August 25, 2011
If you happened to turn on CNBC this morning or any other news network, the news of Steve Jobs’ departure from the top slot at Apple was presented as massive news. The journalists and analysts struggled to find words to describe his impact on the world of business and culture as a whole. There...
May 19, 2011
A report in Mashable yesterday stated that social-gaming leader Zynga had made 14 acquisitions in the past 12 months. That kind of pace is quite extraordinary from what many consider to be a relatively small company- albeit with a potential market cap of $10 billion. It makes you think: 1. Category...
March 31, 2011
Diary - Celebrity NewsFacebook's corporate culture becoming a management talking point was one thing I predicted at the start of the year, so it's an interesting to see a flavor of that prediction coming true. MTV recently aired a behind-the-scenes look at the corporate culture of Facebook and...
August 20, 2010
Watching last night's launch of Facebook's new "Places" product, it was impossible not to be struck by the youth, style and approach of Zuckerberg and his team. This was not corporate America as usual; it was causal, straight-forward and importantly, honest. They launched a product that because...
August 10, 2010
There's a great film going around the web right now, that's basically a recruitment ad for Twitter. It's probably the first piece of communication the brand has done and it gives a real flavor of the place, it's people and its culture. It's also pretty cool, ripping off a scene from the movie...
August 6, 2010
In a hyper-competitive world, it's often easy to forget some basic rules about decency in business.Bob Sutton, the Stanford professor, wrote about these yesterday, but although I was aware of HP's strong corporate culture, I'd never heard of Packard's 11 rules. They just make sense and if every...
July 23, 2010
In the past, corporations might have called ad and PR agencies to solve their image problems. While these efforts may have papered over the cracks, they might have made companies feel good and feel like real change was happening. However, as well know, change happens from within and without...
July 6, 2010
It's been a long time since the very mention of Apple to clients generated the response of "niche player". The company has become an 800lb gorilla and is crushing other corporate monoliths that step in its way. The biggest casualties over the past 10 years have been Sony and more recently, Nokia;...
June 18, 2010
This month's Inc Magazine has an interesting story about Zappos and Amazon that makes it very clear why Amazon acquired them. Here are some of the key points:1. Always imagined Zappos as selling more than shoes- used Virgin as a model, but instead of being all about being "hip and cool",...
August 12, 2007
Some nice thinking in this presentation from LBS on why good companies do bad. Posted by Ed Cotton
May 11, 2007
There are all kinds of rumors flying that Google is suffering a brain drain. Some of the brightest and best are leaving the Googleplex because of the stifling bureaucracy that’s emerged at the company in recent months. Bureaucracy runs counter to the very DNA of Google that's thrived on...









