Curt Doolittle

Category: Business, Organization, and Management

  • Am I slow: Why DOESN”T MSFT buy HP’s PC biz? Dell is a better fit. But why not H

    Am I slow: Why DOESN”T MSFT buy HP’s PC biz? Dell is a better fit. But why not HP?

    Source date (UTC): 2011-08-19 15:34:33 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/104576997321216000

  • Jan 01, 2010Digital Technology and Marketing AgencyPlace: Bellevue, Washington (

    Jan 01, 2010Digital Technology and Marketing AgencyPlace: Bellevue, Washington (47.6172, -122.199)Address: Bellevue, Washington 98004

    Source date (UTC): 2011-07-05 18:47:00 UTC

  • Salmon : Groupon isn’t building a very good business

    http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/06/11/the-big-groupon-question/Felix Salmon : Groupon isn’t building a very good business.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-06-11 11:53:00 UTC

  • My experience is in the field is that people buy ideas, they don’t buy the effor

    My experience is in the field is that people buy ideas, they don’t buy the effort to create them. Show up with answers. šŸ™‚

    Source date (UTC): 2011-05-18 14:42:49 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/70861907195740160

    Reply addressees: @eolsencreative

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/70858593330671616

    IN REPLY TO:

    @ericolsenCMO

    @curt_doolittle Perhaps. But, people might also think I’d be more likely to MAKE them money.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/70858593330671616

  • honest appraisal. Now, the fact that Valve owns their own client base and distri

    http://www.industrygamers.com/news/valve-disappointed-in-ad-agencies-for-marketing-almost-worthless/An honest appraisal. Now, the fact that Valve owns their own client base and distribution system, and that as a game company they have strong creative and storytelling, makes them an uncommon client. But the criticism stands.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-03-18 10:02:00 UTC

  • Notes From An Agency Tour: #1 A Little Preamble

    March 15th, 2011

    Ok, so before I get started here, let me avoid a little criticism right from the start. Iā€™m not a typical agency guy. While Iā€™m the CEO of a fairly large agency, Iā€™ve also been founder, CEO or a principle at companies in a variety of fields from technology to law. And in each field we humans see the world through different lenses. I have a lens too. And fundamentally, Iā€™m a political economist.

    A political economist is a certain kind of geek. It means I think in terms of society, incentives, habits, beliefs, institutions and organization, as well as money and all that money entails. And it also means that iā€™m not politically correct, or even very tempered in my observations.

    Thatā€™s not my job. Something is either true or not, and useful or not. Whether people like it or not isnā€™t something I worry too much about. There are plenty of people who can do that. THere arenā€™t that many of us that predict trends.

    Furthermore, on top of being a little controversial, Iā€™m a contrarian. That term has a technical meaning. It means that I look for the point at which fashions and trends ā€˜failā€™, or ā€˜top outā€™, and the consequences of those trends and their failures.

    Lastly, the division of knowledge and labor in the world is also divided into time periods. So some people think in short term, some medium term, and some long term, and people like me look at the very long term, and I try to understand how organizations react to changes in society.

    So, I see the world through those lenses. And through those lenses I try to find patters that will inform us and our clients about the likely course of events, or the reason some events occurred. In other words, my job is trends.

    And it turns out, whether by luck or skill, Iā€m pretty good at trends. That puts me at odds with most marketers. In fact, you would be surprised how many of my postings the board of directors asks me to take down. Itā€™s one of the reasons I donā€™t write on this industry very often. Itā€™s because Iā€™m largely a critic of it. Iā€™m a critic of it because I understand that marketing is a social science and companies, peopleā€™s livelihoods, as well as our national competitiveness are significantly impacted by whether we are good at marketing or not.

    So, my job is to be right on long term trends.

    http://www.puretheoryofmarketing.com/

  • Nabisco: Please do an annual run of Milk Crackers for the holiday season, even i

    Nabisco: Please do an annual run of Milk Crackers for the holiday season, even if you only distribute them through Amazon by the case. There is no substitute. It’s simple business. It’s good brand building.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-03-07 00:37:00 UTC

  • game. Could have done a better job with the brand tho

    http://www.m-ms.com/us/dark/dark_game.jspCute game. Could have done a better job with the brand tho.

    Source date (UTC): 2010-12-09 18:26:00 UTC

  • I’ll finish with this: Entrepreneurship is the art of finding problems and solvi

    I’ll finish with this: Entrepreneurship is the art of finding problems and solving them for less cost than the customer is willing to pay for it. So entrepreneurship is starting with a set of customers and working backward to the solution, not with the idea, and searching for customers. And hopefully that process is entertaining. At least, that’s why I do it…. And this advice is no value to the zillions of guys out there doing the opposite. They don’t want to hear it.

    Source date (UTC): 2010-07-26 23:46:00 UTC

  • Hi. Thanks for the invite. Interesting posts. But having built or founded a numb

    Hi. Thanks for the invite. Interesting posts. But having built or founded a number of companies from 5M-150M, I have to say that most of the inspirational propaganda read be entrepreneurs is largely nonsense. Most CEO’s are quantitative operational disciplinarians, quantitative disciplined salesmen or quantitative disciplined master craftsmen and by and large they are pedantically boring to people outside of their field. Ideas are cheap. Passion is cheap. Planning is cheap. Strategy is cheap. Operational discipline is costly. Credit is very expensive. But most importantly, customers are priceless: they are the ultimate scarcity. If you have customers, then you have a business. If you don’t, you have a very expensive form of entertainment.

    Source date (UTC): 2010-07-26 23:45:00 UTC