OTOTOT
<<He is a marketing guy with a Social Science background, and these guys don't like to rigorously define their terms.>>
Ahem.(tm)
or rather, harrumph harrumph.(tm)
The essence of social science is clear, rigorous, and falsifiable analysis, including proper definition of terms. The fact that a lot of third-rate fools, knaves, or charlatans put out fuzzy or opaque jargon-filled crap does not invalidate or even discredit social science, merely those specific individuals. Unlike most other disciplines, moreover--and like the natural sciences--social science methodology is, or should be, self-correcting. That is, properly executed it provides a way over time to weed out the crap from the good stuff.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a very sore point with me, because I consider my social science background the source of whatever rigorous analytical skills I possess and am very bitter at the fact that my former haunts have been overrun by idiotic pinheads. tekgirl my end up saving all the world's stray cats and dogs, but if the Q has another couple of years like this <GGG> I'll do my bit to fund some of the good guys still in the academy fighting the good fight in the social sciences.
bubbleboy/Ares@happynewmillennium!.com
PS I'm currently reading a good book by another ex-social-scientist-turned-tech-investor, High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles Ferguson. He started a company called Vermeer, which he later sold to Microsoft for gazillions in the mid-90s, and the book is an absolutely scathing and irresistible portrayal of life in the Valley. Highly recommended, if only for its great sketches of key players. (Eg, "Jim Barksdale, the CEO of Netscape, was Sculley all over again, or worse. Barksdale was moderately smart, charming, handsome, politically adroit, and an excellent manager of large companies. But he was arrogant, ignorant of technology, distracted by politics and glamour, and was running a software company in partnership with a twenty-three-year-old CTO who'd never had a serious job before.")
Interestingly, Ferguson came independently to a very similar conclusion as Geoffrey Moore about the nature of the industry: "By 1992, I had figured out what was going on. The key prize in high technology is proprietary control of an industry standard...I also noticed that standards and systems architectures played a major role in defining the structure of the industry and the profitability of the various niches within it. There were architectural platform leaders, like Microsoft or Intel [i.e., gorillas]; imitators or clones, such as AMD [i.e., monkeys]; [and] architectural losers, such as Apple [i.e., chimps]..." (p. 22) |
