Strategy, gaming economy, Videoscribe, eleemosynary, best practices -- things I learned about this week
17 January 2021
- Your strategy is what you ship. I didn’t learn this so much as I relearned it. The story of the Edsel in Business Adventures is instructive. The Ford team dreamed of an innovative, breakthrough vehicle that would wow customers and capture a new market segment. But what they delivered was an undifferentiated high-priced low-quality car, and we all know the results. 35 years ago in my first real job, the late Tom Jones told me “Your strategy is what you ship” and I have learned this a dozen times in my career.
- I know nothing about the modern gaming economy. I have not played video games actively for about 6 years as I’ve been busy with a day job, and I do not understand the modern gaming economy at all, but I am fascinated by — https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/11/22225416/thegrefg-record-fortnite-viewers-icon-skin-reveal-eu-heretics?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
- Videoscribe. We use powerpoint decks for live presentations and for leave-behind reading. They kind of suck for leave-behind reading; I experimented with Videoscribe to make a more dynamic leave-behind that better captures the story, pacing, flow, etc. I like it a lot and will keep exploring this.
- Eleemosynary is the word of the week, totally new to me. And on first look, I couldn’t even make a reasonable guess about meaning.
- Best practices from around the world. Noah Smith makes a good point this week – “America needs to humble itself and start copying best practice from countries that have things figured out more than we do, instead of imagining that we can reinvent the wheel”. So true, and particularly so in healthcare, where we spend more money and achieve worse results than nearly every other modern democracy.
