Life's Paradoxes

Respect for the individual vs. Criticism
Being disciplined vs. Being innovative
Taking risks vs. Avoiding mistakes
Being an extrovert vs. Being an introvert
Knowing the details vs. Delegating responsibility
Fast decision process vs. Correct decisions
Centralized efficiencies vs. Decentralized responsiveness

Which side are you on?

The Glengarry Glen Ross Times

For salespersons, during a fiscal year end, the situations are straight out of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, especially when the external environment is as volatile as it is currently. As the market goes cold and opportunities turn from a feast to a famine, the stakes are high and create a cauldron of anxiety, tension, and desperation. As the tagline of the movie goes " The hardest thing in life is sell "

The Long Tail

The internet has ushered in an era of unprecented choice, iTunes and Amazon offer nearly forty times as much as selection as a bricks and mortar superstore. As per the Pareto law, a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items ("hits" or "head") against the other 80% ("non-hits" or "long tail"). The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or "non-hit" items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail, which was coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article.

Successful Internet businesses have leveraged the Long Tail as part of their businesses and examples include eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

In the social networking space, the Long Tail is being exploited by platforms such as Ning where more than 220,000 niche sites are hosted. Will the one-size-fits-all model of Facebook and MySpace will eventually give way to a multitude of narrowly focused sites ?