Soon cannot be soon enough. The next version, 8.2 will run native on OS X with built in support for R and SAML, IPv6 and of course in 64-bit with a side of box and whisker plots.
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Tag: business
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MadMen’s Vietnam
Madmen finished a rather interesting season. I only found interest in the season premier when Don sat at a bar in Hawaii and had a drink with a US Soldier on leave from the war. Many have written about Chevrolet was their “Vietnam” for the season.
Other segments throughout this season seemed tied into the cultural change the war took on American society. For example, the necklace of ears segment was rather interesting as the horror of war not only hit home but required the firm to change their advertising strategies.
Did you think their pot smoking scene or the death of a firm’s sibling (killed in Vietnam) reach the audience? Many didn’t seem to think so — maybe they were not looking deep enough?
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Adobe InDesign compatibility
Designers need Adobe Indesign compatibility for demanding workflow. Adobe InDesign’s compatibility, supporting previous document versions has been somewhat smooth since CS3.
Finding all these full installs on a single machine is somewhat surprising don’t you think?
BMW will launch a new Genius Everywhere program, an Apple-like Genius Bar in time for the launch of their i3 electric vehicle which is expected in 2014. Clearly BMW sees Apple’s massive success in retail as a proven solution to support the launch of a new series of electric cars in North America. BMW will also rely upon Apple mobile technologies to arm their sales staff.
The Genius BMW Genius Everywhere program announced in AdvertisingAge will have pre-sale employees armed with iPads helping educate potential customs about this new electric line. The major difference as this point is Apple’s Genius Bar is for post sales while BMW will focus on education and pre sales. This is not the first time BMW has adopted Apple products, design and user experiences. BMW and Apple collaborated to bring iPod support to BMWs early in the car controls your digital device world and today they are also working to integrating Siri technology into more BMW models.
How do organizations compete today? Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World provides a good reference on how major US companies have adopted a new business model for competing in a flat world.
After reading Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century book series on globalization and the breakthrough work by Jerry Wind and Victor & William Fung in Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World.
I found chapters in Corporate Agility a fit perfectly to the above works. Corporate Agility supports business case studies throughout the book that span a wide range of industries with lessons for all who are seeking new models for business in the 21st globalized century.
The strongest chapter is early in the book surrounding the shift in company buildings and the move to a mobile workforce that permits companies to break expensive building leases and create smaller ‘offices’ with limited administrative staff and resources.
I have experienced these efforts directly in working with clients who have been forced to trim staff and yet end up in an dry office complex with over 50% of their office cubes empty.
Actually I’m reminded of a PR company who hired temporary workers to “work” in all their empty cubes while a potential client made an office visit. Needless to say they did not understand the basics of a company’s need for agility as described in the book.
I feel the early chapters of Corporate Agility is an expansion of The World Is Flat while the book’s case studies just touch the surface that is presented in detail by Competing in a Flat World.
Corporate Agility’s book website