Tag Archives: Apple

Applying Social Science Concepts to Business: E-Book Edition

31 Sunday Jan 2010

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Sunday’s Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon has stopped selling Kindle versions of all Macmillan titles.  John Sargent, Macmillian’s CEO, recently went to Amazon’s headquarters to try and negotiate new terms for the sale of e-books published by his company.  In general, the publishing industry has been unhappy with Amazon’s insistence that most books be priced at $9.99.  Apparently, the discussions resulted in Amazon pulling all Macmillan e-books from it’s website.

I am a firm believer that the historical knock on the social sciences is unwarranted and that many of the theories, frameworks, and concepts found in the various disciplines are widely applicable in the real world, business in particular.  So when I read about the Amazon-Macmillan dispute I was struck at how a number of social science concepts shed quite a bit of light on these developments; namely Albert Hirschman’s concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty as well as signaling and the indirect use of force.

So what do these concepts have to do with e-books?  Glad you asked. Continue reading

The Apple-Amazon War Begins 1/27

19 Tuesday Jan 2010

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My very first post back in August of last year examined Amazon’s attempt to disrupt the publishing industry through the release of their Kindle reading device.  The irony, of course, was that while Amazon was looking to Apple and the iPod and iTunes as inspiration their plans were most likely to be thwarted (or, at least, complicated) in the long term by Apple:

Apple could very well launch an e-reader of its own, one that vastly improves on Amazon’s market-leading Kindle. Specifically, Apple could develop a reader that utilizes their leading touchscreen technology so that readers can intuitively flip through pages of magazines or books (a feature the Kindle currently lacks), develop their reader so that media is presented in color (the Kindle is gray scale), and provide a larger viewing screen. And while Steve Jobs has previously denied a desire to get into the e-reader market, Apple is apparently full-go towards developing and launching their own tablet computer. Such a device could be a “Kindle-killer”.

After months of speculation, it appears we will get our first look at Apple’s tablet on January 27th which will likely ship in March of this year.  Additionally, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that HarperCollins is in negotiations with Apple to make their titles available in an enhanced electronic format for the release of Apple’s tablet: Continue reading

Apple and Google agreed not to poach talent?

09 Sunday Aug 2009

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TechCrunch has learned from sources that during Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s tenure on Apple’s board the two firms had an unwritten agreement not to poach talent from each other.

To be clear, this unwritten agreement was that Google would not go after Apple employees, and vice versa. However, employees of both companies were free to apply to the other company on their own, we’re told. That’s a small, but important difference as the practice of going after other company’s talent, also known as “poaching”, is considered to be an important component of healthy competition in the market.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was such an agreement. It need not have been verbalized (since both parties may not have wanted to fracture the relationship by having their recruiters target top talent), although it likely was. With the spat over Google Voice presumably leading to Schmidt’s exit from the board (as well as the general fact that they truly are starting to overlap in a number of areas) I would imagine the reigns might be loosened a bit when it comes to locating and recruiting major talent from both firms. Additionally, ending the talent détente would go some way towards dealing with the current Justice Department investigation into hiring practices in the tech sector.

Daily Linkage

05 Wednesday Aug 2009

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Links of note for today:

  • Roseabeth Moss Kanter tells us we must first dread change before we can master it.  I don’t know if we have to dread it.  A best practice for strategy professionals is a recurring evaluation of the market they operate in–both current and future states.  You don’t need to be scared out of your wits by a potential change to do the things she suggests (e.g. What will disrupt us? Who is starting to eat away at our proposition? What is emerging to replace us?  And then develop a strategy accordingly to deal with the answers).  Maybe I’m getting hung up on the language she uses (e.g. nightmares, dread, etc.)…
  • A few items about Netflix today: 1) A great story in the Chicago Tribune that details how Netflix manages to get your movies to you so quickly.  Lot’s of interesting logistical tidbits, but the one stat about QA caught my eye: percentage of mistakenly shipped discs for the one factory=less than a quarter of a percent (hat tip Noah Brier); 2)  Scott Berkun takes a look at the Netflix “culture deck” making the rounds.  He provides his perspective on the good, the bad, and the weird.  I am particularly interested in how the plan to avoid the trap of growing out of a flexible, innovative firm and into a stifled, regimented, status-quo firm.  Not sure they will solve the problem.  There seems to be several barriers to avoiding such a trap, such as natural growth of the organization and the entrenchment of ideas and interests overtime by earlier innovators (as Scott notes).  I am staring to think more and more than the whole Protean Corporation idea may be a plausible approach.
  • Twitter has issues with patent infringement.  I’d love to hear a patent attorney’s opinion on this, but I can’t imagine the patents aren’t very generic in nature.
  • As a follow up to my post on Apple and Amazon: Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble.

An Innovator’s Dilemma: Amazon and Apple edition

03 Monday Aug 2009

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The cover story in this month’s issue of Fast Company profiles Amazon.com and discussing the long-term strategy behind the Kindle and their push into the e-book market.  The article is a great read, especially as it provides insight into Amazon’s larger strategic goal. Not only is Amazon looking to pull an Apple by disrupting and dominating the e-book industry, but CEO Jeff Bezos has his sights on a larger prize: to rewrite and dominate the entire publishing model.

Jeff Bezos is trying to do to book publishers what Steve Jobs of Apple did to the music industry. With its iPod and iTunes Store, Apple carved out a largely virgin market so fast that it was able to wrest control of the digital-music distribution system and thus dictate what the record labels could do. With Amazon jamming (its latest earnings are sky-high even as other online retailers are in a state of malaise), Bezos may sense similar opportunity, a moment when he, in true Jobs-like fashion, could colonize this growing niche for the Amazon ecosystem. Should that happen, book publishers would have more to fear than just being squeezed. Amazon could phase them out completely, treating them as the ultimate middlemen orphaned by a new technology.

Essentially, Amazon is looking to bypass traditional publishers through its massive electronic distribution channels (Amazon.com and the Kindle device) as well as its on-demand publishing technology.  Rather than dealing with the publishers, Amazon could strike deals with the largest authors (those that provide the bulk of the revenues from ‘hits’ that traditional publishers require to keep operating) by offering wider distribution and increased royalties.  This could fundamentally alter the publishing industry, if not destroy its current incarnation.

While this is interesting, there is another part of the article that deserves attention: the risk Amazon could face down the road from Apple. Continue reading

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