BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
Uh, oh – will Starbucks recover?
Starbucks (see chart here)announced earnings - well sort of (read article here). Accounting rules are the only thing determining whether Starbucks had earnings or losses. Let's say the company broke even - because we don't know for sure given the...
Who pulled the rug?
What a day this Monday is turning out to be. Circuit City files for Chapter 11 (read Reuters article here, and Marketwatch article here). Sirius radio looks like it will follow soon (read article here). And Deutsche Bank analysts are...
Scenario Planning at Apple
Companies get into trouble when they stop developing scenarios and plan to succeed by merely Defending & Extending what they've always done. In the last few weeks we saw Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers disappear because they did not prepare for market shifts. ...
Disruption and White Space in Washington Senator Obama?
Now that Senator Obama is the U.S. President-elect, everyone has recommendations for what he needs to do (read sample on Marketwatch here). What we know from the campaign is that as President he has promised change. Listening to him speak, you could...
Should you Moto?
In 2004 Motorola (see chart here) was about to take off. It's radio business was continuing to grow as it launched into digital products. And its handheld cellular business was about to go nuts with the launch of a new product called Razr. A...
From Great to Gone
Circuit City (see chart here) has announced it will close another 155 stores (see article here). Here, right before the big holiday buying season, Circuit City is contracting drastically. The company is almost out of cash, and is running into...
Scenario Planning
Even in the midst of the recent financial crisis, you probably also noticed that the price of oil has dropped. In fact, it's had a record-setting drop (read article here). It was just in July that oil peaked at $147/barrel. Now it's...
Deadly stalls
The business press, whether print or on-line, is full of stories about lay-offs. Motorola (chart here) to cut another 3,000 jobs in its flailing handset business (article here). American Express (chart here) to cut 7,000 jobs (article...
Hunting for growth
Wal-Mart (see chart here) has not been doing badly the last couple of quarters. Of course, it hasn't done great either. And if we look back the last 8 years - well there's not been much to get excited about. Wal-Mart Locked-in on its...
Adam Hartung Quoted in Investor’s Business Daily
You never know when interviewed exactly what the writer is looking for, what the article is, or how your comments will be used. But I was delighted to be interviewed by the acclaimed weekly newspaper Investor's Business Daily a couple of weeks ago. ...
Check your assumptions
(Read the following quote in Forbes, October 5, 1998, written by Peter Drucker) "As we advance deeper into the knowledge economy, the basic assumptions underlying much of what is taught and practiced in the name of management are hopelessly out of date... most of our...
It’s never too late
Yesterday I talked about how Lock-in to an old Success Formula kept Sun Microsystems from undertaking Disruptions in the 1990s that would have helped the company keep from floundering. One could get the point that with this weak economy, the die has been cast...
Disrupt when times are good
With the economy soft, and sales harder to come by, more companies are thinking about what changes they can make to be more competitive. But what we're seeing now is the emergence of competitors that Disrupted when times were good, and the decline of those who...
Reading ALL the headlines
Ever heard of "confirmation bias"? It's a term that refers to how our behavior changes due to Lock-in. As we develop Lock-in we don't see all the information around us. Instead, we start filtering information according to our Lock-ins -...
Pay attention to long term trends
Traders help markets function. Because they take short-term positions, sometimes hours, a day or a few days, they are constantly buying and selling. This means that for the rest of us, investors who want to have returns over months and years, there is...
Relative Risk
Are people risk averse? Or do they like risk? Would you believe those questions don't matter, when trying to understand risk? Today we're being told that the bankers who ran some of the world's largest investment banks were taking ridiculous risks - and...
Punctuated Equilibrium
We talk a lot about evolving markets. When we use that phrase, evolving, we think of gradual change. In reality, evolutionary change is anything but gradual. People think of change as happening along the blue line to the left. A little change every...
A place to grow
The news is really bad in the auto business. For the first time since 1993 the number of cars sold in the USA in a month has declined to below one million. Sales are down over 25% from the previous year. And sales are predicted to decline...
Reducing solution options
Here's some quotes issued today (October 9, 2008) by Merrill Lynch's top economist, David Rosenberg (see full article here) : "Desperate times require desperate actions and it is possible Ben Bernanke, despite his expertise in how to tap the entire toolbox of the...
Changing Course
Today Walgreen's (see chart here) announced it was dropping its plan to purchase Long's Drugs (see chart here). (Read article here.) This means a lower offer to buy Long's from CVS (see chart here) now comes to the forefront. Yet, some of Long's big...
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