The ACS Blog

What we really want is to find a theory (in the sense of a model or system, not in the sense of an idea) that repeatedly, not anecdotally, predicts future events well. That’s how it works in science. I’m not saying it’s easy. I am saying it’s possible and it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Remember that the tough problem a year ago was where to buy a Nintendo Wii? Thinking about 2008, your next strategy move, and 2009.

Abercrombie, Pure Digital, and Seoul have a lot in common. Here’s how they plan to win, and how they’re winning. Would you invest in them or in their competitors?

We hear a variety of conditions being proposed to accompany an auto-industry bailout: limits on executive pay, change in management, financial oversight. All sound suitably stern. Each of those conditions is a solution to a perceived problem. Does solving those problems solve the real problem?

A brief survey of the day’s news, and what ACS had to say about it before it happened.

What to “do about” the Detroit Three is, deservedly, front-page news. I recommend that Congress and the industry commission business war games on behalf of the industry, the workers, the government, and we the people. Now is the time to look forward.

This essay starts with a shocking pricing tournament and proceeds to the challenges faced by President-elect Obama and the titans of industry. All of us are human and so all of us will be wrong. What’s important is when we make our mistakes.

A different approach to marketing crisis preparedness, from the Wall Street Journal. An upcoming two-day workshop about business war-gaming from ACS.

Whether we’re talking about the troubles of the Detroit Three or the Republican Two, it’s easy to blame the perfect storm of energy prices, financial crisis, and tough competition. But although the perfect storm may have accelerated their decline, it didn’t cause their vulnerability.

Is high executive compensation a problem, or is it high pay for bad performance? The difficulties of regulating compensation, some reasons why good executives go bad, and the need to focus on performance at least as much as on compensation.