http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005 by the authors Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:32:55 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87593 Relax, you don't have to be best - there's hardly any competitive category in which the best-selling is objectively the best. 87593@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:32:55 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87587 Aw geez, it's not enough to best now I have to be first? Sigh. 87587@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:21:50 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87491 Trout and Ries are extending their own brand too far, and should have stopped with Positioning. I've been in high tech marketing/advertising for over thirty years and the world is littered with the bodies of companies who were first and best but got beaten by large companies who came in later with more muscle. The cell phone scenario sounds like the early days of the browser wars: MS is still here and owns the field. 87491@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:59:46 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87479 Hi Hal Pawluk - I'm learning German at the moment. Every day my teacher explains the Rule. Then spends the next half hour explaining the exceptions to the rule :-) And actually Microsoft are in danger, in my opinion, of transgressing Law 12 (extending the brand too far) and becoming seriously weakened because of it. It's better to be really strong in one area than weak in many. They're also running into Law 18 - success leads to arrogance and arrogance leads to failure, despite Mr Gates' paranoia about this. I'd say Microsoft are in danger of missing the next big thing - the mobile/cell phone/thin client revolution that's happening under their noses. One of the themes of my blog (www.mobile-weblog.com) is that the mobile will do to the PC what the PC did to the mainframe. If that's right, a big beneficiary might be IBM, leading us right back to The Law of Leadership :-) Others might be Sun and Apple (guess who owns www.iphone.org?). 87479@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:06:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87471 Microsoft indisputably proves that the Leadership Law is wrong: they have never been first and never been best. 87471@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:35:04 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87461 thanks Russell, very interesting. We are seeing how this plays out with entertainment, especially music, on the Internet: iTunes wasn't first, but it was the first to get the general thumbs up of having done it right, so thus far it's the name associated with online music. We'll see if that lasts. 87461@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:28:41 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/27/055437.php#comment-87455 This is the same debate that was had in Aesop's fable of the hare & the tortise. In capitalism over the long run it is who collects the most money that wins - not sure if one strategy always works? This book is a nice little read tho' 87455@blogcritics.org Mon, 27 Sep 2004 07:59:55 EDT