Automated Law
Our Debt Collection Service is fully computerised, fast and efficient … We believe that you, the customer, should be fully informed as to how we operate in order that you will have a better...
View ArticleThe Decline of Harvard Coop
I used to be a big fan of Harvard Coop. Any time I’d be in Boston, I’d end up spending quite a lot of it just sitting in the Coop reading. Each day I’d walk around, pick up a pile of maybe 8-10 books,...
View ArticleThe Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble
“I went straight to the control tower and demanded to see the airport manager. In Somalia, it is the custom to pay a man double the market price if you accidentally kill his beast. I had the price of...
View ArticleOf Sharks and Pigs
It is a true but little-known fact that more American citizens are killed by pigs each year than by sharks. I believe this is also true of American businesses. Business owners spend most of their time...
View ArticleBaseball lessons for software teams
The economic corollary, cleverly exploited by Billy Beane, was that players who walked more often were being systematically undervalued by the market and could be had more cheaply. Software development...
View ArticleIt’s Not the Idea. It’s the Execution.
I’ve been ranting all week about the latest radio advert from Invest Northern Ireland. They’ve been spending a lot of money over the last few months encouraging people to start their own businesses....
View ArticleNo *you* don’t get it
So, earlier this evening I got email from someone I haven’t heard from in about 10 years, telling me that I was featured in last weekend’s Sunday Tribune alongside an article about BlackStar, in a...
View ArticleRetrospectives
At work we keep trying to make the effort to look back after each project and learn from how it went. But we’ve never found a good way to structure this, and as a result we often don’t do it at all....
View ArticleGrepping the Annual Reports
An interesting take on the latest crop of annual report by Motley Fool UK: Phrase # Reports in which it appears our success 154 we were successful 24 our failure 1 we were unsuccessful 3 we failed 2...
View ArticleIs a TV licence required if I only use my TV to watch DVDs?
Anyone in the UK who watches TV has to pay a license fee every year. The money raised from this is used to fund the BBC. This is a matter of much controversy, made significantly worse by the tactics...
View ArticleGreat Customer Service is Great Marketing
Scott’s back, with a Marketing 101 piece on how Great Customer Service is Great Marketing. I couldn’t agree more. Back in 1998, when we decided to launch BlackStar, we had $10,000 from our...
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