http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com We Stress Test Your Strategies Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:46:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/staying-rational-in-irrational-times/ http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/staying-rational-in-irrational-times/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:30:44 +0000 Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/?p=989 We found John Cassidy's essay in the Oct. 5 New Yorker, "The Real Reason that Capitalism is so Crash-Prone," to be illuminating about the challenges of managing in an irrational context, like the recent credit craze or the more distant dot-com and telecom bubbles. Cassidy argues that, even if managers know that they are in the middle of a bubble, they have little choice but to go along. Boards and investors tell them: "Do it, or move aside so that someone else can." Few can resist such pressure.]]> http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/staying-rational-in-irrational-times/feed/ 0 http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/ibm-beware-of-bhags/ http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/ibm-beware-of-bhags/#comments Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:33:39 +0000 Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui http://www.billiondollarlessons.com/?p=206 IBM surpassed $100 billion in annual revenue in 2008, which is laudable--but 18 years late. Therein lies a tale about the dangers of what author Jim Collins labeled Big Hairy Audacious Goals. In the early 1980s, IBM's then-CEO John Opel declared that IBM would hit $100 billion in revenue by 1990. Although it may be hard to remember back that far, IBM was the world's most profitable company in the 1980s. Its market capitalization accounted for roughly three-quarters of the value of the entire computer industry. Opel wanted to keep IBM from getting too complacent, so he challenged the company to increase in size from $40 billion of annual revenue in 1983 to the magic $100 billion mark by the end of the decade.]]> http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/ibm-beware-of-bhags/feed/ 0 http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/microsofts-mojave-and-the-danger-of-lying-to-yourself/ http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/microsofts-mojave-and-the-danger-of-lying-to-yourself/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:41:07 +0000 Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui http://www.billiondollarlessons.com/?p=102 Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational Blog about Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment reminds us of a cynical moment during our research for Billion-Dollar Lessons when we concluded that, too often, marketing is when companies lie to their customers, and market research is when companies lie to themselves.]]> http://www.devilsadvocategroup.com/microsofts-mojave-and-the-danger-of-lying-to-yourself/feed/ 0