Why big companies dive or thrive: Peggy Noonon on SJobs

I find the first few words of this article by Peggy Noonan very interesting.

There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He's at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to "build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products." Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about "why decline happens" at great companies: "The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues." So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company's daily life. They "turn off." IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but "they didn't know anything about the product." In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.

Jobs's theory of decline was elegant and simple as an iPad, and when I asked business leaders about it the past few weeks, they agreed, some with the kind of engagement that suggested maybe their own companies had experienced such troubles.

Noonan, Peggy. WSJ. 11/18/11. A Caveman Won't Beat a Salesman.

Man, ain't THIS the truth! We see this all the time! The belief that a better salesman can fix things is always flawed.

Groupon falls 35% in 3 days

I hate being RIGHT all the time. Damn.

How we got to the moon

CNN Blogs has a neat feature about different aspects of the Apollo moon shot program here.

It might be fun to see if the Chinese have to reinvent everything themselves or if they just choose to copy stuff that we did in the '60s. They certainly have the technological prowess for the latter. Hopefully they won't use as much lead paint in their spacecraft as their toys for export.

OWS moves to college campuses. Goody!

Seems that OWS is fizzling and the losers are returning to colleges to have their sit-ins and Ignorata meetings. I guess it's easier to get Mom & Dad to pay for protests closer to home.

NYT, again, has the story here. I wonder if these folks will acknowledge the free security and the open environment they're getting back at school.

It's a new Gold Rush, by gum!

NYT has a good article on the Green Gold Rush. Enjoy.

Hey, let's go screw up Europe now!

NLRB's suit against Boeing for moving operations to South Carolina represents a watershed for business in this country. Forget moving offshore - forget moving within the Lower 48! One of the principals involved sent this tweet suggesting that now they can go screw up Yurrup too.

Funny, yes, but smoking gun, too.

Welcome transparency! A good idea from the admin in Washington

The rumor is that the Obama Administration is threatening to use executive order to expose any lawmaker "requests" that impact federal agencies or funding. You know, that letter of introduction or that "reminder" about who's on what committee. That kind of thing.

I think that would be a great idea. Nothing disinfects like sunlight.

Wall Street Journal guide to jobs

WSJ has a new guide to unemployment figures - it's INTERACTIVE.

Finally we get to see just why it was we put up with all the hardship in school.

Energy bracelets share some amazing things with Groupon

Actually, just one BIG thing. They're both poor investments, it turns out. Or it will LIKELY turn out in the future. Check here.

Groupon 1, Reality 0

More here about the Groupon IPO. Note that it's a tiny sale compared to the full equity value of the firm.

Another neat point is the mention of LinkedIn's 9% price drop when they announced more shares sold after IPO. That could be an effect of the investor that sold, but who knows. Whatever it is, managers will have to make up the drop somewhere else.

Here's another link to LinkedIn's IPO info, from the New Yorker. They had a small chunk issued, too, back in May of this year. Yahoo Finance for LinkedIn looks like this.

The article mentions Pandora, the online radio firm that debuted recently too. Yahoo Finance here.

Finally, compare all of these to the grand-daddy of them all: Google.

And Apple, I guess.

Debit fee may be dead, but others await

From a Boston newspaper, here.

In other news, Boston still has a newspaper.

Freddie Mac Needs Your Money!

No surprise. Freddie Mac continues to lose money, has axed for a few billion more of the taxpayer dollars.

Mayor Bloomberg gets one right!

Seems he told a commerce group that the Crisis was the fault of Congress, who forced banks to lend to poor risks.

Maybe he's on to something there!

Article here.

Meanwhile, Daily Koz suggests that banks are securitizing subprime car loans now.

Hello, 1998 wants its news back!

LA Times story on Buy-Here, Pay-Here car lending is here. This stuff is just evil, seriously. Lending money to folks who can't pay it back is wrong on every level. It's like slavery.

On a related note: did you know that of the 91,000 Germans captured at Stalingrad, only 6,000 were eventually repatriated? Says the History Channel. A society has the morality it can afford-I guess Stalin could only afford slavery. Just like ancient cultures to make captives into slaves. I'd heard this before (how German labor built expensive dachas for Commie elites) but this reminded me.

History Channel, another reason to have Netflix.

Goodnight Gracie.