Strategy

The Five Million Pounds Iphone – Everybody Overvalues Something

by Semira Soraya-Kandan on 29. Februar 2012

This week’s headlines are filled with news from The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They refer to latest technological advances such as quad-core processors, large HD screens, or NFS, among many others.
In constrast to this focus on ever growing speed, and ever new functionalities, Arne van Oosterom challenges the notion of ‘owning a phone’ in his blog post on “Value Co-Creation” today. The design thinking perspective offers a challenging frame for many organizations that struggle with unlearning basic assumptions about customers’ values. Arne’s post prompted one of the many inspiring little chats in my timeline among some of my much appreciated twitter pals about the meaning of value.

The absurdity of material cults around mobile phones nicely shows in developments such as the vertu – more „ a concierge service than a phone“, as Symant Sandhir (@syamant) pointed out, topped by another folly: a diamond-studded iphone 4 priced at Five Million British Pounds (via @Graham Hill)

This chat reminded me of a story recently told by my dear colleague Rudolf Dörfler (Hernstein Institut, Vienna) in one of our leadership seminars:

“The Million-Dollar Parrot” by William Ury

A man is walking down the street. He sees a beautiful parrot in the window of a pet store. He goes inside and asks how much the parrot costs; the owner says „A Million Dollars“. „A million dollars!“ „Yeah! It’s a free country; I can ask what I want for it. Look how beautiful this parrot is. It’s worth every penny.

Marvellous Mollucan Tango

Weeks pass, and the parrot remains in the window. The man stops in regularly and asks whether the owner has come to his senses regarding price. The answer remains the same: a million dollars or no deal.

One day the man sees the parrot is gone from the window, so he goes in and asks the owner, „Did you sell that parrot?“

„Yes.“

„How much did you get for it?“

„A million dollars.“

„Someone really paid a million dollars!?!“

„Well, yes. Actually I got two chickens wort five hundred thousands dollars each.“

 

Now, it’s your turn: What do you overvalue?

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Soraya-Kandan goes live

by Semira Soraya-Kandan on 15. Januar 2010

Welcome to my new website integrating blog & social media!

I will talk with you in this blog about:

  • global and intercultural leadership
  • business innovation and creativity
  • ethnography for organizational development
  • virtual cooperation and management 2.0
  • international people development and talent management

You will also occasionally read posts by invited guest authors. And I will, of course, integrate links to other sites, blogs, tweets relevant to the above and other exciting topics.

In this first post I will share some of the stories behind the development of this blog:

Last summer I started following an exciting discussion in the media on the future of marketing and communication, particularly pronounced by Amir Kassaei calling for “creative business consulting“. Reading some more on marketing and web 2.0., I particularly liked Jeff Swystun’s YP Edition on “Adopting a Professional Services Mindset“. Referring to Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler, he made me understand how we need to translate our “professional services mindset” and successful ways of immediate communication with our clients coherently to our digital communication: “Knowledge is the product and knowledge (shared) is powerful”. Many thanks here to the Doyle Dane Bernbach Group.

As always in life, coincidences abound, networks boost ideas, and friendships nourish us. One summer evening last August, I met my friend Mike Swain at the café. We talked about movies and marketing, and social media… He told about how his webpage, kino-zeit.de, a movie portal, continuously changes and grows, and how he started using twitter last May …
I had opened my twitter account since the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, when Dina Mehta, an Indian blogger, ethnographer and business consultant, helped twitter outpace CNN. That was outstanding, I thought. But honestly, I did not quite know what I wanted with twitter.

Now, in summer 2009, Mike tuned my ears to twitter:

  • how to find people who write valuable tweets
  • how to build your own community of followers
  • how to manage the information

I have since found twitter to be a wonderful platform and resource, search engine, news channel, “connector”, you name it.

Mike recommended Jennifer Moss, a wonderful web designer, who created the present design. The wordpress template Thesis provides optimal comfort in site and content management. Justus Leendertz took charge of the technical realizations.

Through all this, I have finally come up with this present site which meets my needs for interaction with clients, colleagues and other people.

Now the blog can develop. I am looking forward to our talks.

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