In some respects, the video-game business is a lot like the razor business, which follows a simple model: Give away the razor, gouge ’em on the price of the blades. 1.49K
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars. 672
Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense. 527
The fundamental problem with banks is what it’s always been: they are in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky. 616
On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn’t make it less true. 587
In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy. 2.44K
In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap. 2.43K
If someone really wants my company’s business, why shouldn’t he be able to do everything he can – including paying me off – to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources. 3K
I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions. 1.29K
The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality often disguises. 570
Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA’s prospects for success through political channels have always been limited. 595
If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we’d all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars. 501
