[opendtv] Re: CE sales Agenda
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 18:52:27 -0500
Dale Kelly wrote:
[After a long list of examples]
> Again, nowhere in the advertisement does it explain
> these features nor does it even mention an external
> antenna. However, a full-page pitch for DirecTV with
> HD receiver is included.
And I could almost accept that from a retail outlet,
which likely gets some sort of compensation for pushing
different services from the service providers, but the
CE manufacturers? What's their excuse?
On a similar note, I noticed that the online TV listings
have become apparently overbooked much of the time. No
doubt due in large measure to TV Guide's format change.
But on a much happier note, my wife, commissioned by the
jolly guy in the red suit, managed to unearth an
Accurian ATSC receiver from a Radio Shack not too far
from where we live. So we rushed our sleigh out there
last night before it was too late. Now of course it has
to wait until the appointed time before it can be tried.
Unfortunately, this is no help for recording. So I'll
use it only for real-time viewing, and recording will
continue to be NTSC. For $90, it's worth it anyway.
Finally, related to the previous topic, this column from
EE Times, about Peter Drucker, seems quite appropriate.
An excerpt here, then the whole column:
> The corporation is an element of society, he said, not
> just an abstract economic construct or legal entity.
> Its purpose is to serve customers, not to make a
> profit. Drucker's observation that the purpose of
> profit was merely to fund the necessary risks
> undertaken in the service of customers was so
> revolutionary that it is today rejected outright even
> by many who will pay him tribute.
> Even more troubling, today we see corporations not as
> organizations to serve their customers, but as
> - ironically - the fiefdoms of the managers who should
> be serving them, and ultimately as the personal property,
> in some abstract and carefully unexamined sense, of their
> shareholders.
Bert
------------------------------------
Misreading Drucker's bequest
Ron Wilson
(11/21/2005 9:00 AM EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=3D174400217
When we trivialize the messages of our forebears, we
exchange our birthright in their achievements for a share
in their unintended consequences. We are reminded of this
fact by the death, on Nov. 11, of the creator of modern
management, Peter F. Drucker, at the age of 95.
Drucker was a revolutionary in the most thorough sense
- he was a man who would follow the course of his reason
even into untried ground, unpopularity or personal danger.
This dedication to truth as he saw it early ran afoul of
the Nazis' rather different notion of truth and made the
United States the immediate beneficiary of some of
Drucker's greatest work.
Drucker's visions, in the U.K. and the United States,
increasingly focused on the organization and its role in
society. And those visions were manifold. The corporation
is an element of society, he said, not just an abstract
economic construct or legal entity. Its purpose is to
serve customers, not to make a profit. Drucker's
observation that the purpose of profit was merely to fund
the necessary risks undertaken in the service of customers
was so revolutionary that it is today rejected outright
even by many who will pay him tribute.
Another giant vision: Management is a distinct profession,
with a complex role in the functioning of the organization.
It must be studied and learned - like any other technical
profession - before it can be done well.
Today, we often still see a management job as the
entitlement of the most aggressive or the reward for
excellent past performance. This is similar to believing
that any good assembly worker willing to sell his peers
down the river would be a great analog designer.
Even more troubling, today we see corporations not as
organizations to serve their customers, but as
- ironically - the fiefdoms of the managers who should be
serving them, and ultimately as the personal property, in
some abstract and carefully unexamined sense, of their
shareholders.
Arguably, Drucker's vision was a foundation stone of the
enormous edifice of wealth and achievement that the
industrial world has built since the end of the Second
World War. But this vision came down to us through the
eyes of a member of a generation very unlike those that
followed - a generation for whom self-discipline was a
characteristic of adulthood, objectives could lie beyond
immediate self-interest and achievement was a greater
reward than accumulation.
It is not surprising that today, while we take time to
honor his memory, we gratefully close the book on what
Peter F. Drucker actually said.
- Ron Wilson (rwilson@xxxxxxx), semiconductors editor
for EE Times
All material on this site Copyright 2005 CMP Media LLC.
All rights reserved.
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