Managing Chaos

« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »

March 23, 2007

I'm In The Wrong Line of Work...

From the 19 March 2007 Wall Street Journal: "An Economist's Courtroom Bonanza: Whether It's Mötley Crüe or Antitrust Law, Berkeley's David Teece Is Ready to Testify" by George Anders

Meet David Teece, renowned expert on lots of things and pioneer of a lucrative consulting niche that has transformed business litigation. The University of California, Berkeley, business-school professor is one of America's busiest expert witnesses, billing corporate clients as much as $850 an hour for his insights. He has built a publicly traded 1,300-person research shop, LECG Inc., that does much of the legwork for him and other economists, so they can zoom through more assignments.

For high-profile economists like the 58-year-old Prof. Teece, expert testimony has become a way to earn $2 million or more a year. Their rise has its roots in the Reagan era of the 1980s, when a free-market view of the law inspired by University of Chicago scholars gained ground. Courts now rely far more on economic analysis, with its apparent precision, to reach decisions. As a result, big companies in legal disputes race to enlist top economists on their side, paying top dollar in an arms race for talent.

[...]

By 1988, Prof. Teece was being offered more expert-consulting work than he could handle, even though he works until 2 a.m. most nights. So was Berkeley law professor Tom Jorde. They decided to set up Law & Economics Consulting Group, an off-campus research shop in nearby Emeryville, Calif. There, they and some similarly busy Berkeley professors built a staff full of newly minted Ph.D.s to help pull together their testimony.

This arrangement not only saved time but also pumped up economic experts' incomes. Besides billing hundreds of dollars an hour for their own work, these experts also collected a markup on their aides' time, much as partners in a law firm do for associates' work. On big projects, with dozens of aides working round the clock, the markup could be worth $100,000 or more to the scholar in charge.

"I won't get many thank-you notes for this, but we've given economists the chance to earn investment bankers' incomes," Prof. Teece says. "If you're successful with us, it isn't hard to make half a million dollars a year." He estimates that 60 LECG experts topped the $500,000 mark last year.

March 21, 2007

Attack it’s weak point for massive damage

(Cross-posted from HedgeStop.com)

It’s reality for anyone doing anything in this day and age: no matter how strongly you intend for your product to be used in a certain way, your users can decide how it will actually be used. Viagra was created to treat heart problems. MySpace came about as a way of promoting bands. But eBay was not created to sell Pez dispensers, no matter what their PR department says.

With the growth of YouTube and other collective media sites, and the decreasing cost of good quality photo, sound, and video editing software, users and critics can now also take presentations and use them for other things. Here’s a great example, from the E3 conference in 2006: A horrible presentation from Sony on the PlayStation 3 was reedited and distributed online to mock the Sony producer who gave it.

Here’s the video:

And here’s a little background from YTMND:

Giant Enemy Crab

YTMNDs on this subject vary greatly in scope, but usually have some manner of Enemy Crab appearing in unusual places. Sometimes a Giant Enemy Crab is photoshopped into ancient Japanese tapestries or onto the blackboard in Japanese history classrooms. There was also a spate of vandalism on the Wikipedia entry for crabs, with people inserting references to certain large, malicious, ancient Japanese varieties.

The lesson here isn’t to step out of the limelight. A great presentation can make you just as easily as a bad presentation can break you. (For example, check out this post on the best presentations ever, most of which are available on video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video.) But if you’re stepping out and making presentations, or moving your company into new territory, realize that you will be mocked and criticized, and it’s not always a bad thing. In this case, the old cliché “there’s no news but good news” is true – you’re getting exposure and publicity and name recognition. And you’re also getting market feedback that 10 years ago you would have had to pay a ton for.

There’s also a chance you’ll get ideas to move in a direction you didn’t consider – a new market, a new product, or a new service. And at the very least, you’re also learning to avoid the giant enemy crabs…