Jockey vs. Horse

To create any successful business, you need (among other things) a great idea and a great team. But what is more important? This is a question that has been on the forefront of business news recently.
Anyone who saw the movie “The Social Network” knows exactly what I am talking about. Would Facebook be Facebook without Mark Zuckerburg? Had Mark teamed up with the Winkelvoss twins, would it be nearly as successful? They had a great idea for a website, but Zuckerburg saw the true nature of the idea and the potential it had to change the way the world communicates.

Would the Winklevoss twins realized what they had? Would they have been gutsy enough to turn down $1billion from Yahoo? $15 billion from Microsoft? Would they have been smart enough to not generate ad-revenue immediately? Would they have jumped-the-gun with opening up the site to those without ".edu" email addresses? Would they have created just another college themed myspace?

What do you guys think? What is more important… the jockey or the horse?

Integrity

We are constantly inundated with stories that vilify the business leaders and their shady tactics. We hear story after story about wall-street “fat cats” duping grandma and grandpa out of their hard-earned pension funds. I question how much of this is the norm, or if it just makes for a compelling journalistic story.

I recently had an experience that helped restore my faith… at least in the rising generation of business leaders. I was recently running a business plan competition that had a $500 purse. That is a lot of Top Ramen for any poor college student. We had invited local business leaders to be guest judges for the event.

Just before the event was about to begin, on of the participants met eyes with one of the judges and then walked over and greeted him. They talked for a few minutes, and then the participant walked back over to me and told me that he was going to withdraw from the competition.

The participant (I am not using his name on purpose) told me that the judge was a former business partner, and wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I was completely floored. I could not believe what I was hearing.

I was so impressed. This student could have participated (and most likely could have won) and not told a single soul about his past relationship with the judge. He gained a lot of credit in my book, and in the book of many of the other business leaders in attendance, which could be worth much more than $500.

1984 No More

There was  a showdown yesterday... Steelers vs. Packers was only a small part of it. This is the time where the ad agencies come out to shine. Many agencies have been built on the notoriety of a single SuperBowl ad.  One of these agencies is Chiat/Day, responsible for the classic "1984" Apple Macintosh commercial. Chiat/Day hung their hat on this ad, and leveraged it to gain many more accounts.

Yesterday, Google took a direct shot at this classic SuperBowl ad, Apple, and Apple users. Was it smart? Take a look.

I thought that this was a fairly clever ad at first. It was an interesting "throwback"  to the classic 1984 ad. 

Here is my problem with it....

It portrays all Apple users as mindless conformist drones. As a recent Apple convert, I had to take offense. I am guessing most of the people who are interested in a tablet, might have some Apple product of some sort... even if it is just an iPod shuffle. 

Rule #1: Don't insult your target market. 

Here is another problem...

Where are the features? If you are going to introduce a product to market, do not show the most boring and obvious features of your product. Show the features that make your product distinctively different than the incumbent. This ad shows that you can look at maps, and view videos on this tablet. Just like the iPad. 

Beautiful concept, poor execution.