strategy Archives – Page 2 of 3

Online ads: Forget tech, invest in creativity

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Technology is not a long-lasting competitive advantage in SEM or other digital marketing – creativity is. This brief post is inspired by an article I read about different bid management platforms: “We combine data science to SEM, so you can target based on device, hour of day and NASDAQ development.” Yeah… but why would you do that? Spend your time thinking of…

Startup dilemmas: Feature priority problem

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction It is a common issue for startups applying customer development to discover many customer problems and either relating to that or to their vision include many, many features in their product development roadmap. However, as we know, it is not about the number of features but their quality, i.e. usefulness in solving the customer pain points. Why is this…

Controlling ad quality in programmatic buying

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Highway to ad quality. Ad quality is an issue in programmatic buying where ad exchange takes place via computer systems. In traditional ad exchange, there’s a human supervising the quality of advertising, but in a programmatic system it’s possible to receive spammy, illegal, or otherwise undesirable advertising without publishers (ad sellers) being aware of it. Likewise, the quality of performance…

Platform strategy: How can media companies co-align their operations with incentives of social platforms

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction Platform integration is a major issue for publishers. The question, as interpreted by some of them, takes the form: friend or foe? Although it would be naïve to answer “friend”, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are not foes either. At minimum, they are necessary evil to cope with, at maximum they are strategic leverage. But somewhere along this axis…

People vs. business models: Warren Buffet’s dilemma

People vs. business models: Warren Buffet’s dilemma

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

In Quora, somebody asked why Warren Buffet prefers not to invest in startups [1]. One of the answers that resonated with me was this one: “In an interview several years back, Warren Buffet said that he does not like to invest in companies whose success is based on the smartness of its people. His reasoning was that all companies hire…

Why human services are needed for world peace

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

The bot can be boss, as long as we have jobs. Why are human services the future of our economy? (And, therefore, an absolute requirement for world peace [1].) For three reasons: They do not pollute or waste material resources (or tend to do so with significantly less degree than material consumption) Exponential growth of population absolutely requires more human labor…

Using Napoleon’s 19th Century Principles for Email Writing

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

“In this age, in past ages, in any age… Napoleon.” (The Duke of Wellington) This is a short post reflecting upon Napoleon’s writing on war and efficient management. I think many of his principles are universal and apply to communication — my special consideration here is writing of emails, which is a vital skill because 1) you want your message to…

Problem/Solution Space: A Startup Perspective

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

I was inspired to write this post by the following pictures that I’d included in my lecture material a few years. Writing it in a bit of a hurry since the class starts soon! (but it’ll good enough to make the point) (You can find the original source for the pictures by googling.) Okay, a couple of things. First, it’s highly…

Modern Market Research Methods: A Startup Perspective

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

EDIT: Updated by adding competitive analysis, very important to benchmark competitors. EDIT2: Updated by adding experimentation (14th April, 2016) Introduction Somebody on Quora was asking about ‘tools’ for validating viability and demand for a startup’s products. I replied it’s not a question of tools, but plain old market research (which seems to be all too often ignored by startup founders).…

How to prevent disruption from happening to you? AKA avoiding the “Vanjoki fallacy”

Published by Joni on March 29, 2017

Introduction A major issue of corporations is how they can avoid being disrupted. This is a commonly established issue, e.g. Christensen discusses it in his book “Innovator’s dilemma”. But I’m going to present here a simple solution for it. Here it is. Rule Number 1: Don’t look at absolute market shares, look at growth rates I call this the “Vanjoki…

Tag: strategy