Enodare et Illustrare
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In Dealing
with Darwin (2005), Geoffrey Moore describes how businesses produce
innovative products and services. The reader may think of new products and new
markets. The fact is that companies must innovate in all markets: new, growing,
or developed, to fend off increasing commoditization and therefore decreased
profitability. During an era of globalization, a continuing cycle of innovation
and deployment is necessary for the U.S. economy.
This book is particularly relevant to value investors, as
it also investigates the process of innovation at companies operating in more
developed markets. The author makes a crucial distinction between companies
whose core expertise is designing complex systems, such as BP and Nucor, and
those whose expertise is efficiency in volume operations, such as Dell Computer
and American Express. The key to innovation in complex systems enterprises (or
investing as a matter of fact) is insight. Since each customer’s situation is
unique and evolving, implementation requires alignment around essential
principles rather than rules. For volume operations, on the other hand,
implementation requires alignment around exact rules.
Although it contains some confusing tables, this book
covers a lot of ground. Companies grow their sales for reasons; this book
discusses these reasons in very useful detail.
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The July-August 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review
discusses the many dimensions of the financial crisis and the resulting
transformations, what they mean for us in the future. Markets cause change. The
world-wide collapse of the financial markets will significantly change the
structure of the world economy, the management of companies, and the regulation
of businesses.
In “The Descent of Finance,” historian Niall Ferguson writes that the collapse of U.S. consumer confidence and the financial crisis in Western Europe have caused the first global recession since W.W. II. In that article, he sketches two different scenarios…
Copyright © 2010 Horizon Capital Research, Inc.
topic: stock market valuation, market equilibrium, financial market behavior
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