Lousy Tomatoes and the Rare Search for Wonder

Posted by Chris Denney on Oct 4, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Lousy Tomatoes and the Rare Search for Wonder Seth makes some great points here. In particular he mentions my greatest pet peeve with most businesses (and products for that matter). Too often, it’s just being phoned in. Rather than reach out and try, they do just the bare minimum to “make the numbers”. When you fully develop to team that’s in it to nock it out of the park...
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China Inc. Hits a Snag

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 24, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Interesting piece by Mike Buetow over at Hot Wires. Sounds like China’s beginning to taste the sweet nectar of letting corporations take care of their people instead of the government taking care of the people. There’s apparently a new round of fees levied by China on MNCs doing business in China. Apparently this has caused hundreds of businesses to go under already with thousands...
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Why we left our factories in China

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 19, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Why we left our factories in China Here’s a feel good story for your weekend. Sleek Audio, maker of customizable earphones, recently moved most of their manufacturing back to the United States from China. I like the phrase they use “reshoring”. Fortune has the article so click the link to learn more. I’m seeing more and more of this. OEM’s are getting fed up with the...
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Apple’s Invisible Advantage

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 15, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Apple’s Invisible Advantage           Some brilliant writing from the guy who originally named the “iMac“, Ken Segall. He points out some very interesting things about how Apple does business. For instance…     I had the pleasure of working on the “Making Of” video for the Cube, which appeared on apple.com when the store was first...
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What’s Happening to U.S. Manufacturing

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 12, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments What’s Happening to U.S. Manufacturing Interesting article by Michele Nash on The Huffington Post. It’s well written and has some rather depressing statistics about American manufacturing. But I wish she had spent more time speaking about what to do about it. Honestly, it’s not easy. There’s not a very good answer. And I suspect it would take many good answers to fix the...
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Defining Quality

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 8, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Defining Quality How can you make something more perfect? What if Apple said “You know what would make the iPhone more perfect? A stylus!” Truth is, there is an international standards body that defines product build quality. In our industry it’s called the IPC. They have 3 classes of product build quality. Class 3 being the highest. WAi pretty much doesn’t ship anything...
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We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 4, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers Great piece by Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal. He brings up some amazing statistics about the number of people working for the United States government compared to manufacturing workers. In fact he even goes so far as to show that there are more people working for the government than work for manufacturing, fishing, mining, farming,...
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Is a return to ‘Made in the USA’ Possible?

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 3, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Is a return to ‘Made in the USA’ Possible? Eric has some interesting thoughts here. He lays out the challenges that could get in the way of American manufacturing becoming prolific again. He misses a couple points but this one stood out the most for me. Electronics component supply base: Houston, we have a problem… Oh yeah. We have a problem. He points out that China controls...
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Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots

Posted by Chris Denney on Aug 1, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years Big surprise here. I continue to make the point that American manufacturing did not get outsourced simply because China is “less expensive”. Maybe if you just look at a number on a spreadsheet they look less expensive, but if you take into consideration the IP battle you’ll have on your hands, outsourcing to the wild...
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Are you listening?

Posted by Chris Denney on Jul 21, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments Are you listening, Steve Jobs? Absolutely amazing. They ripped off an entire Apple store in this town. The store itself is remarkable. But then you realize that there are two more stores just like it within a 10 minute walk… If you’re outsourcing your product to be manufactured in the wild wild east, who’s ripping you...
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National Governors Association Annual Meeting, Thomas Friedman Remarks

Posted by Chris Denney on Jul 20, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/MeetingClo Thomas Friedman, 3 time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, spoke at the recent National Governors Association Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. His book The World Is Flat is required reading. Amazon link: The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (See all International Relations Books) He makes a lot of points and the video...
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