July 2009 Archives

One of my very best business school professors, Bob Pricer, distinguished business types in a simple way: Businesses that mass produce a product or service, versus businesses that customize a product or service - which he called "A" Businesses and "B" Businesses. Once you learned to seperate businesses the Pricer Way, it became clear how you would need to operate your business, sell your product and how to grow your business.

A Businesses succeed by providing low-cost, large volume "one-size-fits-all" solutions to their customers. B Businesses provide highly customized solutions to customers with a specific need. Ford will build 250,000 Focuses this year, while for the nine years Aston Martin built DB7's they only made 777. The most expensive Focus costs $18,265. The DB7 listed for about $140,000.

It's been four weeks since Scott Smith, Barbara Iverson and I hosted the Chicago Media Future Conference, so I've had some time to think about the event and outcomes. Because of interceding work and vacations (Scott going on the freaking Oprah cruise) I have not really discussed these points with Scott and Barbara, but based on our chats in the bar right after the conference, I'm guessing their thoughts aren't too far from mine.

Coming out of the conference, I think I learned about how to put on a better conference and more on the state of the Chicago media scene. Let me start with the conference: