Archive for the ‘geopolitics’ Category

Black Lives Matter

June 23, 2020

A post from the DiamanteScholars.com blog

By Peter Zaballos

Seattle protest organized by Black Lives Matter, June 3, 2020

[This post originally appeared on the Diamante Scholars Blog and was published there on June 11, 2020]

When we founded the Diamante Scholars a year ago, one of the core tenets of the program is that it “helps high school students with overlooked and unseen potential find a path to higher education and career success.”

Overlooked. Unseen potential.

What has happened in this country over the past ten days is all about overlooked, unseen potential. It’s about systemic racial discrimination. It’s about the fact that the United States is a fundamentally racist nation that (hopefully) is about to admit that and do something about it.

Achieving equality begins and ends with understanding what life is like for someone other than yourself. My wife and I attended the George Floyd protest at Westlake Center in Seattle on Saturday, May 30. And we saw people of all colors there. Peaceful. Families. And we also saw agitators — like a white guy carrying a baseball bat. Who brings a baseball bat to a peaceful rally? We all know where that rally went. But those peaceful people of all colors were not the instigators of the violence or the looting.

We also attended a protest rally outside the Seattle Courthouse on Wednesday, June 3 that was put on by Seattle Black Lives Matter. Again, people of all colors were there. And one of the speakers, who I believe was Ebony Miranda, made a point of thanking all of us for being there. They also reminded us that when it comes to defining the issues that matter, Black people are the ones who define what matters to them. They are the ones living with racist oppression every day because of their skin color.

I cannot know what it feels like to be Black – I’m a white male and have lived my life with privilege. Every step of the way. For years my black friends have told me about what it is like to be them. To be highly educated and highly successful and to still endure the constant judgment and discrimination that comes just from the color of their skin. One of my friends years ago educated me about DWB traffic violations – Driving While Black. About how often he is pulled over in his car simply for being Black and driving a nice car.

But it’s not just this one friend. This past week a close friend, Dave Cotter, who is Black — and a successful technology executive — wrote a heart wrenching blog post about what it is like to be him. About being pulled over in his own neighborhood and in the surrounding neighborhoods and being asked “is this your car?” and “why are you here?” He’s even been pulled over driving his ski boat, and asked if that was his.

For those of us who aren’t Black this moment is all about listening. It’s all about empathy and understanding. And all about empowering, about hope, about opportunity for action.

And about how the direction we need to head is clear. 

Why am I writing this on the Diamante Scholars blog? Because we are committed to helping students find their paths and realize their potential. Regardless of race, ethnicity, religion and many of the many other factors that make us human and unique. Because we are committed to seeing our students for exactly who they are: people with dreams, people with futures ahead of them, people who deserve to be seen for their talents and actions.

While racial injustice and racial discrimination are not new, what does seem to be new is the broad acknowledgement that enough is enough, and it is time to do something about it. And what is getting done is messy. It is certainly unfortunate that violence and looting have happened, but it’s a fundamental tragedy that Blacks have been systematically oppressed for 400+ years. And we have to change this.

On August 28, 1963 Rep. John Lewis gave a searing speech at the “March on Washington” and his words are just as urgent and relevant today as they were then. Which is tragic in its own right, but this passage seems to be fit once again for what we are seeing across our nation:

“To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we have long said that we cannot be patient.  We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now! We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler, “Be patient.” How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now. We do not want to go to jail. But we will go to jail if this is the price we must pay for love, brotherhood, and true peace.”

We are committed to seeing our students for exactly who they are: people with dreams, people with futures ahead of them, people who deserve to be defined by their deeds and actions. And who deserve to be free. We strive to empower our scholars to use their voices, to be advocates of racial justice. And their voices are here for us to listen to them, and for us to learn from them as well.

Here is how Kristine and I are personally supporting change where we live, in Seattle. 

We support the brave protesters who are literally putting their lives on the line to stand up for justice by helping them with bail as they get arrested. 

We support the Black-owned businesses that are critical employers and fixtures in our community.

We support local politicians who can take on the structural change that is so urgently needed

Finally and most important, we are listening and learning:

  • And most importantly, we spend time with our Black and brown friends, to clearly understand how different the paths they take through are from ours.

We found some of the above resources from the 2020Protests.com website, which also lists protest resources for people in California.

Do what others doubt. Help end racial injustice.

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Posted in Empathy, equality, geopolitics, Intellectual curiosity, meaningful failure, Self-knowledge, Success, Values | Leave a Comment »

A Blockbuster closing

July 9, 2009

The Blockbuster closed in our town last week, in the “out of business” sense.  I heard a lot of folks attribute this to the popularity of Netflix.

About a year ago our post office (looks like the one in Mayberry RFD) put a sign above their “Out of town” mail slot, saying “Please put Netflix envelopes in the “Packages” drop box.”  Apparently Netflix has gotten so popular that the post office has had to make an adaptation just to handle the volume, and the reflection of the shift in consumer behavior couldn’t have been written more plainly.

But the more I think about it, Netflix didn’t single-handedly kill our Blockbuster.

About six months ago our (only) supermarket got one of those “Redbox” DVD rental kiosks, and slowly it’s taken over the activity at the front of the store.

People are lined up at it all the time, and when I thought it was just a stand-alone machine, I didn’t consider it all that novel until I realized that you can reserve movies, at an individual machine, over the internet. That’s when I thought “this is really cool.”  No wonder folks are jammed there, they’re going to the store anyway, and they can get their movie too, and reserve what they want.  Wow.

So, I did a quick Google search on “Redbox Netflix” and this was the third citation, the headline says it all: Blockbuster CEO: Redbox, Netflix “Not On Radar Screen” as Competition.  The article was from December.  And this is a publicly traded company.  How in the world does someone say this?  What detachment from the customer (and reality) does that broadcast?  It certainly provides a more grounded understanding of why our local Blockbuster went down the drain.

But while Netflix may have pushed Blockbuster to the brink, Redbox may have sent them over the edge.  Not because Redbox was targeting Blockbuster: they were collateral damage.  It’s Netflix who’s in the cross-hairs of Redbox.  And the best part?  Netflix paved the way for Redbox to hollow them out.

How?  Netflix fundamentally changed consumer behavior.  Until they arrived you were at the mercy of your local video store: you had to actually make a separate trip there, choose from their inventory,  and had to remember what you came in there for.

Netflix created a whole new behavioral model of how you rent and experience movies and tv shows.  Infinite inventory to choose from, your own queue on a website, and they mail your movie to you.  How simple, how convenient.  And as I wrote earlier, a change in behavior like this takes time – like a decade.

Convenience is nice, but where Netflix really grabbed hold of people was by also embracing people’s existing behavior: they don’t return movies on time.  Eliminating late fees was the rallying cry that created incredible word of mouth.  And started that hollowing effect for Blockbuster.

So how does this apply to Redbox?  Well, they just applied Netflix’s playbook:  focus on consumer behavior and where the economic leverage is.  They recognized most people rent the current releases, and thanks to Netflix, they also expect to be able to use the web to choose as well as know they’ll get what they want.  Critically, they also realized that having the movie mailed to you meant for many consumers just not having to make a separate trip to get  it.

So Redbox embraced this existing behavior in a clever way.  They just  rent the top movies from a vending machine located in a supermarket.  You can reserve your movie over the web.  So you get what you want, with no special trip.

And the fact it’s a kiosk also means expectations are automatically set that the selection is limited.  This reflects a nuanced understanding of consumer psyches, while dramatically reducing the complexity of inventory management.

And while convenience is nice, where Redbox really gets its leverage is with the economics, just like Netflix did with Blockbuster.  $1 per movie.  Sure there are late fees, but at this price it makes Netflix seem expensive and really tough for digitally delivered movies to pencil out from a margin perspective.  Ouch.

So, against this backdrop, it’s hard to fathom the statement from the Blockbuster CEO.  He’s right, Netflix and Redbox really weren’t on his radar screen.  He wasn’t even in the same business, wasn’t even in the fight.

And if I were Netflix, I’d be working my bankers, hard, to figure out how to acquire Redbox.

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Posted in geopolitics, meaningful failure, Strategy | 1 Comment »

My guest post on TechFlash

May 6, 2009

John Cook was kind enough to let me guest post on TechFlash today, on a theme which turned out to be quite timely given Amazon’s introduction of the new Kindle DX.  The post is about how mobile consumer devices like the Kindle and the iPhone have finally wrested the grip of the mobile phone networks from the device itself.

To me it’s a rare instance where you can witness an industry transformation occur before your eyes.  Or perhaps watch a train wreck occur in slow motion.  The carriers will never be the same, but holy cow, we’re all in for some great new mobile products and experiences as a result.

You can find my post here:  The Kindle, the iPhone and the wireless carrier as commodity

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Posted in geopolitics, meaningful failure, Strategy | 2 Comments »

The iPhone – Virtualizing enterprise market share

April 8, 2009

It’s always good to state the obvious:  there is no way Apple will ever make a dent in overall PC market share, much less get into the enterprise desktop or server business in a way that’s relevant.  The reasons are so obvious most people don’t realize it.

The Mac will never duke it out at the low end, much less hang out with the netbook crowd because the lower margins don’t work with Apple’s business model.  HP, Dell, Lenovo – they get to have all the “fun” sorting out the volume/margin voodoo.  Lucky for Apple there’s a large enough segment that will gladly pay a premium for an elegant, integrated, and stable computing experience. 

And guess what?  Apple gets nicely rewarded:  in the fourth quarter of 2008 Apple’s operating profit was 11% while HP’s was 5% (for their personal systems division). 

But what about the corporate market?  What about all those enterprise customers who you can build lucrative, durable, “sticky” relationships with?  Businesses built from hard-fought battles over market share, premised on whoever sells the most laptops/desktops/servers to corporations reaps the rewards of valuable added services that run on them.  Has Apple really just punted on this?

No, they’re smarter than that.  They’ve realized in a world of cloud computing and web delivered applications, their leverage into this market doesn’t come from desktop unit volume.  It comes from inserting the iPhone into the information flow between businesses and their workers. 

But hasn’t every big mobile device supplier tried this already?  Didn’t Nokia bet a huge part of their farm on this with various “Communicator” handsets? 

What about Microsoft with Windows Mobile?  Wasn’t that supposed to provide the worker/enterprise tether?  It was but it never did.  It neither generates significant revenue for Microsoft, nor has it gotten durable traction with business users.  Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider does a great job explaining why it’s a tweener in the worst way.  I can tell you that my two years using a Motorola Q were the longest mobile “computing” years of my life.  One of my partners compared it and an iPhone to “showing up on horseback (Q) when everyone else is arriving by jetpack (iPhone)”.

And as Network World pointed out, Blackberries are great at corporate email and “legacy” enterprise applications but are not great mobile internet experiences.

These companies forget that it’s not about them and protecting their business franchises, it’s about the user experience.  Apple is the first company to get the complete mobile internet user experience right.  Microsoft, Nokia, even Blackberry/RIM probably have done a better job getting mobile computing right, but in a world of web services, I think the operative term is “internet”, not “computing”. 

So how does Apple become relevant in the enterprise?  By virtualizing its market share.  The battles to be fought in enterprise computing over the next 5+ years won’t be over email and ERP, they’ll be around cloud-based services, web-delivered applications and mobile interactions with them.  Market share leverage will be measured in mobile devices, not desktops. 

And until the iPhone arrived, no one had a compelling mobile internet experience.  Hundreds of millions of other phones shipped, and they all suck at the mobile internet.

In an April 2008 report, Gartner found the iPhone is clearly having an impact on IT strategy.  Of their survey respondents, 65% were responsible for supporting, managing and/or provisioning enterprise mobile solutions.  Of these, 13% said they either currently supported the iPhone or had planned for it, 64% said they were currently researching/evaluating support for the iPhone. 

This is brilliant.  By having major corporations enable iPhone support Apple can get a meaningful share of enterprise users without having to sell a single desktop, laptop, or server:  13% share of mobile support is 10x+ Apple’s share of enterprise desktops.

No one is focused on this, and it makes me wonder if Apple likes it that way.  Keep the “iPhone is a consumer product” head-fake going long enough to get a strong foothold with enterprise users.  And if Apple can instill in those users the loyalty they’ve instilled in consumer iPhone and Mac users, well this could be brand new territory in enterprise business.

The reasons are so obvious most people don’t realize it..

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Posted in Business planning, fear of not succeeding, geopolitics, Intellectual curiosity, Strategy | Leave a Comment »