Category Archives: strategy in the news

Bronco Busting; Disruptive Strategy

What’s happening here? There was a great deal of commentary by the sports pundits in the immediate aftermath of Super Bowl XLVIII.  The dust has since settled and we can now think more clearly about how the score of Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8, came to be. How could this have happened?  Going into the game, the Broncos had set a bunch of National Football League offensive records, including a remarkable average of nearly 38 points per game. And meanwhile, the Seahawks established themselves as the clearly dominant defensive-oriented team in the NFL.  So the game was framed by … Continue reading

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Strategy in the News: Drones, a New Resource

DRONING THE FARM  Robert Blair’s neighbors have grown accustomed to seeing him launch a small aircraft over his fields in Idaho.  It’s a nice-looking little plane about 4 ft. long, with a wingspan of around 8 feet, that systematically flies back and forth over sections of his land. What’s Blair doing with this thing?  He runs a good-sized operation – 1,500 acres.  It’s hard to know where and how much to be tending the crops on a spread this size.  And the cost of tending them has risen dramatically as the costs of fertilizer, fuel and water have increased. So targeting … Continue reading

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Strategy in the News: Lasso and Lascaux

LASSO Well-regarded author Patricia O’Brien had produced 5 novels.  But her last one hadn’t sold well, and her Simon & Shuster editor declined to publish her new one, “The Dressmaker”.  A dozen more publishers also rejected the efforts of her well-known literary agent, Esther Newberg, to secure a contract for the book. What was going on?  Turns out O’Brien’s book was being rejected because her numbers had been lowered in Nielsen BookScan, a book sales tracking service, as a result of the performance of her most recent book.  And the publishing house editors were making their publishing decisions based on … Continue reading

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Strategy in the News: Fake Review Scams

RISKY RELIANCE          Here we are online, looking for a pair of sneakers.  We’re at the site of a major online retailer.  [sorry – ignore this interruption: BYB6NREXZYJG]  So many sneakers to choose from.  A dazzling array of makes, models and colors.  How to choose?  After going down the search tree, we find several candidates that look pretty good.  Time to check out their customer reviews. Wow – so many 5-star customer ratings!  Funny.  As we read along, some reviews emerge as rather odd.  Maybe it’s the way the reviewer slipped into “marketing speak” – which we wouldn’t expect a real consumer … Continue reading

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Strategy in the News: Witch’s Horns

Recently in the news, reported by the Fox Network and various newspapers, incl. my local Coloradoan:  A North Carolina woman of the Wiccan faith locked horns with school district administrators.  She attempted to convince them not to allow the distribution of Christian bibles at the school her daughter was attending. The school district did so, anyway.  How to deal with this?  As it happens, the law gave the mother, Ginger Strivelli, just what she needed to devise a strategy that created an untenable dilemma for the administrators. The law reads that the administration has two choices.  1) If they refuse the … Continue reading

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