Space Balloon

Aquí

Podría decirse que es "Basic Research", hecha por "Normal People" :-)

¡Genial!

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Kindle Fire at USD 199 (a la venta desde nov. 15 2011)

Aquí la home page de Amazon

Extracto desde el blog de GigaOm:

(Aquí la entrada completa)

"Just weeks after dismissing the Kindle Fire as a potential challenger to the iPad, J.P. Morgan is now upping its assessment of Amazon’s debut tablet, saying the device is expected to move 4.5 to 5 million units in the fourth quarter. Based on checks with supply chain vendors, J.P. Morgan’s hardware team reports production momentum for the Fire has is up sharply of late, suggesting that the device is seeing a lot of pre-order demand. Several vendors, including Foundry partners, have experienced rush orders in the last two to three weeks, J.P. Morgan said Monday in a research note.

J.P. Morgan Internet analyst Douglas Anmuth, who covers Amazon, is looking for 5 million units in the fourth quarter and expects to see multiple models in 2012, including 7 and 10-inch units and models with 3G radios in addition to Wi-Fi. The Kindle Fire goes on sale Nov. 15. [...]"

***

1. Puede argumentarse ampliamente que en este caso Amazon ha "seguido" a Apple y su iPad

2. Lo que sería una prueba del éxito del iPad

3. Pero también puede argumentarse que Apple con el iPad "siguió" al Kindle original (para mejorarlo)

4. Lo que sería una prueba del éxito del Kindle original

5. Puede afirmarse, más bien, que Apple y Amazon son dos grandes organizaciones innovadoras, que cuidan en extremo de sus clientes :-)

Pricing basics: "the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it"

Aquí la entrada desde el Ludwig von Mises Institute

Extracto:

"Book buyers have been used to hardback books being the most expensive, with softcover versions being priced much less, while e-book versions are cheaper still.

This pricing scheme comports with David Ricardo's doctrine that the value of consumption goods are determined by the "cost of production" or the labor theory of value. Obviously the production cost of a hardback book is greater than that for a paperback, with both of these far and away more expensive to produce than a Kindle or ePub version.

The costs of book preparation — formatting, editing, typesetting, indexing, marketing, and royalties — are incurred no matter what the book's version. However, with hard and softcover books, publishers must warehouse their inventory and there are costs associated with that. With e-books, as well as downloadable audio versions, no warehouse is required — just a hard drive somewhere.

But that's not the half of it. When Amazon or any bookseller runs through their inventory of a book in the physical form, they have to order and pay for more paper and ink to be constructed into the particular title so that orders can be filled. Replenishing inventory costs money. Not so for an e-book. Once the digital version has been created, it's good until the market doesn't accept it anymore.

So for those thinking David Ricardo had it right, expensive hardbacks and cheap e-books make all the sense in the world. But Austrians see the world differently. Consumers set prices based on their preferences. It doesn't matter what a book costs; what matters is what a reader will pay for it. Likewise, consumers in the Western world determine the prices — not by haggling — but by buying or not buying.

The illusion that costs of production determine price is created by the reality of financial viability. If you can't recover in proceeds what you have spent in production, you have to stop what you are doing or change the way you do it. If your profits are extremely high, you attract the competition to your endeavors, and then your prices have to fall. Over the long run, it's true, your marginal costs and marginal prices tend to equalize. What matters is the cause and effect: the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it.

Buying the hardback means paying for shipping and waiting for the book to arrive. The same goes for the paperback. Physical books require shelving and space, which is, again, an expense.

E-books offer immediate availability and thousands of books can be stored in a single thin, lightweight piece of machinery, not to mention the many other cool features e-readers offer."

¿Y qué pasó con el virus H1N1?

Una búsqueda en inglés en Google arroja en estos momentos 69 millones de resultados (21 millones de páginas en español)

En contraste:

La búsqueda "Euro Crisis" arroja 1290 millones de resultados (61 millones de páginas en español)

:-% :-% :-%

La última noticia en Google (desde Nicaragua):

"De los 28 casos sospechosos de H1N1 identificados por el Minsa, 12 resultaron positivos. De este total, dos son menores de 15 años, y 10, de 15 años o más, lo cual demuestra que todos somos vulnerables a contraer la enfermedad. En cuanto a la distribución por sexo, 10 son mujeres y dos son varones. Esto según los últimos datos proporcionados por el Ministerio de Salud, Minsa.

La distribución geográfica continúa mostrando un marcado predominio del departamento de Managua, con un total de nueve casos, seguido por el departamento de León con tres casos positivos.

Del total de 12 casos, dos están hospitalizados, una embarazada y un adulto con neumonía.

Las autoridades también informaron que existe un total de 199 casos reportados durante este brote de H1N1 que está azotando al país.

De este total, 165 pertenecen a Managua; 12 a León; 15 a Masaya, tres a Jinotega, dos Matagalpa, uno a Rivas y uno a Río San Juan. [...] "

The biggest innovator soul: Steve Jobs

La entrada es de Innosight aquí

¿Qué hace de Steve Jobs (qepd) el más grande genio innovador de los últimos tiempos?

¿Cuál era su modo de acercarse a los problemas que plantea la innovación radical, para llegar a ser exitosa?

¿Qué legado nos queda a quienes procuramos que nuestros clientes lleguen a tanta satisfacción con el producto como a la que llevó Steve Jobs a los de Apple?

*****

Extracto introductorio:

"To mark the passing of one of the world’s all-time great innovators, some of the leaders of Innosight are reflecting on what Steve Jobs taught the world. He leaves as his legacy a set of lessons about innovation that will continue to inspire us for generations to come. These are just eight of the main takeaways from his remarkable career and life:

1. The zen of knowing what customers want without actually asking them
One of our favorite Steve Jobs quotes came as his answer to the question: What market research did you do that led to the iPad? “None,” he replied. “It's not the customer’s job to know what they want.”

Innosight co-founder and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that Steve Jobs helped teach us to shun focus group-type research and instead carefully observe what people are trying to do, not just functionally but socially and emotionally too. “His instinct was not to focus on the customer, but rather to focus his innovations on the job that the customer is trying to do.”

2. A passion for breakthrough experiences..."

Marketing and Sales

Aquí el artículo completo desde The Economist

El representante de ventas, el gerente de cuenta, el vendedor, ¡no ha muerto!

La venta personal desde siempre ha sido un componente vital del buen funcionamiento de la Distribución y de la Comunicación. Vitales éstos a su vez del buen marketing. Los medios electrónicos han amplificado su importancia. El buen vendedor sigue siendo apreciado en toda organización: esto es, aquel que es capaz de vencer los 4 No`s de camino hacia la transacción: No Trust ("no le creo, a su compañía"), No Need ("no necesito, su producto"), No Help ("ya lo tengo, y me funciona mejor que el suyo"), No Hurry ("tal vez sí, pero hoy no")

*****

Extracto introductorio:

"WÜRTH, a German family firm, makes the most basic products imaginable: screws, nuts and bolts. No need for fancy salesmanship here, you might think. In fact, Würth has 30,000 sales reps. It calls them its “beating heart” and strokes them deftly: when one performs exceptionally, the firm writes to congratulate his wife.

Reports of the death of the salesman have circulated since the first dotcom boom. Consumers are doing their own research. Businesses are opting for automated purchasing and reverse auctions where all that matters is price. Online comparisons, ratings and other unbiased information have made the tough task of selling tougher still. Customers have become warier of being sold to. Drug firms used to hire ex-cheerleaders to sway doctors into prescribing their pills. But doctors (many of whom are female these days) have grown less swayable. About a third of them are now considered “hard to see” by the drugs industry."

Creative thinking and Doodling&Sketching

"Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension -- and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we're caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen."

"A doodle is an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes. Stereotypical examples of doodling are found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class. Other common examples of doodling are produced during long telephone conversations if a pen and paper are available.
Popular kinds of doodles include cartoon versions of teachers or companions in a school, famous TV or comic characters, invented fictional beings, landscapes, geometric shapes and patterns, textures, banners with legends, and animations made by drawing a scene sequence in various pages of a book or notebook."

CHILE: Tierra fértil para la innovación :-)

Aquí el video de la imagen arriba

Y aquí otro

El precio del Oro (cuando el escenario es que cada vez menos, y menos veces, se atreven unos a invertir en nada más)

T.I.M.E. de poesía. Tomas Transtörmer

Me gustó el 'nobel' :-) (y harto :-):-):-)

"Las piedras

Oigo caer las piedras que arrojamos,
transparentes como cristal a través de los años.
En el valle vuela la confusión de los actos
del instante, vociferantes, de copa
en copa de los árboles, se callan
en un aire más tenue que el presente, se deslizan
como golondrinas desde una cima
a otra de las montañas, hasta
alcanzar las mesetas ulteriores,
junto a las fronteras del ser. Allí caen
todas nuestras acciones
claras como el cristal
no hacia otro fondo
que el de nosotros mismos."