me for blaming the family in this case, since they are the ones to have suffered the loss. So let me be very clear: I am not urging the local authorities to charge the child’s caregivers with felony endangerment or any other crime on the basis of the original event. I just feel that suing the manufacturer of the doggie door is the worst form of frivolous lawsuit, especially since there is no indication whatsoever that a warning label would have made any difference to the events of this case. The child’s mother is on record as stating that she didn’t believe there was any chance he could fit through such a small opening, and would doubtless have ignored the warning label (if there had been one) for the same reason. It’s only because a check of the records indicates that this happens a few times each year that somebody got the bright idea of bringing suit in the first place…
The fact is that if you fail to take any safety precautions to prevent drowning accidents in your pool and then also fail to keep a close eye on your young children – an unfortunate combination of events that happens every year in America – then it is not the fault of the people who manufacture the windows, doors, screen doors, crawlspaces, basements, doggie doors or cat flaps the children escaped out of that a tragic event ensued. I’m not saying that the event wasn’t a horrible tragedy; I’m saying that blaming somebody else for your poor judgment is a complete abdication of personal responsibility no matter how tragic the results happen to be, and suing them is at best an attempt to deflect the blame for your own failure and at worst an attempt to profit from your own stupidity by filing a “deep-pockets” lawsuit…
And there ought to be a law against those things…
A story being reported on ABC News Online this week tells the story of a family whose toddler crawled out a doggie door and drowned in their pool, who are outraged that the doggie door was sold without a warning that small children can egress through such an opening, and are suing the manufacturer. In this particular case, I don’t know if Florida has a law requiring that swimming pools be fenced in to prevent accidents of this kind (not all states do), and I don’t actually know if state laws governing child endangerment would apply, but I’d like to suggest a law criminalizing lawsuits of this type. That is, if a jury of your peers decides that you are only filing suit to deflect blame or attention away from the fact that you are apparently too stupid to realize that (A) small children will crawl through ANY small opening they find and (B) that a doggie door IS a door leading to the outside, you deserve some form of legal sanction…
Now, I’m sure some of you are going to get upset with me for blaming the family in this case, since they are the ones to have suffered the loss. So let me be very clear: I am not urging the local authorities to charge the child’s caregivers with felony endangerment or any other crime on the basis of the original event. I just feel that suing the manufacturer of the doggie door is the worst form of frivolous lawsuit, especially since there is no indication whatsoever that a warning label would have made any difference to the events of this case. The child’s mother is on record as stating that she didn’t believe there was any chance he could fit through such a small opening, and would doubtless have ignored the warning label (if there had been one) for the same reason. It’s only because a check of the records indicates that this happens a few times each year that somebody got the bright idea of bringing suit in the first place…
The fact is that if you fail to take any safety precautions to prevent drowning accidents in your pool and then also fail to keep a close eye on your young children – an unfortunate combination of events that happens every year in America – then it is not the fault of the people who manufacture the windows, doors, screen doors, crawlspaces, basements, doggie doors or cat flaps the children escaped out of that a tragic event ensued. I’m not saying that the event wasn’t a horrible tragedy; I’m saying that blaming somebody else for your poor judgment is a complete abdication of personal responsibility no matter how tragic the results happen to be, and suing them is at best an attempt to deflect the blame for your own failure and at worst an attempt to profit from your own stupidity by filing a “deep-pockets” lawsuit…
And there ought to be a law against those things…
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Less is More
Okay, not always. But lately we’ve been hearing about a lot of cases in which people who have only taken out mortgages they can afford and then conscientiously made their payments are getting nothing from the government, while the people who behaved like idiots will be rescued by some new bailout program that the rest of us (including the responsible homeowners) are going to have to pay for. Of all of the complaints we’ve been hearing about the President’s recovery package, this is the only one that really holds any weight, in that we really are punishing the responsible citizens to pay for the idiocy and greed of the criminally inept – and I’ll admit that as much as this annoys me, I don’t have any better ideas. But I’m not going to complain, because the Ford stockholders are getting it much worse than I am…
If you’ve been following the developments in the auto industry bailouts, you already know that Ford Motor Company has, so far, declined to accept any of the Federal funds that are keeping GM and Chrysler alive. What you may not have realized (I didn’t until I read the linked article) is how badly they are being shafted in return. You see, unlike the competition, Ford is not getting to weasel out of its debts or its union contracts, and will have to make payments that the other two companies are getting forgiven. As a result, they are going to be operating at a significant disadvantage for a number of years to come, lowering both their ability to turn a profit and their stock price – because they did not engage in any criminally stupid financial decisions…
Of course, Ford is also being spared the pain of having to close factories, eliminate entire divisions, fire even more people, and take orders from government flunkies that their competition is being exposed to. And it’s hard to feel sorry for a company that effectively dug its own pit (over-committing to giant SUV models when the price of gas was rising, eliminating the popular Taurus line when it was the best-selling car in its class, falling behind the curve in solar, gas/electric, clean coal and hydrogen fuel cell technology, etc.) and then jumped into it. Still, it doesn’t seem fair to the investors (public and private) who not only put their money and faith into the company but have also continued to stand by Ford in these tough times to be penalizing them for the company’s relatively competent management practices…
In the long run, of course, it’s going to come down to development, production and sales of products that the general public actually wants to buy that will determine which of the Big Three lives or dies. Ford appear to be on the right track, with increasing emphasis on alternate fuels, low-cost (both to purchase and to operate) models, and more efficient operations and methods, while GM is being forced into some brutal (and questionable) decisions and Chrysler is being purchased by Fiat. But I still have to wonder how long it will be before companies stop even trying to behave in a financially responsible fashion and just do as they please, knowing that the Federal government will ride to their rescue if they make too many bad choices…
And how much longer the taxpayers who are picking up the tab for this kind of idiocy will be able to carry the load…
If you’ve been following the developments in the auto industry bailouts, you already know that Ford Motor Company has, so far, declined to accept any of the Federal funds that are keeping GM and Chrysler alive. What you may not have realized (I didn’t until I read the linked article) is how badly they are being shafted in return. You see, unlike the competition, Ford is not getting to weasel out of its debts or its union contracts, and will have to make payments that the other two companies are getting forgiven. As a result, they are going to be operating at a significant disadvantage for a number of years to come, lowering both their ability to turn a profit and their stock price – because they did not engage in any criminally stupid financial decisions…
Of course, Ford is also being spared the pain of having to close factories, eliminate entire divisions, fire even more people, and take orders from government flunkies that their competition is being exposed to. And it’s hard to feel sorry for a company that effectively dug its own pit (over-committing to giant SUV models when the price of gas was rising, eliminating the popular Taurus line when it was the best-selling car in its class, falling behind the curve in solar, gas/electric, clean coal and hydrogen fuel cell technology, etc.) and then jumped into it. Still, it doesn’t seem fair to the investors (public and private) who not only put their money and faith into the company but have also continued to stand by Ford in these tough times to be penalizing them for the company’s relatively competent management practices…
In the long run, of course, it’s going to come down to development, production and sales of products that the general public actually wants to buy that will determine which of the Big Three lives or dies. Ford appear to be on the right track, with increasing emphasis on alternate fuels, low-cost (both to purchase and to operate) models, and more efficient operations and methods, while GM is being forced into some brutal (and questionable) decisions and Chrysler is being purchased by Fiat. But I still have to wonder how long it will be before companies stop even trying to behave in a financially responsible fashion and just do as they please, knowing that the Federal government will ride to their rescue if they make too many bad choices…
And how much longer the taxpayers who are picking up the tab for this kind of idiocy will be able to carry the load…
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Up All Night
Have you ever been in the middle of pulling an all-night study session and suddenly thought to yourself, “You know, I could really go for some warm, freshly-baked cookies right now!” but you didn’t have any in the house? What did you do about it? You can’t very well abandon your work and run down to the market to buy some cookie dough and then cook it; if you had that kind of time you wouldn’t be working all night in the first place. There are companies that bake cookies and sell them from retail outlets, of course, but they’re generally not 24-hour operations, and even if they were, you’d still have the problem of having to leave the isolation of your workspace and go find them. If only there was a business that would deliver such products to you at, say, 1:00 am…
Well, actually, there is. At least, if you live in one of the communities served by Insomnia Cookies , that is. My wife and I were out at the movies this past weekend, and afterwards we decided to go get some dessert. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of late-night places in East Lansing, and most of those aren’t really dessert places. But we both remembered seeing the Insomnia Cookies shop across the street from campus, and we decided to go and check it out. It was quite an experience…
On arriving at the shop, we quickly realized that they were serious about the delivery approach as part of their business model. Part of it was all of the delivery vehicle signs stacked up and ready for use; clearly these people can and do employ multiple delivery vehicles every night – which indicates a relatively high volume of orders, considering that their individual products are not very expensive. Even more to the point, though, was the layout of the shop itself: a small service counter, a tiny seating area (just two tables and four chairs) and a huge kitchen/bakery work space with an equally impressive storage area for both dry and refrigerated ingredients. These people are set up to crank out a huge volume of cookies every night – and then deliver them to the customer…
If you’ve ever worked for a Domino’s franchise – or any other delivery-only food service company – this layout should sound very familiar. It’s not intended to serve in-store customers; they’re planning to bring all of the business to you. It’s the only dessert-only delivery food operation I’ve ever heard of, but what is even more remarkable about the company is their operating hours. They’re called Insomnia Cookies, at least in part, because their target demographic is people who can’t sleep (or aren’t, anyway); they are only open from 4:30 pm to 2:30 pm during the school year, and from 2:00 pm to 10:00 pm over the summer…
I don’t know how well these operations would fare in a normal neighborhood, where people don’t usually stay up all night (and will usually make some attempt to eat healthy food), but in a college town, where people DO stay up all night working on overdue projects and subsist on whatever junk comes to hand, it’s sheer genius. And the odd operating hours not only means the store is open at the most productive times of the day (people other than me don’t eat cookies for breakfast, after all), but also limit the company’s personnel requirements to two six-hour shifts (Open and Close) for the delivery/hourly personnel, and a single ten-hour manager’s shift…
Of course, this will only help you if you are fortunate enough to live near one of their 18 locations, but according to the web site the company is about to start franchise operations, which means that sometime soon there might be a shop in your neighborhood that will deliver some of the best cookies you’ve ever tasted direct to your door in the middle of the night. And if any of you are still looking for a franchise business opportunity with a real difference, you might want to look into this one…
Well, actually, there is. At least, if you live in one of the communities served by Insomnia Cookies , that is. My wife and I were out at the movies this past weekend, and afterwards we decided to go get some dessert. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of late-night places in East Lansing, and most of those aren’t really dessert places. But we both remembered seeing the Insomnia Cookies shop across the street from campus, and we decided to go and check it out. It was quite an experience…
On arriving at the shop, we quickly realized that they were serious about the delivery approach as part of their business model. Part of it was all of the delivery vehicle signs stacked up and ready for use; clearly these people can and do employ multiple delivery vehicles every night – which indicates a relatively high volume of orders, considering that their individual products are not very expensive. Even more to the point, though, was the layout of the shop itself: a small service counter, a tiny seating area (just two tables and four chairs) and a huge kitchen/bakery work space with an equally impressive storage area for both dry and refrigerated ingredients. These people are set up to crank out a huge volume of cookies every night – and then deliver them to the customer…
If you’ve ever worked for a Domino’s franchise – or any other delivery-only food service company – this layout should sound very familiar. It’s not intended to serve in-store customers; they’re planning to bring all of the business to you. It’s the only dessert-only delivery food operation I’ve ever heard of, but what is even more remarkable about the company is their operating hours. They’re called Insomnia Cookies, at least in part, because their target demographic is people who can’t sleep (or aren’t, anyway); they are only open from 4:30 pm to 2:30 pm during the school year, and from 2:00 pm to 10:00 pm over the summer…
I don’t know how well these operations would fare in a normal neighborhood, where people don’t usually stay up all night (and will usually make some attempt to eat healthy food), but in a college town, where people DO stay up all night working on overdue projects and subsist on whatever junk comes to hand, it’s sheer genius. And the odd operating hours not only means the store is open at the most productive times of the day (people other than me don’t eat cookies for breakfast, after all), but also limit the company’s personnel requirements to two six-hour shifts (Open and Close) for the delivery/hourly personnel, and a single ten-hour manager’s shift…
Of course, this will only help you if you are fortunate enough to live near one of their 18 locations, but according to the web site the company is about to start franchise operations, which means that sometime soon there might be a shop in your neighborhood that will deliver some of the best cookies you’ve ever tasted direct to your door in the middle of the night. And if any of you are still looking for a franchise business opportunity with a real difference, you might want to look into this one…
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Get Hopping
If anyone is still reading this blog, you may recall a story I commented on last summer about the City of Los Angeles using goats for brush clearance. It’s a very green measure, in that it helps to reduce the risk of brushfires while at the same time not using any gasoline-powered equipment in an environment that still suffers from excessive smog. That didn’t keep the Union people from hating it because it only provided work for a single goatherd for a few weeks, instead of a squad of City employees for the whole summer…
This week, with wildfires burning in the Santa Barbara area that were supposedly started by a spark generated by gas-powered brush-clearing tools, I read with great interest a story about an enterprise in the UK that is selling wallabies, which they breed for the purpose, as lawn-maintenance (and, one assumes, grass removal) measures. You can read the story in The London Times website if you want to, but the basic theme is the same: wallabies start at about $300 USD, cost almost nothing to feed (they mostly just munch on the lawn) and require no more care than a large rabbit does. They don’t need to be sheered, dipped, wormed or herded, and you don’t have to worry about them head-butting people, ripping the grass out by the roots (and eating the roots) or trying to eat the siding off of your house. You need at least half an acre of lawn, and a rather tall fence, but otherwise you just turn them loose and let them feed…
Of course, the wallabies aren’t going to be much help with brush clearance; for that the goats (which are renowned for eating almost anything they encounter) will be more useful. I call this to your attention more because of the ingenuity of the businessman in the story than because of its revolutionary nature. Granted that natural and organic gardening methods are probably a good idea, most of us do not live on an estate in the English countryside, and will therefore not be keeping a wallaby in the garden anytime soon. The idea of breeding large marsupials for sale as family pets, and then discovering their dual-purpose nature standing in for sheep or other grazing animals as groundskeepers, however, is truly brilliant – and leads me to ask you to take another look at your own business model one more time…
It has been said that there is no tool so useless that you can’t find something to fix with it – assuming that you bother to look, and that you know how to fix things in the first place. The same is also true of most, if not all, business models. The next time you’re thinking about how to boost sales of your product or service, take a moment and consider if it could be repurposed, converted to a different application, or just marketed to a different group of potential customers. Just because you were planning around the domestic pet market doesn’t mean that you can’t sell to the landscape management market as well…
Particularly if your main product consists of large marsupial herbivores…
This week, with wildfires burning in the Santa Barbara area that were supposedly started by a spark generated by gas-powered brush-clearing tools, I read with great interest a story about an enterprise in the UK that is selling wallabies, which they breed for the purpose, as lawn-maintenance (and, one assumes, grass removal) measures. You can read the story in The London Times website if you want to, but the basic theme is the same: wallabies start at about $300 USD, cost almost nothing to feed (they mostly just munch on the lawn) and require no more care than a large rabbit does. They don’t need to be sheered, dipped, wormed or herded, and you don’t have to worry about them head-butting people, ripping the grass out by the roots (and eating the roots) or trying to eat the siding off of your house. You need at least half an acre of lawn, and a rather tall fence, but otherwise you just turn them loose and let them feed…
Of course, the wallabies aren’t going to be much help with brush clearance; for that the goats (which are renowned for eating almost anything they encounter) will be more useful. I call this to your attention more because of the ingenuity of the businessman in the story than because of its revolutionary nature. Granted that natural and organic gardening methods are probably a good idea, most of us do not live on an estate in the English countryside, and will therefore not be keeping a wallaby in the garden anytime soon. The idea of breeding large marsupials for sale as family pets, and then discovering their dual-purpose nature standing in for sheep or other grazing animals as groundskeepers, however, is truly brilliant – and leads me to ask you to take another look at your own business model one more time…
It has been said that there is no tool so useless that you can’t find something to fix with it – assuming that you bother to look, and that you know how to fix things in the first place. The same is also true of most, if not all, business models. The next time you’re thinking about how to boost sales of your product or service, take a moment and consider if it could be repurposed, converted to a different application, or just marketed to a different group of potential customers. Just because you were planning around the domestic pet market doesn’t mean that you can’t sell to the landscape management market as well…
Particularly if your main product consists of large marsupial herbivores…
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Ethics of Mother’s Day
Every year around this time you will hear people complain about the so-called “Hallmark Holidays” – events created (so the complainers would have you believe) entirely for the purpose of requiring people to expend money and time on them. One could easily take issue with this position, pointing out that there are traditional celebrations of motherhood dating back for at least 500 years in Western tradition, and even longer in certain parts of the world, or that when the modern holiday was established in the U.S. the Hallmark company had only been in operation for a couple of years, and certainly wasn’t selling cards (or anything else) specifically for this occasion. But leaving the origins of the holiday aside for the moment, let’s consider the ethics of the modern holiday itself…
First, we have the charge that Mother’s Day is held primarily for the benefit of greeting card manufacturers and florists. It must be conceded that these businesses do profit from the existence of the holiday, and will continue to do so for as long as there are people who lack the artistic ability to make their own cards or access to areas rural enough to produce wildflowers. But given that these businesses provide employment for a large number of people, purchase raw material from a wide range of vendors, and make use of transportation, retail, and even advertising services, it is difficult to explain why this is inherently bad for our civilization, let alone unethical…
Second, we have the complaint that people should do nice things for their mothers because they accept or even respect their filial duty, not because some external authority commands it of them. This might hold some weight if there were actual social consequences of failing to observe the day, or if all observances of the holiday were somehow mandated by culture or law. But in reality there is no such compulsion, and even the most libertarian observer must concede that there is nothing wrong with doing something nice for your mother on a specific day. Although it should be noted that if this is the only day on the calendar in which you do anything for your mother, you probably have relationship issues (or other problems) that should not be blamed on Hallmark…
Then we have the issue that the event is unfair to those with low budgets, poor memory skills, or large separations from their mother. I tend to dismiss these because of the very technological marvel on which you are currently reading this rant. If you can operate a computer at all, you can at least send your mother an e-mail greeting, possibly with pictures obtained legally from a free-use source and/or a few lines of poetry from something in the public domain, all without spending a dime. You should also be able to set a recurring reminder in Outlook (or the equivalent) that will remind you that the second Sunday in May is coming well in advance…
Finally, we have the complaint that the holiday is unfair to those who were abused in childhood, those whose relationships with their mothers are so toxic as to be unbearable, those who have been disowned by their parents, and those whose mothers are currently dead. This objection is at least reasonable, but unfortunately, the underlying problem in all of these cases would exist regardless of the observance of a holiday honoring mothers. I can only recommend that these people spend the second Sunday in May being nice to someone else’s mother – or just sleep in that morning and ignore the whole thing…
First, we have the charge that Mother’s Day is held primarily for the benefit of greeting card manufacturers and florists. It must be conceded that these businesses do profit from the existence of the holiday, and will continue to do so for as long as there are people who lack the artistic ability to make their own cards or access to areas rural enough to produce wildflowers. But given that these businesses provide employment for a large number of people, purchase raw material from a wide range of vendors, and make use of transportation, retail, and even advertising services, it is difficult to explain why this is inherently bad for our civilization, let alone unethical…
Second, we have the complaint that people should do nice things for their mothers because they accept or even respect their filial duty, not because some external authority commands it of them. This might hold some weight if there were actual social consequences of failing to observe the day, or if all observances of the holiday were somehow mandated by culture or law. But in reality there is no such compulsion, and even the most libertarian observer must concede that there is nothing wrong with doing something nice for your mother on a specific day. Although it should be noted that if this is the only day on the calendar in which you do anything for your mother, you probably have relationship issues (or other problems) that should not be blamed on Hallmark…
Then we have the issue that the event is unfair to those with low budgets, poor memory skills, or large separations from their mother. I tend to dismiss these because of the very technological marvel on which you are currently reading this rant. If you can operate a computer at all, you can at least send your mother an e-mail greeting, possibly with pictures obtained legally from a free-use source and/or a few lines of poetry from something in the public domain, all without spending a dime. You should also be able to set a recurring reminder in Outlook (or the equivalent) that will remind you that the second Sunday in May is coming well in advance…
Finally, we have the complaint that the holiday is unfair to those who were abused in childhood, those whose relationships with their mothers are so toxic as to be unbearable, those who have been disowned by their parents, and those whose mothers are currently dead. This objection is at least reasonable, but unfortunately, the underlying problem in all of these cases would exist regardless of the observance of a holiday honoring mothers. I can only recommend that these people spend the second Sunday in May being nice to someone else’s mother – or just sleep in that morning and ignore the whole thing…
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Holding the Bag
Sometimes the ideas you need to gain a business advantage are very complex, involving intricate arrangements of high finance, specialized insider knowledge and technical expertise, unique innovations in high technology, or unbelievable timing to seize the perfect moment to make your move. And sometimes all you need is about five cents worth of nylon…
The drycleaners near our house recently asked us if we wanted to sign up for their VIP program. This is less hype than it is a large nylon laundry bag with your name and account number printed on a tag attached to the drawstring. I’ve seen these programs before – they were fairly common in Los Angeles while we were living there – but this particular company had managed to find a new wrinkle: the service is free. Most of these VIP services have used the speed and convenience factors as their main selling points – you don’t have to wait in line to drop off your laundry, just toss the bag on the counter and run – and have required some lengthy registration forms and a deposit for the bag. Which is why people like me have traditionally blown them off, of course…
Now, I’m not attacking the companies back in Los Angeles. Most of them were using nice canvas bags with metal grommets for the drawstring holes and the customer’s information printed on them, which have the advantage of not needing replacement for years at a time (and a nicely unique, giving a real feeling of a relationship being established), but have the drawback of being expensive enough that you wouldn’t want to have to keep replacing them. Hence the deposit, and the information to establish who you really are and where you actually live…
The difficulty here is that the value to me (of being able to just dump my laundry and run) was not worth the time or money involved in joining the VIP program. It’s not that the amounts of money or time involved were especially large, it’s just that since I usually dropped my laundry off before 7:00 am (where there was usually no wait to drop off an order in the usual way), the value created by the VIP service wasn’t worth it to me. This would be even more likely now, since I spend most of my days dressed as a grad student (jeans, knit shirts, sneakers) and only dry-clean a few items each month…
Using the cheap nylon bags, our local drycleaner doesn’t really have to worry about people walking off with them (or just misplacing them) since these things only cost a few cents each; thus, they can do away with the formal requirements of the VIP service. They’re not creating the same sense of “belonging” that a customized bag give you, but neither are they dealing with the big-city formality that would make such a thing more of an issue. And I’d be willing to bet that you could apply the same idea to any number of other “frequent customer” programs, depending on what your business does and where it is located…
Which is why I’m calling this concept to your attention in the first place, of course…
The drycleaners near our house recently asked us if we wanted to sign up for their VIP program. This is less hype than it is a large nylon laundry bag with your name and account number printed on a tag attached to the drawstring. I’ve seen these programs before – they were fairly common in Los Angeles while we were living there – but this particular company had managed to find a new wrinkle: the service is free. Most of these VIP services have used the speed and convenience factors as their main selling points – you don’t have to wait in line to drop off your laundry, just toss the bag on the counter and run – and have required some lengthy registration forms and a deposit for the bag. Which is why people like me have traditionally blown them off, of course…
Now, I’m not attacking the companies back in Los Angeles. Most of them were using nice canvas bags with metal grommets for the drawstring holes and the customer’s information printed on them, which have the advantage of not needing replacement for years at a time (and a nicely unique, giving a real feeling of a relationship being established), but have the drawback of being expensive enough that you wouldn’t want to have to keep replacing them. Hence the deposit, and the information to establish who you really are and where you actually live…
The difficulty here is that the value to me (of being able to just dump my laundry and run) was not worth the time or money involved in joining the VIP program. It’s not that the amounts of money or time involved were especially large, it’s just that since I usually dropped my laundry off before 7:00 am (where there was usually no wait to drop off an order in the usual way), the value created by the VIP service wasn’t worth it to me. This would be even more likely now, since I spend most of my days dressed as a grad student (jeans, knit shirts, sneakers) and only dry-clean a few items each month…
Using the cheap nylon bags, our local drycleaner doesn’t really have to worry about people walking off with them (or just misplacing them) since these things only cost a few cents each; thus, they can do away with the formal requirements of the VIP service. They’re not creating the same sense of “belonging” that a customized bag give you, but neither are they dealing with the big-city formality that would make such a thing more of an issue. And I’d be willing to bet that you could apply the same idea to any number of other “frequent customer” programs, depending on what your business does and where it is located…
Which is why I’m calling this concept to your attention in the first place, of course…
Friday, May 8, 2009
Automotive Black Box
There are a lot of old jokes about programs to put a cockpit recorder and flight data recorder system (the notorious “black box”) similar to the ones used in commercial airliners into cars – usually with a punch line on the order of “Hold my beer and watch this!” There’s never been a serious attempt to legislate such a system, however, because there would be a huge cost to the consumer and a huge invasion of privacy to anyone who rode in such vehicles – thus, everyone, liberal and conservative, can find something to hate about the idea. Even more to the point, perhaps, is the issue of what (other than gathering empirical data) would be the purpose of such devices. Most people are convinced that they are excellent drivers (regardless of the facts of the matter), and they’re not going to listen to a box that tells them they’re not. So, while the technology has been around for some time, there’s never been a practical application for it. At least, until now…
A story being reported in an Detroit Free Press details how a “black box” system, which monitors the vehicle’s location as well as operations, is being tested on teen drivers by the an The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety . The basic idea is that parents can use the system to monitor where their teenager is driving, how fast they were going, rapid accelerations/decelerations, violent turns, and even if they were wearing their seatbelts. Initial tests indicate that teenage drivers are more cautious when they know the car they’re driving will be finking on them to their parents in real time, and as a result, they’re having fewer accidents. It’s a good idea, as far as it goes, but I think the people behind the program may be a bit naïve if they think these systems are ever going to be more than a means for parents to check up on their children…
Granted that some percentage of new drivers are going to appreciate the opportunity to learn how to become more proficient behind the wheel (the “mentoring” aspect mentioned in the Free Press article), it’s hard to imagine the average teenager actually liking this idea. In fact, a lot of them are going to see it as nothing more than a way for their parents to keep tabs on them, monitor their every move, and so on. Unless the systems are very well hidden and extremely hard to tamper with, I would expect jamming, spoofing and hacking to become vastly popular new teenage hobbies; I also expect that a number of particularly contrarian teens will start looking for ways to mess with the system – and with the parents attempting to look over their shoulders…
More to the point, perhaps, parental control methods are problematic once a child turns 18, and if they are self-supporting (and own their own cars) there’s not going to be much their parents can do to require safe driving, black box or no black box – and traffic accidents remain the number one cause of death in White males until the age of 29 (with other demographics not far behind). Nor will these systems do anything about rebellious teens who are going to drive the way the please, parental informants or no, who then do something aggressive and stupid and die anyway…
For all that the idea has some merits, in the long run it’s going to end up being just another attempt to legislate good behavior, and it’s going to fail in the same ways that these measures always do. The cost of these “black box” systems will make them an option on new cars, serious-minded and responsible people will buy then while everybody else passes to save a few bucks, and the serious-minded and responsible teenage drivers will use them as intended – and have a much better change of living to have young drivers of their own. Meanwhile, the remaining 97% of the population will either not have the recorders installed, or else use them to watch their sullen, rebellious teens defy their authority by driving straight into a stationary object…
A story being reported in an Detroit Free Press details how a “black box” system, which monitors the vehicle’s location as well as operations, is being tested on teen drivers by the an The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety . The basic idea is that parents can use the system to monitor where their teenager is driving, how fast they were going, rapid accelerations/decelerations, violent turns, and even if they were wearing their seatbelts. Initial tests indicate that teenage drivers are more cautious when they know the car they’re driving will be finking on them to their parents in real time, and as a result, they’re having fewer accidents. It’s a good idea, as far as it goes, but I think the people behind the program may be a bit naïve if they think these systems are ever going to be more than a means for parents to check up on their children…
Granted that some percentage of new drivers are going to appreciate the opportunity to learn how to become more proficient behind the wheel (the “mentoring” aspect mentioned in the Free Press article), it’s hard to imagine the average teenager actually liking this idea. In fact, a lot of them are going to see it as nothing more than a way for their parents to keep tabs on them, monitor their every move, and so on. Unless the systems are very well hidden and extremely hard to tamper with, I would expect jamming, spoofing and hacking to become vastly popular new teenage hobbies; I also expect that a number of particularly contrarian teens will start looking for ways to mess with the system – and with the parents attempting to look over their shoulders…
More to the point, perhaps, parental control methods are problematic once a child turns 18, and if they are self-supporting (and own their own cars) there’s not going to be much their parents can do to require safe driving, black box or no black box – and traffic accidents remain the number one cause of death in White males until the age of 29 (with other demographics not far behind). Nor will these systems do anything about rebellious teens who are going to drive the way the please, parental informants or no, who then do something aggressive and stupid and die anyway…
For all that the idea has some merits, in the long run it’s going to end up being just another attempt to legislate good behavior, and it’s going to fail in the same ways that these measures always do. The cost of these “black box” systems will make them an option on new cars, serious-minded and responsible people will buy then while everybody else passes to save a few bucks, and the serious-minded and responsible teenage drivers will use them as intended – and have a much better change of living to have young drivers of their own. Meanwhile, the remaining 97% of the population will either not have the recorders installed, or else use them to watch their sullen, rebellious teens defy their authority by driving straight into a stationary object…
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