Curt Doolittle

Theme: Productivity

  • NATURE OF EUROPEAN EXPORTS

    http://www.law.uchicago.edu/audio/bradford011812THE NATURE OF EUROPEAN EXPORTS

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-31 01:40:00 UTC

  • What Policies Have Helped The U.s. Come Out Of Recession While Europe Has Failed To Do So?

    In simplest terms, none.  No policies made the difference. The reason the US began (and has now stopped) coming out of recession, and europe has continued to decline, is that in europe, the protestant germanic states are unwilling to subsidize the catholic mediterranean states.  In the USA, this same  anti-subsidy conflict is conducted along racial and urban rather than national lines. The difference is, that in the USA, we are powerless to stop that subsidy because the monetary and fiscal power is centralized, and the government can inflate away debt across all people, whereas in europe the EU cannot inflate debt away because the monetary (central) and fiscal power (local) is separated.  However, there is very little difference in practice. In the States we are a polarized society, and in Europe they are a polarized society.  So, the difference in the duration of the recessions is structural, not one of policy.  This is why the left economists favor centralization and the right economists favor breakup of the eurozone by german exit: its a moral conflict.

    https://www.quora.com/What-policies-have-helped-the-U-S-come-out-of-recession-while-Europe-has-failed-to-do-so

  • people are almost always members of the middle class who build businesses and ma

    http://business.time.com/2012/07/05/how-the-rich-got-rich/Wealthy people are almost always members of the middle class who build businesses and make windfalls from capital gains when they sell all or part of them.

    Very few people are at the top for more than one or two years. Those that are, are insignificant outliers.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-07-05 14:09:00 UTC

  • Riffing On Scott Sumner: German Membership In The Euro Is Preventing The Advancement Of The Poorer Countries

    The eurozone excludes Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Britain and Switzerland. …Germany is one of the few northern countries that’s actually in the eurozone… And it seems to me that here you have a massive adverse selection problem. Because of Abraham Lincoln, affluent states like Massachusetts can’t suddenly decide they want no part of our fiscal union, and would rather just reap the benefits of our large single market. But Switzerland, Norway can and did make that choice. Britain almost certainly would, and both Sweden and Denmark might as well. In contrast, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia would like nothing more than to join such a union. And all the likely future expansion of the EU is into areas further east, and much poorer than even Greece and Portugal. Places like Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine (a country nearly the size of France) Belarus, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Moldova (the saddest place on Earth—even the name is depressing.) And did I mention Turkey? Indeed why not Russia at some distant point in the future? People often compare Europe to the US. That’s wrong; the eurozone is sort of like the US, although a bit poorer. But Europe as a whole is far poorer than the US, far more corrupt, backward, inefficient, whatever other pejoratives you want to apply. Even America at its worst (say the treatment of ethnic minorities) isn’t as bad as the treatment of gypsies in Eastern Europe. My point was not to predict the future, but rather to provide a warning. Once you start down that road [to creating a united states of europe], there will be constant pressure to go further. Quite likely at some point the northern European taxpayers will rebel, and we won’t end up with a United States of Europe. The policy will collapse. The eurozone really only has two options; a more expansionary monetary policy or a breakup. There’s no point in looking for alternative solutions.

    The argument I consistently make, is that of course Germanic Protestant northern tax payers will rebel. And likewise, so will germanic northern european americans rebel. Which is what they’re doing today. We call it polarization. Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, should leave the eurozone and germany should reissue the Mark. (Belgium is already divided between french and german cultures, and they despise each other as much as the french and english canadians do.) The success of the euro then, will be as a vehicle for poor countries to unite, and possibly (I say with uncharacteristic hope) focus on group improvement, rather than transfers from the north to the south. In fact, the most important and valuable strategy that the United States could adopt for the world today, is to dismantle the empire both domestically and internationally. The anglo people have succeeded in spreading consumer capitalism. We’ve modernized the planet. But it’s one thing to invent and evangelize a technology. It’s another to try to control it. Europe doesn’t need one federation. It needs two or three. Because germanic, latin, and byzantine europe are different cultures if not different civilizations. They always have been. They always will be. And multiculturalism is impossible.

  • How Do The Best Graphic And Web Design Firms Handle Sales?

    SALES: It varies by the size of the company.   Small companies generally are hired because they are local and cheap for small projects. Small projects get more attention and quality from small local companies. Big companies hate small stuff and are expensive. Selling to local companies is really just a matter of knocking on doors and showing work until they give you some of it.

    Large agencies are generally hired for their breadth of services, ability to scale, and strategic understanding.  Large agencies are able to attract and pay for a lot of talent in sales and delivery.

    Most opportunities are found through relationships between people who know each other.  But customers are always seeking new agencies and ideas. So customers will sometimes seek out an agency that wins awards or does promotional work for interesting clients.

    But most new companies do not have relationships and must generally produce gratis work for non-profits to promote its abilities. Much of the best award winning creative work is done gratis.  Usually, established companies are too conservative to fund projects that are useful for the agency to use in a sales pitch.

    Rarely do companies get off the ground without one or two accounts to support the startup.

    If I understand your question above, ‘Design Services’ is what you’re selling. 
    The problem is that for marketers, design services are like buying paper towels, toilet paper, and dish soap: they’re commodities. Design isn’t scarce. The difference between all but the top talent is marginal. So to get clients, you need to sell something other than the work itself.  Generally, you’re willingness to do it cheaply, or with greater customer service. Or perhaps because you understand their business or customers.  Largely; it’s “ease, dependability and price”.

    Most agencies MARKET rather than sell themselves.  Most service companies SELL themselves rather than MARKET themselves.  The question is, whether you have the money and talent to market yourself, or whether you are still just a service company and need to sell commodity services directly until you have relationships and business understanding. 

    PROCESS: 1)if you’re small just knock on doors and learn about possible client’s businesses.  Eat whatever ‘bugs’ you have to in order to get in the door.
    2) Develop a pitch team of Creative, Editorial, Technical, Marketing and account management.  Most of the time, in my experience, there are only two strong people out of that set in any given company. 
    3) if you get big enough, then hire a salesperson.  Usually the founders of small firms perform sales.   Sales people are very risky. Almost all business I have purchased in my life have gotten in trouble when the founders try to stop selling and hire salespeople.

    RFP’s: have a very bad name largely because customers will steal ideas, and because most of the time you’re just ‘column fodder’.  Pitches are EXPENSIVE.    A big agency for example only might put in five pitches a year. But they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on each pitch. A midsized agency might spend over 50K for each pitch and do more of them, and a small agency less than that. It’s expensive.  A commodity agency might never pitch just sell services based upon proposals.  So, if you’re in the pitch business, it’s best to pick the RFP’s you’re capable of winning and then to absolutely kill it with good ideas, and price on the pitch. 

    My main bit of criticism, as someone who almost never loses a pitch, is that it’s not worth pitching something that you havent given your all.  So only pitch when you’re willing to give it your all, and where what you’re pitching is really valuable to the customer.  Everything else is a waste of time and money.  Count on at least one-quarter of your business leaving each year, so that if you want a greater than 20% growth rate – which is what attracts customers and talent – then you need to sell enough pitches to generate 40-50% of your revenue a year. If you figure out the average size of your accounts as they exist today, then the size of the pitches you feel you can win, then the rate of your wins, it’s just some simple math.   (Most agencies are puny, at under 5M in billings.) 

    (I’m trying to keep this simple enough for a Quora posting, so if something isn’t clear then ask.)

    SOFTWARE: Adobe suite. Macs. You need to be able to speak PC well enough to work with and deliver customers assets though.

    REFERENCES: There are notoriously few books on this business that are worth reading.  Ogilvy on Advertising is about all you really need to know.  There is one on copywriting the name and author escapes me.  Maister’s book on being a “Trusted Advisor” is as timeless as Ogilvy’s.   Other than Seth Godin’s attempt to shock the old guard into thinking about the identity of consumers today little has been written that’s really valuable. (There book about the marketing history of Mazda is good too.) Generally, high minded and fashionable books on marketing and advertising are just nonsense.  Find work. Take care of clients. Accumulate talent.  Try to survive. It’s a craft. Not a science.  It’s not that complicated.

    LAST BIT OF ADVICE: Creativity is not magic. It is the process of filling your mind with related information then playing while the subconscious does its thing.  It’s repeatable. It’s procedural. And you can get good at it as an individual or team.  The best defense against doing bad work is to simply collect as much work as possible and keep examples of both good and ‘failures’.  I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve shot down by using an example of a known failure.

    OVERALL: It is a murderously overpopulated business in transition from a highly profitable past to a less profitable future, where you are little more than a commodity and where you live hand-to mouth in exchange for the freedom to work in a field that accepts “playing” as doing work.

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-the-best-graphic-and-web-design-firms-handle-sales

  • IN GROCERY SPENDING OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-america-spends-on-groceriesCHANGES IN GROCERY SPENDING OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-21 00:10:00 UTC

  • YOU SHOULD READ: ENRICO MORETTI’S THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS I had the privilege

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/05/23/richard-florida-is-wrong-about-creative-cities/BOOK YOU SHOULD READ: ENRICO MORETTI’S THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS

    I had the privilege of living in Seattle during the rise and crest of Microsoft. Galleries, and playhouses, the experimental “Entros” restaurant, the expansion of the art-glass movement, the rise of seattle as metalsmithing community. The northwest painting movement imitating Z Z Wei. And today the innovation in home design is still heavily influenced by the seattle market. Microsoft gave more of its profits to employees than perhaps any company in history. And Seattle’s unique character reflects it.

    There is a difference between the Creative Class and the Innovative Class. Creativity is a luxury good. Innovation is an economic necessity that makes that creativity possible.

    The arts are a luxury good produced as a byproduct of wealth. The arts become a draw for the creative class. And the creative class improves the overall environment. But it’s industry, and in particular, industry that produces exports that makes it possible for a city to afford the arts.

    Unfortunately there is a meme or perhaps desire, within the creative fields that they are the leaders rather than followers of prosperity. During the ‘oughts’ a series of books were published heralding the new leadership of the ‘creative class’.

    And similarly, a meme among the political class, that government creates prosperity. The effect of which can be seen in the failure of large scale urban projects such as those produced by Detroit. Or the hulking travesties of the old industrial northeast. Even in Seattle, the government all but drove Boeing out of the state, in one of the greatest political vanities in history.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-23 09:28:00 UTC

  • How Is An Economic Stimulus Package Supposed To Work?

    There are a series of possible stimuli available from the short term to the long term.
    1) Spending – Fiscal Policy: the government borrows money, then spends it on any number of projects.  This puts money in the hands of consumers, consumers spend on things not related to the projects, and businesses respond in order to serve demand. Their employees spend too, and the cycle expands.  Problem? It takes a long time for money to move into the economy.
    2) Monetary Policy: the government borrows money and then auctions it off at low rates.  Bankers buy this ‘cheap’ money and sell it as lower cost loans to business and the public.  Problem? Sometimes (now) no matter how low you make the cost of credit (effectively zero) people will not borrow it.
    3) Trade Policy. Sometimes you can tax or reduce taxes on goods and services to make them cheaper or more expensive. So, for example, if you want to create jobs in say, clothing manufacture, you highly tax clothing imports.  Problem: this just makes goods and services more expensive for consumers, so it has to be paired with monetary policy.
    4) Industrial policy: what we did with the auto companies. You find a way to create or expand industries that create jobs or create demand.
    5) Education policy: train or retrain your population to produce goods and services that are desired, when the goods and services they produce are no longer as desirable.

    Most of the time, governments quickly adjust monetary policy then they try spending policy.  The argument today is that we should spend more. The problem is that people don’t trust their government to spend it wisely, and they therefore prefer to suffer a slower economy than fund bad behavior in government.

    https://www.quora.com/How-is-an-economic-stimulus-package-supposed-to-work

  • Can Scrum/agile Project Management Be Used Effectively In A Digital Agency?

    I agree with Dave, despite being an advocate of Scrum in most circumstances.

    A controversial argument:

    Scrum was developed for:
    1) Small teams of  talented people.
    2) Strong buy in from the client(s) who are effectively members of the team.
    3) To compensate for the evolutionary accumulation of knowledge as development progresses.

    HOWEVER
    1) It is less contractually defensible without extraordinary change control – the causal relationship between goal, budget and what is accomplished is often open to greater risk of litigation or loss.
    2) Clients are often comprised of different factions attempting to undermine each other, and conflicts not resolved in contracts are often impossible to avoid, leaving the agency exposed to failure, caused by the client discord.
    3) There are a lot of people in the industry who lack the discipline to work in this manner, and the addition of contractors often exacerbates the problem.
    4) It used to be more difficult for agencies to attract top technical talent.  This is declining but is still, to some degree, true.

    INFORMED OPINION
    Is that it is better suited to teams who work together all the time, and in particular for product development, and less comforting to use in high risk environments with a significant amount of customer management.

    Given the tendency of the major agencies to have less trusting delivery relationships with their clients I would have to approach any question extremely cautiously less one or two major failures a year remove all perceived benefit from the broader financial and relationship questions.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-scrum-agile-project-management-be-used-effectively-in-a-digital-agency

  • Have Any Corporations Embraced Equitable Or Just Compensation Models?

    Um.. This is one of those problems that’s really nonsense. 

    All employees should be compensated at market rates. Otherwise if you are lower, they won’t stay, if they are over, your competition will eat you.

    Compensation is not equitable WITHIN A COMPANY. It is equitable across ALL COMPANIES.

    Do not fall into the trap of confusing the ‘fiarness’ of a family, with the alliance of people that work together in a company.

    https://www.quora.com/Have-any-corporations-embraced-equitable-or-just-compensation-models