Category: business

Singapore Series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

On a recent business trip to Singapore I was surprised at how much cool stuff I saw. Not just start ups, but general marketing insight. It’s my general belief ( & many others) that globalisation has taken some of the joy away from travel. It’s harder to find new stuff, different concepts, and fresh ideas. Things just cross boundaries so much quicker now with the advent of $10 air tickets and the web.

But to my pleasure, it’s still out there if you look hard enough. So enjoy the next week’s blog entiries sub branded the “Singapore Series”.

Singapore personified!

By the way: How many brands are positively identified by their employees?

Flying under the radar

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Flying under the radar – actually has some real meaning. It was once the optimum strategy for a spy plane to fly as high as possible. This was thought the best way to get ‘out of reach’ of enemy and radar. The U2 spy plane did this by flying above 85,000 feet. When one was shot down during the Cuban missile crisis some smart people decided to flip their thinking.

 

 

 

The solution was so obvious in hindsight. Simply fly very low where the terrain blocked radar effectiveness. Underneath the radar!

 

Maybe it’s time to flip your thinking to solve today’s business problem.

 

if vs when

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a simple idea for the day.

 

Remove the word ‘if’ from your vocabulary and replace it with ‘when’ while talking about your business, brand or startup.

 

It’s simple to do and starts the chain of possibilities, ideas and belief. Sounds silly – actually works.

 

Technology transfer

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Meet Trev.

 

 

Trev is small.

Trev doesn’t like going much faster than 120km per hour.

Trev only fits two people and two bags.

Trev can only travel 150km before he needs a recharge.

But Trev is efficient. He only costs 1.1cents to recharge per kilometer. Trev makes petrol look silly.

 

Here’s the thing. Trev is only possible because of advances in mobile phone battery technology. A classic case of technology transfer. The question entrepreneurs should be asking is what technology can we utilize from industries adjacent to us?

 

You can read more about it here.

Ebay, Paypal and arrogance

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You’ve probably heard that Ebay is about to enforce the use of it’s wholly owned payment service “Paypal” on every Ebay transaction.

 

The blogosphere and government regulatory bodies are up in arms about this. As they should be. In fact the ACCC (Competitive regulator in Australia) has just made a draft ruling blocking the move as Anti-competitive. Although Ebay claims it ‘significantly enhances protection of buyers and sellers against fraud” – which it may well do.

 

Here’s the thing Ebay – you’re clearly using monopoly power to force people to use a service you own, to extract more revenue. And your customers know this.

 

 

 

Startup blog says – Ebay should be true to the launch platform of being open, transparent, a market where users decide, what to pay and how to pay.

 

Never let the arrogance of success change how you treat those who made you successful in the first place.

Indecisiveness

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The ability to make decisions is crucial. Maybe it’s why we escaped our cubicle – to make our own decisions. But this insight doesn’t stop us from occasionally facing moments of indecisiveness.

 

Here’s what to do – Outsource it.

 

Not literally, but metaphysically. We should ask ourselves what our most revered and respected entrepreneurs would do. And just do that. Done, decision made.

 

The fact is we know what they (Insert favorite entrepreneurs name here: Branson, Jobs, Brin, Bezos ?) would do, because we’ve read so much about them, we’ve seen them in action, so we know exactly how they’d act. And often, the have the courage and conviction we strive for.

 

So when in doubt, just be them.