Category Archives: Business

Mechanisms

March 6, 2020
Business, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution
3 Comments

Mechanisms are complete processes built around a tool, owned by a leader, that get adopted broadly and are regularly inspected, and improved to ensure things get done, not because everyone has good intentions, but because the elements of the mechanism structurally force the desired behavior. “Good intentions never work, …Continue reading →

Kindel’s 2nd Law

July 30, 2019
Business, Kindel, Leadership
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Kindel’s 2nd Law – Companies with a subscriptions-based business model eventually behave in ways hostile to that company’s customers. Charlie Kindel – July 2019 Woot! I now have two laws named after me. This law was originally coined in a …Continue reading →

Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit

March 13, 2019
Business, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution, Uncategorized
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We’ve decided to adopt Amazon’s Leadership Principles at Control4. For a while we debated creating our own, or modifying Amazon’s, but in the end we decided just running with Amazon’s as-is would work best. Last week I sent a mail …Continue reading →

Kindel’s Law

December 21, 2018
Business, Kindel
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Kindel’s Law – Every payment system eventually becomes an anti-fraud system. -Charlie Kindel, 2013 I’m not sure how this law thing works. But I’m jealous of folks like Moore, Atwood, and Shannon. I think everyone should have a law named …Continue reading →

Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)

April 21, 2018
Business, Career, Clarity of Thought, Customer & Product, Leadership, Organization & People, Technology & Execution
3 Comments

CBTO = Customer + Business + Technology + OrganizationContinue reading →

Businesses Buy Differently

February 28, 2013
Business, Platforms
9 Comments

My post on Why Nobody Can Copy Apple has become one of the most read posts I’ve ever written (thanks @gruber). Commenters are asking me “Can you describe more what the behaviors are that are different when building for business …Continue reading →

Why Nobody Can Copy Apple

February 19, 2013
Business, Customer & Product, Platforms
128 Comments

Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled “Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?”. As he points out, Apple is fairly unique in its command of vertical integration and many people point to that as the “why”. However, Horace also admits …Continue reading →

Paying Developers is A Bad Idea

September 26, 2012
Business, Platforms
95 Comments

The companies that make the most profit are those who build virtuous platform cycles. There are no proof points in history of virtuous platform cycles being created when the platform provider incents developers to target the platform by paying them. …Continue reading →

Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins

August 30, 2012
Business, Mobile
2 Comments

Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they should stay focused on technology because this post is seriously absurd: “More than two years after the introduction of the iPad, Samsung appears to be very confident in the tablet market and …Continue reading →

A Mouse and Keyboard Don’t Make a Hardware Company

July 25, 2012
Business, Customer & Product
47 Comments

Microsoft is not, and never will be, a hardware company. Please don’t go off saying “what about Xbox or mice & keyboards?” Microsoft does not really want to build & sell hardware. Surface is akin to Google’s Nexus; a ‘north …Continue reading →

The Five Big Guys

April 15, 2012
Business, Mobile, Platforms
17 Comments

I’m working on writing up my thesis on the future of the consumer technology business and have convinced myself that there are 5 companies that stand to dominate. I call them The Five Big Guys. This post lays the ground …Continue reading →

Brand is a Critical Part of the End-to-End Experience

April 1, 2012
Branding, Business, Customer & Product, Mobile, Startups
4 Comments

A commenter on another of my posts asked me to explain further why I think “brand is as much a part of the end-to-end experience as the user interface, device, OS, apps, and services.” I took it as a challenge to …Continue reading →

Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both

August 24, 2011
Business, Leadership, Platforms, Startups, Technology & Execution
9 Comments

If you think the thing you are building is both an “app” and a “platform” you will fail. Oh, and if you think it’s going to be a just a platform, you will fail too. (Update: April 6, 2012 – …Continue reading →