Missing an Opportunity?

 Like a lot of Americans who are not supporters of the previous Presidential administration I was quite amused to read the story of how Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks museum in San Antonio had been forced to remove its wax figure of our previous President from public display. According to the story on the San Antonio Current website, the company was concerned about the figure taking any further damage because visitors to the museum keep punching it in the face. A host of sarcastic remarks, a few of which might be considered outright gloating, went streaming through my mind, but then it occurred to me that the company may be overlooking a new business opportunity that is right under their collective nose…

Even a cursory glance at the news from the last two months should suggest to any alert observer that there are many people in this country who would quite like to punch the actual 45^th President of the United States in the face, but are unable to do so because such an activity is both illegal and also likely to result in being shot repeatedly by Secret Service agents. Punching a wax figure would likely not be as satisfying, but it would be much safer. If the figure was sufficiently life-like the museum could offer action photography, color or black-and-white, of guests apparently punching the former President in the face, although video would be problematic in the sense that it would not accurately simulate the sound of the punch landing or the action of an actual person falling to the floor after being punched…

Having reached that conclusion, it occurred to me that this would only scratch the surface of such a new business model. Tussaud’s Waxworks can, in theory, produce life-sized effigies of virtually any known person, living or dead, of whom a sufficiently detailed photograph exists. This means that, potentially, they could sell anyone the opportunity to punch the image of any person who affronts them in the face, along with a set of glossy photographs either printed on-site or captured on disc for future reproduction. And, unlike a photoshopped image, these pictures would not show any signs of digital tampering, because, of course, they would not have been falsified in any way…

Whether or not such a service would be feasible from a legal standpoint is less clear. Public figures have less control over the fair usage of their name and image than most private citizens do, and just allowing people to punch an effigy of someone in the face does not introduce any particular claims about that someone. One could easily imagine a court ruling against a business which had chosen to display a wax figure of the 45^th President in a compromising position with one or more of the dictators with whom he was known for currying favor, for example, or an effigy of our ex-President with his head emerging from the digestive tract of an animal, but explaining what material harm is caused to any individual by allowing customers to punch his three-dimensional image in the head would be harder to accomplish…

Some municipalities within the United States have laws against using pictures of actual people as targets for pistol or rifle shooting, and if San Antonio has one it could be argued that such a ban should extend to any simulated act of violence against any individual, no matter how obviously simulated it might be. Alternately, one might imagine cities, counties or states passing laws that would render acts of simulated violence against one or more classes of people illegal in that jurisdiction, for reasons of decorum, public safety, or inappropriate use of wax works. And, I suppose, it is possible that such a service would be cost-prohibitive, or require a price-point too high to attract a sufficient number of customers. But, on the other side of the issue, it might also be possible for the company to produce a more life-like effigy, e.g. one that would look, feel, or even sound much more like a real person when being punched in the face…

If so, I really hope that someone at Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks gets started on these improved models straight away – because I can think of a number of public and historical figures I would be willing to pay to punch in the face…

And I don’t believe that I’m the only one who would…

Two Kinds of Error

Over the past decade I’ve devoted a lot of time in this space to complaining about – and occasionally making fun of – the vast oceans of misinformation that can be found almost everywhere online. Although, to be fair, I mostly complain about people who blindly accept everything they read online, and make fun of the often nonsensical actions they take in consequence. For example, some years ago I wrote about a bit of clickbait claiming that Don Knotts had just revealed the “real” reason for his departure from the Andy Griffith Show, despite the fact that this iconic American actor had been dead for eleven years at the time. I also strongly implied that anyone who blindly clicked on the link, let alone believed the absurd misinformation they would find there was a complete sucker…

Recently, though, I’ve become concerned with the opposite phenomenon appearing with increasing frequency – that is, people finding perfectly reasonable, carefully documented information online and refusing to believe it anyway. One could argue, as I have on occasion, that this error is the other side of the same coin. For example, members of the “anti-vax” movement heard about a single, laughably unprofessional, long since discredited theory about vaccines being tied to autism, and have re-introduced potentially fatal diseases into the United States while they cling to that theory, while as many as one-third of Americans have seen repeated information explaining how the use of facial coverings could end the pandemic in a matter of weeks, but are still refusing to wear them…

The point was brought home to me personally this week when I ran across a Buzzfeed list article about outrageous things college professors said their students had done. It would be easy to dismiss the entire list as being fictional, or at best highly exaggerated, except for the fact that I have seen several of these behaviors first-hand over the last decade at work, some of them repeatedly. It isn’t at all unusual for students to cite things their mother told them as proof of their thesis, demand an explanation for receiving zero credit for work they copied and pasted directly out of Wikipedia or failed to turn in at all, or demanding a different presentation date despite having had four months to prepare…

Any readers familiar with statistics (assuming I have readers) will recognize this basic problem as the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 errors, but if you are unfamiliar with the terms, the upshot is that accepting incorrect information is just as problematic as failing to accept correct information. That is, accepting universally-acknowledged quackery is going to be just as harmful as rejecting elementary best practices, even in cases less serious than the spread of potentially fatal pathogens. And in the current age of information, both types of error are far more dangerous than they have ever been before…

This post was originally going to be a humorous and sarcastic set of comments on things I saw in the classroom as a college instructor, including a few things even more absurd than the people at Buzzfeed put on their list. I could tell you stories about the kid who not only plagiarized a paper, but tried to turn in a paper that had been submitted to me, in the same class, during the previous semester, or the unfortunate individual who missed a term paper deadline because he was in jail that morning. But half-way through that post I realized that there was an actual point to be made here…

In today’s interconnected world, every one of us has access, at least in theory, to every bit of information, reliable or not, that has ever existed. Verifying any particular fact you come across is easier than it was at any previous time in history, but figuring out which data points you should accept, and which ones must be rejected is arguably the hardest it has ever been. Regrettably, though, the consequences of making either error are also orders of magnitude worse than they have ever been – and the fact that we are now being inundated by people deliberately spreading misinformation, disinformation, or outright lies is not helping. Going forward, all of us have got to try harder to get this right, before we lose another half-million (and counting) people for no reason at all…

Think It Through

There are times when I really wish I had chosen to study Marketing in business school instead of Management. The first time, at MBA level, I still believed that there was a place in the world for a generalist who just wants to get on with the job at hand. The second time, I was looking for the answer to why the senior management teams of otherwise perfectly good companies keep running their firms directly into the ground, and it seemed reasonable to study the actions and strategies of the senior managers themselves. And, of course, both times through I knew I didn’t have the math for it. But quite apart from that, and leaving out the absurd bias my former department has against applied research (and the practitioners who apply it), I have noted a large number of the aforementioned management failures that relate directly to marketing decisions that even a reasonably bright six-year-old would have known better than to make…

A case in point would be Burger King’s attempt at a marketing tweet this week. I picked up the story from USA Today, but you can find details about it all over the Internet as of today. Actually a series of three tweets, the first one said “Women belong in the kitchen.” The second one pointed out that women comprise only about 20% of all professional chefs, and the third tweet introduced a new Burger King program to provide scholarships for women attending culinary schools – thus correcting the shortfall. It’s a marketing/public relations move that has some real potential, timed to coincide with International Women’s Day 2021, but whoever came up with it seems to have missed just how badly the first tweet would be received – and how likely people were to ignore tweets two and three, particularly if they were already angered by tweet number one…

It seems possible that the company was attempting to emulate the success that Wendy’s has already had with their company’s Twitter account, which has become known (if not exactly famous) for its humorously sarcastic tweets over the last few years. Unfortunately, whoever came up with this triple tweet appears to be unfamiliar with the convention of indicating a multipart tweet by putting the notation 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3, or however many tweets the message takes up. They’re also ignoring the tendency of people to stop reading something that angers them, as well as the fact that this particular message is neither sarcastic nor amusing…

Now, I don’t mean to imply that if I had a Marketing degree I would be able to tell any company when their attempt at being hip, edgy, or at least relevant was about to crater. But this isn’t the first attempt at Twitter advertising or other online marketing attempts to fly wide of the mark, and it isn’t even Burger King’s first absurdly offensive failed marketing attempt. Regular readers of this blog (assuming I have readers) will recall an earlier post about a Burger King ad featuring a new oblong burger product and a woman’s face apparently looking at it with an expression that could be interpreted as awe, fear, or revulsion, depending on your point of view…

It doesn’t take a lot of familiarity with failure analysis, let alone a graduate degree in Marketing, to recognize that the company has an unfortunate history with advertising that is not as clever or funny as they think it is, or that any future attempts at witty, edgy, or viral advertising are likely to attract greater scrutiny than they seem to have expected. You have to wonder if the person operating the Burger King  twitter feed ran this idea past anyone else – and if so, whether the “anyone else” included any actual women. Or, for that matter, anyone who had ever met an actual woman…

Other authors have written about the propensity of supposedly brilliant leaders in movies and television programs to formulate elaborate plans in which any ordinary six-year-old would be able to find obvious flaws, and suggested that if they ever have the chance to be the “evil overlord” or equivalent they will run all of their plans such an individual. It seems excessive to suggest that the senior management at Burger King should consider the same advice, but if they want the advice of a scruffy blogger who used to teach Business Strategy at a top business school, I do have some time available…

Try It Again, Folks

If you’re the type who follows aerospace news, you’ve probably already seen the footage of the Space-X “Starship” prototype exploding a few minutes after what had, to that point, been its first successful high-altitude flight and soft landing. If not, you may not have known or cared that the two previous landings ended the same way. After all, other than hardcore space wonks like your humble blogger, who really cares if an eccentric billionaire’s pet project works out or not? Elon Musk clearly has the money to spend on this weird science-geek hobby, and if he wants to spend it on an epic-scale model rocketry kit, what difference does that make?

Well, in addition to being a hardcore space wonk (since 1968!) I’m also a business blogger and former business teacher, and I have to say that dismissing the latest Space-X explosion as merely a novelty (or even worse, a vanity project) would be a mistake for financial, economic, and historical reasons. The financial opportunities presented by the commercial exploitation of space have been enumerated by many authors, and need not delay us here; nor does it require any great understanding of business or finance to grasp the benefit of the jobs provided by Space-X itself, and by the many companies from which it buys materials. But failing to grasp the historical and economic significance of the rise of private spacecraft and launchers is difficult to excuse as anything other than being two generations behind the times…

Fifty years ago, private space exploration lay entirely in the realm of science fiction. Putting a person – or even a good-sized satellite – into orbit was possible only for a national government, and indeed only two of those had managed it. Even more daunting, perhaps, was that both the American and Soviet space programs had suffered humiliating failures by 1970, with a plethora of rockets exploding on the launch pad, or shortly thereafter, and at least one fatal accident each. The idea of a private citizen building a space-worthy rocket was the stuff of children’s books, fantasy stories, and (in 1979) comedic adventure television programs staring Andy Griffith. And yet, even then, there were historical perspectives that should have told us otherwise…

In 1903 the airplane had no practical applications, and the automobile wasn’t much better; neither one was anything a modern audience would call safe, either. And yet, thirty years later the first of the Douglas Commercial airplanes was built, followed two years after that by the DC-3. Air travel became a common feature of life, and dozens of commercially viable firms began offering it. The same period saw the rise of literally dozens of automakers, proliferation of highways, and expansion of companies selling everything from internal combustion engines to tree-shaped air fresheners. Today it would be virtually impossible to imagine the world without those two industries…

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone standing on the dunes at Kitty Hawk in 1903 could have predicted the use of airpower in either world war, let alone the 747, the A380, or the SR-71. And we can only wonder what Henry Ford would have thought about self-driving cars, hybrid vehicles, or jet-powered ground vehicles (it’s a stretch to call them “cars”) that can break the speed of sound. But anyone who dismissed those technologies, or discounted their commercial possibilities, based on the failure of early applications would feel like an idiot in today’s world – and I’d be willing to be that anyone who dismisses Space-X or any of the other private spacecraft companies that are getting started today is going to feel even dumber in just another generation or two…

Why Do People Rob Banks?

The title of this post isn’t facetious, and it isn’t really sarcastic, either. If you’ve ever read a story about bank robbery, or looked it up online, you already know that most bank branches rarely have more than five figures worth of cash on hand, and never more than low six figures. They are also loaded with countermeasures, cameras, silent alarms, dye packs, and even armed guards. Even worse, from any potential criminal’s point of view, bank robbery is automatically considered a Federal offense, and will bring the FBI down on you faster than you would believe. There is an excellent chance of being killed outright, and an even better chance of being sent to prison, and even if you succeed in getting away with it, you’re probably going to end up with less than $100,000 for your trouble…

As an alternative, consider the case of Jessica Metivier, of Acton, Massachusetts, who was sentenced this week for her part in defrauding the United States Treasury Department of more than $50,000,000 USD. According to the story on the US Department of Justice website, Metivier and her partner, Christopher N. Condron, submitted grant applications for tax free energy grants as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, including wind, biofuels, and gasification projects, totaling more than $88 million dollars. As a former grant writer, I can tell you that such grant applications are incredibly detailed, and rigorously vetted by the granting agency. Getting one at all is intended to be as difficult as possible, specifically to avoid fiascos like this one…

It seems worth noting that this wasn’t a case where the defendants were immediately caught, either. The fraudulent applications first appeared in May of 2009, and Metivier and Condron weren’t charged with anything until August of 2017. One might have hoped that it would take less than eight years to detect such an offense, either by periodic audits, progress reports (that are required on all Federal grants, usually quarterly), or simply because somebody drove by the alleged site of the project and failed to see any of the large wind farms, gasification plants, or development facilities that should have been present…

I could absolutely understand if any or all of my readers (assuming I have readers) were outraged by the fact that some clown was able to defraud the Federal government for upwards of $50 million of your tax dollars and remain undetected (or at least unindicted) for more than eight years. But if that upsets you, you’re really going to be furious when you find out what Metivier’s sentence was: one year of probation. Condron’s case hasn’t been resolved yet, but since he’s being charged for stealing a smaller amount of the money, it seems unlikely that he will end up doing any worse than his partner…

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t had the chance to read any of the court documents, and I’m not suggesting that I would understand any of the legal aspects anyway. I don’t have a law degree, and my one semester of Business Law in business school probably wouldn’t be any help even if I had taken it more recently than 1991. But from a strategy standpoint, if you had to choose between a venture that would net you less than $50,000 and could easily result in 10 years in prison (or death), and one that would yield literally a thousand times more money and only result in one year of probation if you were caught at all, why on Earth would anyone select the first option?

All kidding aside, as one of the aforementioned taxpayers, I can’t help feeling that just having to spend one year in which you do not commit any crimes is rather a light sentence for stealing $50 million of our money. Even more to the point, though, is the question of just how many other teams of fraudsters are pulling off operations like this one – and of  how many of them, if any, have been caught in the first place…

Overlooked

Every so often you may find yourself reading an interesting story, in whatever medium you prefer, when you suddenly realize that the authors have just made a casual reference to something far more amazing, surprising, or completely game-changing than the original topic of the article. This may indicate that your understanding of the topic, the industry, or the world itself is out of date; alternately, it may indicate that the authors are taking something for granted that isn’t general knowledge, just because it isn’t novel to them. But in the case of the Lockheed-Martin “Speed Racer” unmanned aerial vehicle, I think it’s possible that I just have a different perspective than the technology writer who authored the original article…

I got the story from the Popular Mechanics website, but only because it was picked up by the News app on my iPhone. Apparently, when they say “There’s an app for that!” they aren’t kidding. The new vehicle called the “Speed Racer” UAV is an interesting piece of technology in its own right, a drone that can be used both as a reconnaissance platform and as a cruise missile. If you load it up with sensors it can penetrate contested airspace and send information about the battlefield back to its carrier vehicle, and if you load it with an explosive warhead it becomes an extremely stealthy missile that can find and destroy anything you tell it to look for. Even better, it can apparently be launched by any aircraft big enough to carry it, without the need for any added equipment – Lockheed is apparently testing it with a Beechcraft model 1900, a light transport airplane called a C-12 in military service…

The possibilities for launching both advanced reconnaissance drones and advanced cruise missiles from a common, off-the-shelf transport craft are already extraordinary. If this article is correct, not only could the drones be fielded at a fraction of the cost of building a new carrier vehicle (let alone the cost of a new manned airplane for the same purpose), but the US could also deploy them from widely-dispersed platforms that would also be indistinguishable from a common commercial transport. The implications of Lockheed’s “StarDrive” design system may be even more amazing, however, especially from a business standpoint…

The details of the system are highly confidential (and probably classified, as well), but the technology involved allows the company to move from conceptual drawings to a working prototype aircraft in months, not years, using computer-aided design (CAD) and robotic manufacturing equipment. For example, the company was able to produce the first prototype for its new advanced fighter in less than a year from the completion of the first concept drawing. This doesn’t quite match the 173 days North American Aircraft needed to produce the first P-51 Mustang prototype, but the long-term possibilities in the face of the military and commercial Cold War now ramping up are intriguing…

Imagine the possibilities if the US was able to field new military aircraft ten or twenty times faster than any foreign adversary, and implement upgrades and improvements to the design even more quickly. For that matter, imagine if Lockheed (and whatever corporate partners they deside to take on) were able to produce new commercial offerings for sale in the time it usually takes to decide to start a new design project. This technology has the potential to change not only the aerospace industry but any other industrial sector where the “StarDrive” system can be used in a cost-effective manner beyond recognition, and the authors of the linked article barely even mention it in passing as they discuss one of its recent accomplishments…

I’d like to think that the people who follow such developments have only just gotten around to telling the rest of us about it, and that they already realize the incredible competitive advantage this technology would offer to any company that could get permission to use it. And I certainly hope that anyone who might see their company wiped out by a competitor with this kind of tech is already talking to Lockheed about licensing possibilities. But either way, it’s a good example of why you should always consider the broader implications of what you are reading…

Read the Room

I’m reluctant to use this title for a single post; if I tried I could probably come up with dozens, if not hundreds, of stories about tone-deaf moves by businesses and their management teams that have made the pandemic era even worse than it already was. Maybe I can start a regular feature on this topic, running every week to cover the most egregious example I can find in the previous seven days. For sheer idiocy, in terms of a move that does not work well under the current atmosphere, it may take a while to top the story of an employee who wrote to the CEO of Trader Joe’s asking for more rigorous anti-COVID procedures at work, and was promptly fired for his trouble, however…

I picked up the story from The Washington Post, but you can also find it on Twitter or any number of aggregation sites. A crew member working for Trader Joe’s at one of their New York locations wrote directly to the company’s CEO, explaining that more stringent measures were needed to protect the store crews, and that only the CEO had sufficient authority to impose them on the entire chain. Most of these were not terribly surprising, as workers everywhere have been asking for better air filtration, more time and supplies to disinfect the store interiors, and more conscientious enforcement of mask requirements. The only really innovative point in the letter was the request for a “three strikes” policy against customers who refuse to wear masks when inside the store…

It seems worth pointing out that employee recommended that the company accommodate customers who can’t wear masks due to medical conditions by using a curbside pick-up – a common measure taken by grocery and pharmacy companies, and one which Trader Joe’s already offers its customers. It also seems worth the mention that the company insists that it fired the employee in our story because of “the disrespect he showed toward our customers,” while telling the employee himself that the requests in his email and his temerity in emailing them indicated that he didn’t understand or practice the company’s “values,” whatever those might be…

What takes this over the line from poor management practice into complete idiocy is that the employee claims to have received stellar annual reviews, praising him for (among other things) his dedication to customer service and excellence in assisting customers – and the company has not disputed any of this as of this to date. Unless those reviews were all disinformation of some kind, it would appear that this employee is actually very respectful of the customers, and the company is actually taking offense at his request. In listing different causes in his termination letter and in their statement to the Post about this situation, effectively lying about the facts of the matter and slamming the employee, the company has not only managed to flush their own credibility, they have also sparked public outcry and calls for a boycott…

Now, I’m not going to suggest that the CEO of any company, let alone a national chain the size of Trader Joe’s, should have to consider and respond to every request received from one of their employees. I am suggesting that, if this story is true, then this matter was handled in possibly the worst fashion possible. It would have been much simpler for one of the CEO’s administrative assistants to reply with the company’s standard “thank you for your suggestion; we will look into it” message, and then ignore the whole thing. If anyone at corporate headquarters is actually mortally offended at the request that senior management “show up for” its employees by granting these requests, in return for the employees risking their safety by showing up for work every day despite the pandemic, they could always find some plausible excuse for firing this employee at some later point. Hopefully without triggering public outrage, giving rise to wrongful termination lawsuits, or making themselves look like a bunch of arrogant, thin-skinned, easily-offended idiots…

Alternately, I suppose, they could actually consider his requests…