Selling with the argument of something being “greener”

The other day the power supply of my 1HE Switch stopped working. Some Power-Overload in my office Rack I believe. I screwed the Switch out of the Rack and opened it. First I thought OMG I have to buy a new one. Then I thought “lets just fix this”. I contacted the manufacturer Support (Email of Support was linked with the Email-Address of Sales, I checked that later) of the Switch and told him about my problem. Instantly a sales person replied and told me to buy a new, greener, Switch. The argument was “buying a new Switch is cheaper then fixing the old one”. But that was not my intent. I wanted to _fix_ my switch not buy a new one. But I understood the arguments. I was supposed to feel good by owning a new Switch that uses less electricity. My thinking went on. I thought “Buying a new switch means that the new Switch has to be produced”. The energy it takes to produce and ship a new Switch is a lot bigger then the energy consumed to run an old, repaired Switch. So I ordered an Open-Frame Power-Supply via Ebay. Bingo, it was the wrong one. I cross-checked the output numbers and found out that it was my mistake. So I ordered another Power-Supply with what I thought would now be the correct Output. This time I did not buy on Ebay. I bought it locally in Switzerland. Bingo. It worked. I did not have to throw away my old Switch but I had one trial-error that is partly wasted (at least the shipping cost). But it was still cheaper then buying a newer Switch. I also believe that my solution is “greener” then if I would have bought a new Switch. This is where I bought my OpenFrame PowerSupply. Model # LPS42.

State of Fear and Rich Dad Poor Dad

During Christmas and New Year in the Swiss Alps I found some time (besides teaching my wife to snowboard and hiking up some mountains with the snowboard on my back) to read two books:  The first one being Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” and the second being “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kyosaki.

In “State of Fear” Michael Crichton describe the whole global warming campaign as Global-Media-Fear-Campaign and gives _real_ references to all his arguments he makes. I could not stop reading the book and after finishing it also watched some public presentations of Michael Crichton available on his public website. One of his main arguments is:  “How can you tell if global warming is happening if you can not even predict the weather more then 4 days in advance”? His arguments are well researched and well documented and well thought trough. It is also nice to read what happens with the Hollywood-Stereotype-Actor ;). I found the book because I heard of Michael Crichton’s death in November 2008 on PBS. They also mentioned that Michael Crichton was an adviser to GWB.

“Rich dad poor Dad” was recommended to me by a New Zealand friend of mine living in Tokyo. The book starts of with a very nice example of two boys wanting to be rich making nickels out of the metal of toothpaste tubes. It describes Roberts childhood, having two dads, one an academic and the other an entrepreneur. Teaching the boys how to become rich, the entrepreneur dad starts with paying them 10 cents an hour for dusting of food cans (the minimum wage would be 25 cents an hour). For their second job, he pays the boys nothing and then after that they start inventing their own business. It is an interesting read. Specially the first example is very good! Kyosaki a fourth generation Japanese American born in Hawaii, brings more interesting examples. Some examples are bit to “money-focused” and not enough intrinsically driven for me. Still an interesting read. Thanks for the read my Dear Friend.

The flying Shoe of Iraq

President George W. Bush visited Iraq and Afghanistan, probably for the last time in office. During his speech to the Iraqi Media he was greeted by a flying shoe, sorry two of them! He joked that it was shoe size 44. Now one must know that throwing or even showing the bottom of your shoe to anybody is extremely offensive in the Arab world, specially in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s statue was bashed by many shoes when they tore it down after the US-led invasion in 2003.

A president facing flying shoes and then joking about it, that is a real democratic president. This would not be possible in Saudi Arabia (or Russia) and it would not have been possible under Saddam Hussein. Throwing a shoe at Saddam Hussein would quite surely have resulted in the death penalty.

This is how far Iraq has come these days.

Songbird makes you want to listen to Music!

Songbird is everything iTunes is not and much more. The only thing similar to iTunes is the Look and Feel. Songbird is amazing! Mozilla must have the smart new people working for them, Go Mozilla Foundation!

I just downloaded Songbird and it was really amazing how fast I was able to search, listen and then download the music I wanted to download (who donwloads anyway these days except for want you really want on your iPod or iPhone to listen on the go).

I recommend you install Songbird and see yourself.

Enjoy! And kudos to the people who work for Songbird. I an running Songbird on OS X, Linux and on my emulated Windows XP on QEMU.

I believe that with Songbird you will not need your 80GB music collection anymore. Free up your Harddisk for Songbird!

New WordPress Version makes you to want to Blog!

I just could not wait and wanted to look at the new WordPress-Version and I must say: The first impression really rocks. You guys are pulling off some stunts while other companies like the Auto-Makers or the Banks are sailing in the Doldrums. Keep up the Speed WordPress. Oh and make the Pop-Up for the Hyperlinks without Scrollbars please for Firefox 3.0.

Hank Paulson, Man of the Year 2008

In my wonderful Google-Reader I tripped over this News Headline this Morning: Washington Broker The Evolution of Hank Paulson, so I opened the link and began to read and then I tripped over this paragraph, quoting:

A Republican, Paulson would bring government into some of Wall Street’s most private quarters. He said banking regulators should have a major say in how financial firms compensate their executives and that the Federal Reserve should have the power to regulate any financial company it considers crucial, including hedge funds and private-equity firms. He added that the policy statement he crafted on hedge funds in January 2007, which stated they should not be regulated, was wrong.

I believe Hank Paulson could not be more right and he sould be elected man of the year 2008. This is why I believe so:

1. If you look at the amount of energy that has been wasted through the financial industry in the last 3 years, it is massive. Just look at the UBS stock price in Switzerland today (since a couple of month I am saying it will touch CHF 12. My friends said, if that will happen, UBS will be bankrupt. My response: Why? They can go down to zero point something) and compare it with the bailout package of CHF 60 billion with some 7 million inhabitants of Switzerland and USD 700 billion bailout package of the USA and their 300 million inhabitants. Switzerlands bailout is 3 times bigger if you compare the size of the populations as well. Massive waste of money and empty houses in the USA, funded with Swiss money ;).

2. If you look at the USD 50-60 something trillion of unregulated Credit Default Swaps in unregulated territory not knowing what they insure and what is on the other side of the balance sheet, you start thinking like Hank Paulson as well. You baisically just have to!

3. I like to take another metaphor from another industry, but I believe it is a nice comparison. Compare the Tokyo Metro System to the New York City Metro System. The Tokyo Metro System ist highly regulated, you can not drink or eat on the train, there are no trash bins in the stations, the stations are very clean, you always know when the next train is coming, entering and leaving the metro is highly efficient with a magnetic passcard or with your cell phone. To make it short: So many people use the Tokyo Metro every day, it just _has_to_be_well_organised_and_highly_regulated. The Tokyo Metro has several private companies competing (I include JR as well) against eachother, in a highly regulated market. I am not even mentioning the tons of shops and restaurants you get underground in the Tokyo Metro stations. That Eco-System just works.

No fly over to New York City and use the Metro System there. You will want to leave again, right away. The NYC Metro is not a five star place. It is dirty, you never know when the next train is coming, sometimes you have to pay with coins, sometimes with paper money and sometimes you have to walk to the next station to be able to pay and get on the train.

The point I am trying to make with the above comparison is this: The more people rely on a system, the better organised it has to be. If people start fighting in the metro, because it makes them feel that way, then you have to be very strict with the rules and make them very transparent to everybody. The same rules for everybody, no exceptions. Relying on good faith does not work.

4. The global financial system has a lot of dependencies but no or very few rules at best. Actually it contains more greed then rules. The dependency of governments and populations on a working financial system is very big. At the moment the global financial System looks more like the Wild Wild West with John Wayne and Billy the Kid in it (and at the momemt both of them are shouting and screaming for help from the Sheriff, because they lost their money gambling against eachother). The global financial system should look like the Tokyo Metro System.

Now I will continue reading what Hank Paulson has to say.

To the Harvard Business School students I can only say: Apply for a job at the Treasury. You will make history (because changing history is not possible). But you have to go there and work there for a couple of years. Forget about your bonuses in banking. Forget that! Please, trust me. I am begging you.

Barack Obama’s first President-Elect Message on Youtube

Normally I am supporiting the Republicans; but I believe the 44th President-Elect led an astonishing campain over the internet. And he seems to be persuing this strategy as well as president elect. Here is his first message he is sending out over Youtube. It is a perfect Media-Message, eloquent, with the right topics. He seems young but he also seems to have analytical intelligence. He seems to be a family man and he seems to like politics. You should watch it. PS: Also read this post about the future CTO of the U.S.

Visiting Harvard Business School in Boston for one day

Through my wife’s friend I had the honor to visit the Harvard Business School (HBS) in Boston for one day. The 44th President Elect of the USA studied there and so did a lot of other famous and and international businessmen. It was a rainy day and the school seemed to be shining as ever, forever.

The atmosphere at HBS is more like at a high-standard social club then it is at a school. Everybody is dressed up and every body seems to speak at least 3 languages. Everybody seems to be very fast.

Morning

Thanks to my dear friend Nick I was also able to participate in a class! Now that was a lot of fun, thanks also to Professor Joseph B. Lassiter who gave a lecture on Zoots, a dry-cleaning-company. Nick had printed out the Case-Study the night before and I actually studied the case before I went to bed and also in the morning before the class started. I did not read everything to great detail and I also did not crunch the numbers with and Excel-Sheet but I crunched the “emotional/soft stuff” from the case study.

The class started at this point.

Professor Lassiter was dealing with the class in a very positive way. He never interrupted the students, he _never_ gave negative vibes. He did not lecture the students. He actually opened the class with an applause for the visiting guests and told the students “Today we have guests, today we must perform for them”. I was amazed! This is America to me. Always upbeat, always positive.

As the class went on, Professor Lassiter was interacting with the students and was trying to pitch the students against eachother, at times deviding the class in two halfs one representing the Ventrue Capitalist (VC) / Private Equity (PE) company and the other representing the management of the board.

I remember Pooja arguing against the VC / PE not wanting to give them control of the Management of the Board. Wanting to keep her independence but still wanting the money – of course.

The class was about Entrepreneurial Finance and Professor Lassiter was doing an amazing job, showing off the ways of finance at one point asking “Is this a business for VC or for PE”.

But here comes my personal “but”. As an entrepreneur myself, what I was missing was the aspect of differentiation and quality.

It seemed to me that it was all just about money. How to leverage, how to make money (fast). At the end of the class I challanged Professor Lassiter and asked him why he would not make a point about the Zoots dry-cleaning business, by makeing more money through better quality (charging higher prices) and better product differentiation, ie using “greener chemicals” to clean the clothes and therefore charge higher prices for dry cleaning but also letting the customer know that the usage of “greener chemicals” would cause less allergic reaction for highly stressed managers that wear a new dry cleaned shirt every day. Professor Lassiter admitted to my point, in fact also pointing it out to another student, who also waited in line to talk to the professor.

The class was about entrepreneurial finance so I guess that is why Professor Lassiter did not enter more into the field of quality and differentiation.

Unfortunatly I can not share a copy of the case study with you online because the case study has following footer:

Copyright © 2007, 2008 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-
7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School.

Very Harvard-Style.

Lunch

After the class we had lunch and that was fun as well. Again meeting more HBS students was just entertaining and fun. Actually socialising and meeting all of these interesting people was something I enjoyed most at HBS. Also just watching the people interact and hearing their jokes.

After Lunch we visited Harvard Undergrad, where Nick took his 10 minutes Japanese Exam. He finished it in 6 minutes, very Nick-style, very Harvard-Style. Nick hated the Traffic in Boston because it was not fast enough.

Early Evening Discussion

In the early evening Nick had to participate in some small dicussion with other students. That was his study group. I asked Nick if I can join there as well. Of course that was possible so we headed off to the small discussion room. The first person we met outside of the room was orginally from Lebanon. Nick was teasing him about always being afraid of being prepared right for the class. He was teasing back. The second person we met was a Sikh from India. Once in the Room, Nick starting teasing him, a bit more agressivly, about his Turban. The Sikh was teasing back as well telling Nick to shut up. The third preson in the room was not teased and was probably the smartest person in the room, IQ wise. He was originally from Guatemala.

So instead of letting Nick continue with his teasing I broke off their discussion and started a dicussion about the war in Iraq. Again this was higly interesting not necessarily because of their arguments (of course they where all against the war, except maybe Nick who used to work for the US Navy in a submarine) but of the way how they made their arguments. Their thinking and their arguments where quick, fast-paced and sharp. The arguments where not necessarily very innovative. The discussion was still very stimulating because the poeple where so fast and sharp and open.

At one point the dicussion turned to the future job offers of all of these bright people in the room. All of them seemed to be wanting to go into finance. I was a bit dissapointed by that so I asked them why they, with all their brightness, would not want to go and work for example for the US treasury. My argument was, that the financial industry needs new rules and laws, needs innovation and that probably the treasury would have some great opportunities for them. Once the new laws for the next financial world would be written, they could venture off to the private industry and make their “loads” of money. Obviously they where not interested in that. They wanted to make money right away. But they admitted that the Treasury probably would offer the most interesting job. So I criticized them for just wanting to make money but not wanting to do any serious business. I asked them “why are you so concerned about money and not about doing business”?

But I can answer part of that question as well. If you want to study at Harvard Business School for 2 years for your MBA, you will need about USD 120’000. Tuition is about USD 45’000 per year. The rest will be living and socializing. I guess most of the students have a loan.

Gossip and Sex Life at Harvard Business School

That interested me as well. So I asked my discussion partners in the room “What about sex life at Harvard, what about Gossip”. There where – unfortunately – no girls in the room. The men where agreeing in some part, that some girls and guys where actually looking for their future partner at HBS. To get married. Gossiping was obviously at its best, and the Gossip would also keep them from having Quick-Sex because that could give them a hard time during the daytime. Besides that most guys in the room where married, or had a girlfriend.

Closing Comments

Both presidents of the United States, the current and the president elect, studied at Harvard. Bush, I believe studied at HBS, Obama at the Harvard Law School. Bush is more of an emotional leader, Obama is more of an intellectual “leader”. I put that “leader” in “” because Obama first has to show his leadership qualities in office. His campain was higly effective.

You do not have to study at Harvard Business School to become successful in life. But if you choose to study at Harvard, you will have a great social life and you will have a great Network of fellows that studied with you for two years, for the rest of your life. And if you loose contact, there is still Facebook and your memories or memoirs.

Thanks again to Nick and JayTee for taking me out for one day! With the new president elect and Harvard Business School, the USA seem well prepared for the next 4 years.

Update: JayTee just sent me this link. Interesting because the money they lost gambling on the stock market they could have invested into the education of families with children with an income below USD 60’000.

Update II: Nick just sent me this link: College Students Drop Dreams Amid Wall Street Woes.

Congratulations to Barack Obama

You have to hand it to him! Barack Obama led a historic election! Historic fundraising with the internet. Congratulations to the victory of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States of America. Let’s see how he leads as president.