Tony Petroski

The Future of U.S. Consumer Spending: It's a Generational Thing

At last, someone broke the mold:

"By studying the generational makeup and growth of the U.S. and Japanese consumer (ages 15 to 70) from 1970 to 2025, one can see it is like comparing apples with mangoes."

I prefer mangoes.

This was printed for the Japanese:

9%: GI Generation (born 1905 to 1924)
39%: Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1944)
35%: Baby Boomers (born 1945 to 1964)
19%: Generatiosn X (born 1965 to 1984)

I don't know if it was an American or a Japanese national, but I know it was a young one. Most of the Japanese "GI's" didn't make it. A number of the American GI's didn't make it either.

Why Christmas Will Kill Retail

This article makes me sick.

Wait, I think I already have it, I'm feeling a fever, I'm, no, this is the end...

Business Lesson Learned: Pay Attention to Your 'Bottom of the Pyramid' Strategy

Very interesting article.

The success of a company built on a few key products and then ramping up production of those products (and then never doing much of anything else) is understandable in organizational terms as the company gets bigger, more bureaucratic, harder to move or innovate and with constituencies of employees that like the status quo.

The guys at the top can slap each other on the back and talk about disruptive design and pyramids, but do they accomplish much of those aims vs. disrupting profitable companies to no end. Decentralized organization structure promotes innovation but brings risk to the older model.

How much of the Intel example is just a company going flat-out with what they are already great at, building on those competencies and maximizing their potential and leaving aside other options, some of which might produce great breakthroughs. In other words, it's not that there is an organizational propensity to favor old ideas over new innovation because of fear of disruption, but rather there is no time for the new because what is already successful is taking up full time plus overtime.

It's Not a 'Cloud', It's a 'Brain'

Orestes: Tighten up the prose:

"For those of you familiar with brain chemistry, you can think of these devices as a neurons—when we touch or speak into it, it transmits information based on our usage habits, times spent on apps, the types of apps we download, the music and movies we like, the games we are interested in, or basic information based on who we reach out to—such demographics are stored in a centralized location profiling who we are as users, customers, cultures."

An interesting article. Good tidings.