L2 blog

One of the biggest drawbacks with electricity produced by windmills is that the price per Kw falls the harder and longer the wind blows. Since there is no way to regulate the output from windmills it would be nice to be able to somehow store the energy until prices are high enough.

This is an interesting design challenge as well as a huge business opportunity.

By the end of 2007 there will be 1 billion camera phones in existance. The sale of mobile phones with a camera have skyrocketed from 3 million in 2001 to 500 million sold in 2006. In 2006 there were sold 1 billion mobile telephones worldwide, half of which were camera phones.

Lets take a moment to grasp this: It took Casio 30 years to sell 1 billion calculators. I don't even think McDonalds sold a billion hamburgers that fast!

The customer is always right. Love your customers. The customer knows best.

We've all heard these old sayings. And to some extent they are right. Consumers vote with their wallets. They know what they want when they see it. The problem is when it comes to user input in the product development process the results are less than impressive.

While re-reading a portion of "Competing for the Future" by Hamel & Prahalad, I ran across this sentence: "A company surrenders tomorrow's businesses when it gets better without getting different".

This has been on of the fundamental themes of my working life: keeping a firm grip on improving what we know how to do, while still being open and adventurous enough to do things completely different in and for the future.

I saw an episode of "Penn & Tellers BULLSHIT" last night. The show was about the truths and myths of recycling. Is recycling a benefit to the environment and does it save natural resources?

Which ever view you take, one interesting fact popped up: 40% of all of the recycled trash ends up in a landfill site anyways.

Organizations like fish need to stay fresh. The more fresh the fish, the better they taste and the higher the price. Keeping organizations and companies fresh and innovative is not always easy, especially in the face of success. The Japanese fishing industry was faced with similar challenges several years ago.