Research conducted by the blog UberCEO.com looked at Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs to determine how many were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog — and found they were mostly absent from the rapidly growing social media community.
The study found only two CEOs had Twitter accounts and 81 percent of CEOs did not have a personal Facebook page.
Only 13 CEOs had profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Three CEOs stood out with more than 80 connections but they were all from technology companies — Michael Dell from computer maker Dell Inc., Gregory Spierkel from technology products distributor Ingram Micro Inc., and John Chambers from Cisco Systems Ltd.
…Not one Fortune 100 CEO had a blog. (my emphasis)
“It’s shocking that the top CEOs can appear to be so disconnected from the way their own customers are communicating. They’re giving the impression that they’re disconnected, disengaged and disinterested,” said Sharon Barclay, editor at UberCEO.com who runs executive PR firm Blue Trumpet Group.
The important thing isn’t whether they are blogging or not – it’s not for everyone – or that Facebook is critical for their job or their company. The important thing is that no knowledge – and (too) often outright hostility – to social media, the real-time web, etc. means that their understanding of the world in which they operate is frighteningly lacking. This has been a problem for time eternal for leaders of large organisations and is not specific to the advent of social media per se, but I would suggest that this time it is even more unfortunate than usual. One the speed of change and the deep structural paradigm shift that our society and economies are experiencing is more profound than normal ‘linear’ change. Secondly, their ability to ‘do something about it’ is real. In the past, I would of had much more sympathy for the corporate or political leader who said – “ok fair enough I’m a bit out of touch up here in my ivory citadel but what can I do about it”. Today that doesn’t wash. Or to a much much lesser extent.
So why are these leaders seemingly so ignorant and on the face of it disdainful of this new paradigm? Partly I’m sure it’s because they are really busy and have a never ending call on their attention: the urgent pushes out the important. This happens to all of us. More disappointingly – and here I can only speculate, I don’t know any of these 100 CEOs – I suspect that for many it is driven by fear. Not fear in a cowardly sense, but fear of looking dumb. Most people are afraid of this, and I’m sure toiling under the spotlight associated with running a Fortune 100 company only exacerbates this. These smart, ambitious, driven men and women must feel some annoyance after having spent 20 or 30 years climbing the corporate ladder to reach the pinnacle, only to find the rules of the game changed.
Here’s a suggestion. The Boards’ of these companies should ask there CEO’s to take a 1-2 month sabbatical to immerse themselves in the 21st web, preferably supported by a mentor or coach. When they came back they still might not blog. Or tweet. Or have a Facebook page. And that might be ok. But I’m certain they would have a much better understanding of why they don’t and what tools they might actually want to adopt. But most importantly they would have a better understanding of the world in which their company operates. First hand knowledge; not “Oh yeah my kid was telling me about that and tried to get me signed up. Damn teenagers!”
According to the June 22 letter, the review identified “valuation concerns” where “appraisal documentation is missing or incomplete,” or where property-assessment methods were “insufficient/lacking.”
Other missing information included employment confirmations, phone numbers, credit reports and rent verification, the letter said. The review also found “income calculation errors.”
Another fine example of six sigma in banking. Imagine if Dow and Dupont ran their chemical plants like this. Holy crap. Or Boeing built planes this way. Yikes. But then again, in those industries lives are at stake. Banking. [shrug] Just money. Ok a few billion hundred billion. But still, it’s not like anyone died. Sheesh.
Hmmm. In 2002 – yes 2002, seven years ago(!) – I wrote:
In a recent speech, Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, made exactly this point: “…[if] you put six sigma in an investment bank, they would all gag!” In case you think he was just engaging in some gratuitous banker bashing, consider this: six sigma quality means havingfewer than 3.4 defects or errors per million operations in a service process. That is 99.99966% perfection.
Contrast this benchmark with the assurance once made to me — by a senior syndicate manager of one of the largest and most respected global bond underwriters — that it was perfectly normal and necessary to expect and reserve for 5%-10% errors in the allocation of a jumbo multi-tranche bond deal! Assuming an average of 200 individual orders (including splits) on a typical new issue, to reach six sigma quality levels you would need to have fewer than four errors over 5000 issues!
…And therein lies the next major opportunity for capital markets bankers over the next decade: to use technology not only as an enabler of innovation (as has been the case over the past 15 years) but as a driver of industrial efficiencies.
The guys in IT thought it was an interesting take on things (with $ signs in their eyes) but the ‘business’ side, well, let’s just say it didn’t strike a chord. Banks were special. Bankers were (even more) special. All that re-engineering and total quality management and painful restructuring and shifting centres of power…all good for manufacturing and you know, “other” industries. The ones they advised and financed and funded LBOs of… but not banking. Banking is “different.” You wouldn’t understand…What. A load. Of. Crap.
Well now they are paying for it. We all are paying for it. Rivers didn’t catch on fire but the financial system was well and truly polluted. But there is a bright side. The bright side is that there has never been a better time to come in and build businesses in banking and financial services that have an engineering DNA, businesses that are natively adapted to an industrialized and digital way of doing business. Indeed some of the pioneers in this mold have already enjoyed tremendous success (Markit Group comes to mind.) Others are emerging. And the incumbents have never looked less frightening (even if, especially because, they are now too big to fail.)
GigaOm writes today on the growing divide between the leading and lagging companies on the web:
The web is entering a period of intense creativity. Companies like Google and Apple are positioned to ride, if not generate, the momentum driving that creativity. The laggards are at risk of being stuck in perpetual catch-up mode. If that happens, the bluebirds will have flown for good — and the landscape of Internet companies will soon look dramatically different.
And yet this is nothing compared to the ‘creativity gulf’ that is emerging between leaders and laggards in other sectors of the economy, including in banking, insurance and finance generally. Only here, the leaders are still small and just starting to emerge. Further, GigaOm points out that even once this creativity divide is created and continues to grow, the deleterious effects of being on the wrong side of this divide can take many years to really start to bite:
Other Internet names seem mired even further in the past. Yahoo’s interest in a deal with Microsoft for “boatloads of money” is a headline that belongs in 2008. eBay keeps trying to recapture the magic it had five years ago. And MySpace is still trying to renew its lifeline to Google.
None of these laggards will see a quick end. They’ll be able to endure for years serving the people who haven’t taken to Facebook or maybe tried and then abandoned Twitter, people who are comfortable with a simpler, more familiar experience on the web. But it’s an ever-shrinking crowd. A decade ago, AOL chose a complacent path by maintaining its gated online community, shunning the migration of content and services to the web itself. And look where AOL is today.
Substitute ‘financial’ for ‘internet’ in the analysis above and the parallels are obvious. The big difference of course is that the analogs for Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter in finance are not yet obvious and indeed probably don’t yet exist (or are at the very early stages of their development.) However, the environment supporting the emergence of new digital leaders in finance has never been more fertile. This is one of the main reasons I created Nauiokas Park with Amy: in order to discover, support and develop the next generation of leading companies delivering financial services and products from the right side of the digital divide. The next several years promise to be exceptional vintages in our opinion.
“The single most important thing was to dismantle the organisational structure,” he recalls. “We tore it apart in 60 days, removing a large number of leaders who had been there a long time and who represented an operating style that lay outside any proper understanding of market dynamics.” In their place he promoted a group of younger executives, many with a background in consumer marketing, who understood and could provide what he wanted: accountability, openness, rapid communication and impatience with hierarchy and internal politics.
An interview with the CEO of [insert name of rare banking success story] c. 2014? One would hope so. Especially as the value of this approach – if it wasn’t self-evident enough to intelligent Boards everywhere – had already been proven: the quote is in fact from Sergio Marchionne(in The Economist) on how he was able to turn Fiat from a basket case into a market leader.
The market dynamics in financial services have clearly changed (this was already true a couple years ago but is now apparent and obvious to even the most blinkered…) and events have highlighted that incumbent management in most large financial institutions are no better adapted to embrace this new reality than their analogs in the auto, telecom, media or any other industry. But they do have the advantage of having seen first hand the disastrous results in these other industries of failing to act and of desperately holding on to an obsolete business model, so the hope is that even if they have been slow off the mark, that the best amongst them will be able to re-invent themselves under the cover of the current systemic turmoil.
An interesting question would be – can this kind of change be implemented without first changing the CEO? ie Is parachuting someone from outside a necessary condition to achieving the kind of change that Mr. Marchionne achieved at Fiat? (If so, I’d guess you’d need not just someone from outside the company but someone from outside the Establishment.) Another interesting question would be whether or not – as the senior non-executive Director – Mr. Marchionne pressed for a similar approach (to the one he took at Fiat) at UBS? And if so, whether or not he was rebuffed, ignored or embraced? Is the appointment of Mr. Grubel (clearly an outsider, although also part of the Establishment) an indication of this strategy in action?
If anyone has any examples of the ‘Fiat experience’ in action/being replicated in financial services (banks, brokers, insurance companies, etc.) I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
About a month ago, management guru Gary Hamel posted “a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life” that he felt that tomorrow’s employees would use as benchmarks to judge which companies “got it”. It’s a great list but I would go further and say that it’s not just about attracting the Digital Generation (or the Facebook Generation or Generation Y or M or whatever else you want to call today’s teens and twenty-somethings), it’s about attracting smart, connected, ambitious and energetic professionals of any age, but especially thirty and forty-somethings that are old and wise enough to have no illusions about the reality of working in a typical Fortune 500 company and have valuable “last century” skills but young enough to be able to want to reinvent their relationship to work and their employer.
1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
On the Web, every idea has the chance to gain a following—or not, and no one has the power to kill off a subversive idea or squelch an embarrassing debate. Ideas gain traction based on their perceived merits, rather than on the political power of their sponsors.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
In any Web forum there are some individuals who command more respect and attention than others—and have more influence as a consequence. Critically, though, these individuals haven’t been appointed by some superior authority. Instead, their clout reflects the freely given approbation of their peers. On the Web, authority trickles up, not down.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
On the Web, every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done through other people. Forget this online, and your followers will soon abandon you.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
The Web is an opt-in economy. Whether contributing to a blog, working on an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on the things that interest them. Everyone is an independent contractor, and everyone scratches their own itch.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
On the Web, you get to choose your compatriots. In any online community, you have the freedom to link up with some individuals and ignore the rest, to share deeply with some folks and not at all with others. Just as no one can assign you a boring task, no can force you to work with dim-witted colleagues.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
In large organizations, resources get allocated top-down, in a politicized, Soviet-style budget wrangle. On the Web, human effort flows towards ideas and projects that are attractive (and fun), and away from those that aren’t. In this sense, the Web is a market economy where millions of individuals get to decide, moment by moment, how to spend the precious currency of their time and attention.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
The Web is also a gift economy. To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch—and garner the credit that might have been yours. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
On the Internet, truly smart ideas rapidly gain a following no matter how disruptive they may be. The Web is a near-perfect medium for aggregating the wisdom of the crowd—whether in formally organized opinion markets or in casual discussion groups. And once aggregated, the voice of the masses can be used as a battering ram to challenge the entrenched interests of institutions in the offline world.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
As many Internet moguls have learned to their sorrow, online users are opinionated and vociferous—and will quickly attack any decision or policy change that seems contrary to the community’s interests. The only way to keep users loyal is to give them a substantial say in key decisions. You may have built the community, but the users really own it.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
The web is a testament to the power of intrinsic rewards. Think of all the articles contributed to Wikipedia, all the open source software created, all the advice freely given—add up the hours of volunteer time and it’s obvious that human beings will give generously of themselves when they’re given the chance to contribute to something they actually care about. Money’s great, but so is recognition and the joy of accomplishment.
12. Hackers are heroes.
Large organizations tend to make life uncomfortable for activists and rabble-rousers—however constructive they may be. In contrast, online communities frequently embrace those with strong anti-authoritarian views. On the Web, muckraking malcontents are frequently celebrated as champions of the Internet’s democratic values—particularly if they’ve managed to hack a piece of code that has been interfering with what others regard as their inalienable digital rights.
My first job (way back when) was as an analyst in an M&A department. But before a year was up and at the suggestion of the senior partner I was working for I applied for a job on the trading floor (as a bond trader.) The point my partner made was that in corporate finance, it mattered how old you were, who you knew and how much grey hair you had. (All things I was short of at the time!) On the trading floor however, not so much. There results and ideas mattered. In fact, the best thing about being a trader in the early nineties was well that many of the 12 items on the list above applied. At least for awhile.
If you work for a big bank or financial institution, score your employer – do they get more than 8/12? More than 4/12? Do they tick any of the boxes above? Answers in the comments please.
Obviously, Citigroup has continued to be much in the news of late, first becoming a penny stock and then enjoying a nice bounce this week because, well…(short covering?) For better or worse, I try to focus mainly on the tremendous opportunities that exist in the context of inventing the future of such a vital yet stale industry that is finance. So why, I asked myself, so many posts about Citi?
I guess it is impossible to write a blog like the Park Paradigm without posting relatively frequently about Citigroup; every hero need a nemesis right? So I guess in this context they’re the Joker (and I’m, um…Batman???)
Clearly much of the price appreciation is due to a vicious short-covering rally that Messrs. Pandit and Lewis kicked off. But the fact is, what do they have to lose? If they can fool us long enough, credit spreads will come in and recovery will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Otherwise, Congress (read: the US taxpayer) will bail them out once again. Citi, B of A and AIG have each had multiple bites of the bailout apple, so what’s another bite among friends? They are inclined to do this because their reputations are already severly damaged; in essence, short of outright fraud, they can’t get any worse. Therefore, they are motivated to throw caution to the wind, be super-positive and hope for the best. If new management with fresh reputations were on the scene, the would be much less inclined to release bullish statements without empirical data to back it up. This is a major flaw of TARP: letting incumbent managements stay around. It has created perverse motives that serve neither the troubled institutions nor its shareholders very well.
So with this in mind, I’ve been curious to see how the whole (non-executive) Boardroom shake-up that has been hinted at would play out. Well today Reuters reported that Citi would be adding (at least) three new outside directors, and confirming that – due to mandatory retirement at age 72 (not gross negligence and/or insanity) – 2 current directors would be leaving. Speculation was that the new directors would be:
Wow. That will really shake things up. I mean these new guys, they bring a completely new perspective to the existing Board, right? A real diversity of experience and knowledge. Two plus two equals five stuff…
I don’t know much/anything about Messrs. Grundhofer, O’Neill or Thompson, but I’m pretty sure they are all very talented, experienced managers with great track records; and there is no reason to believe they won’t be an improvement on whomever they replace (admittedly a fairly low hurdle…) But c’mon! Where are the new Board members who will challenge the industry (not just the corporate) status quo? Who have a vision of what finance might/should be in the 21st century? Where is the new Board member with a firm grasp of the latest trends (and implications thereof) in information and communications technology and how they will shift the societal and cultural framework in which Citi operates over the coming years? Where is the independent Director who isn’t a paid-up member of the Fortune500 great-and-good (and so will be more likely to bring a different perspective to the table, and less baggage)? Where are the Board members that manage their own email inbox (or at least read and respond directly themselves), that have a Facebook or a Twitter account, that write and/or read blogs? That have bought at least one iPhone app and feel more panic when they don’t have access to broadband/the web than when they don’t have a mobile/voice signal?
Every successful team I’ve ever seen or been a part of has one common denominator: diversity. Diversity of experience. Culture. Expertise. Seniority. Temperament. Gender. And even better if there were one or more ‘independent thinkers’ amongst the group. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about box-ticking compliance driven ‘diversity’ (although by accident rather than by design, this can sometimes help at the margins, by at least avoiding the ten 60-something white guys out of central casting…) but diversity that creates intersections. Of ideas, world views and aspirations. Because that’s where interesting things happen. (You can bet that my bank‘s Board will have this principal as its foundation.)
I’d be curious to know which headhunter(s) worked/are working on this mandate and what was their brief (and who wrote it?) I would have hoped (on behalf of US taxpayers) that the Obama administration had much input into the search criteria and that they would be looking for Directors that would focus primarily on ensuring the future success of Citigroup without regard to worrying about legacies and sunk costs (real and psychological.)
As an aside, take a couple minutes and wade through the mangroves of Citi’s corporate governance. No wonder it’s gone so horribly wrong! (I wish I had looked at this a couple of years ago, even without hindsight, it just screams sell…) They have 49 people on their Senior Leadership Committee. FORTY-NINE!!! I assume they at least have a wiki to manage committee business…
I like to compare large businesses to factory farms. What they are supposed to do is produce things predictably at scale. And surprises aren’t welcome; you just want to mass produce and so the way you manage a factory farm is with techniques to eliminate surprises, eliminate defects, be close to your customer, optimize productivity and efficiency. And then what you want is little gardens or greenhouses, not one big lab but small gardens or greenhouses that are loosely connected to the businesses. So they might be located within a business unit, they might be in a corporate group – it depends on the culture of the company where they should be located. They might be outside of the corporate walls; it may be connections with companies in Silicon Valley. It’s all about nurturing, it’s all about surprises. It’s all about having no goals. It’s all about gaining information and being prepared for the future… Having a vision, having a shared purpose – those people can’t get isolated from what the corporate mission is because then they’re off in left field. But this loose coupling…and you don’t want to manage them the way you manage your day-to-day business.
It’s great to hear someone with Judy’s experience and credibility articulate many of the important ideas on the structural failing of corporate innovation; understanding and mitigating these failings is a key pillar in our business plan and value proposition. And obviously at Nauiokas Park we love her garden metaphor!
* unfortunately McKinsey is another site who doesn’t make it easy to embed the video elsewhere, so a link is the best I could do.
Yesterday – in response to an earlier article – Gillian Wilmot makes a claim on the FT’s editorial page for more women in senior executive and Board positions in the UK: “Men have messed up. Let women sort it out.”
The more worthy the task the more women, and the more financially rewarding the task the more men. So the public sector and charities, where work is pro bono or modestly paid, have far more women directors than private equity houses, banks, city firms and hedge funds, which are dominated by the “white, male accountant”.
“So what? Why should I care?” Because it is in the financial institutions where the big decisions and risks are taken and where all our pensions and savings are invested. The testosterone-packed “winner takes all” approach does not sit easily with looking after the interests of all stakeholders (shareholders, employees and customers) and managing the downside risk. A lethal combination of testosterone, complexity and greed has brought UK plc to its knees.
The City knew by 2006 that their seven times debt-to-profit deals were unsustainable. They did the deals to win the game and get their bonuses – the individuals cash out, the rest of us lose out.
Would it have happened with more women on these boards? Not if those women had been in the powerful roles of executives, chief executives and chairmen at big financial institutions.
Well, she’s right. Although I can’t say I agree with her claim that quotas are the only way to redress the ridiculous situation of having a homogeneous group of old white guys running everything. I think that generational change, the enormously compelling arbitrage which exists (pound for pound hire women rather than men and you’ll beat the competition hands down – more talent for the price, what’s not to like), and the blindingly obvious fact that heterogeneous groups of people are smarter, more creative and robust than brittle monocultures will ultimately lead us to a more balanced executive suite rather sooner than most people think. I especially think ubiquitous broadband and mobile computing and communications technologies will allow us (as a society) to keep the interest of bright women who heretofore were pushed out by the need to choose between work and family. (By the way, it will also allow men to maintain a more intelligent balance and in so doing not only result in happier families and children, but smarter, better adjusted men in the Boardroom.)
But ultimately the only way real change will be effected in the boardroom is quotas, as in Norway. These can be done in a staged way but there must be targets for executives, chairmen and non-executive directors.
All female shortlists can work well and it is highly successful companies that have led the way. Admiral, the FTSE 100 insurance company, ran an all-female shortlist in 2005 when I joined the board.
Men created the current financial mess; they need women to help them clear it up and restore everyone’s faith in the system.
I’m not against quotas per se, just that they shouldn’t be imposed by the government from above – if companies are too stupid to see the competitive advantage inherent in a balanced executive team, let them suffer the consequences. Except perhaps for the banks (or any other industry that the State cannot allow to fail catastrophically…) But now that the government owns 60% of RBS they don’ need to pass a law to get more women on the Board, just a shareholder’s resolution, or a quick call to Mr. Hester.
It’s pretty obvious that banks and others in the financial markets have taken many risks they either did not understand or – more likely – that they managed poorly. Unfortunately – and at the risk of being accused of a broad generalization – they suppressed a different kind of risk taking – aka creativity. Creativity in terms of new ways of thinking about their business, their customers, their way of looking at the world. Tim Brown of IDEO reminds us in this great talk that ‘adult behaviors’ get in the way of new ideas; adults worry too much about what everyone else will think. Financial services firms are perhaps the most ‘adult’ of all institutions. All work, no play. And so questions are not asked. And group-think dominates. And the cliff beckons…
Taking yourself too seriously has to be one of the best ways to end up looking ridiculous. I wonder if the lesson will be learned. Pass me the toys.
Regular readers will know that I have a healthy skepticism with respect to the supposed benefits of ever-increasing size in corporations and in particular with respect to financial services firms. Given the preponderant importance of human capital to creating and maintaining a competitive advantage in financial services, the exponential increase in complexity arising from imposing traditional hierarchical organizational paradigms on tens or hundreds of thousands of employees quickly outweighs the benefits of economies of scale in infrastructure and financial capital in today’s hybrid / universal banking and insurance giants.
Until now however, I have been without an elegant and robust metaphor for this thesis. But when I read Michel Bauwens’ essay (thanks to a pointer from Gordon Cook) comparing the current fundamental, secular changes in societal organization driven by the revolution in information and communications technologies, I knew I had found my meme:
…there is also the emergence of a new form of horizontality, no longer local and disconnected and unable to compete with hierarchical forms, but able to scale globally, through the global coordination of a multitude of small teams, outside of a logic of command and control. I think this is the significance of peer to peer (and peer production specifically), and that it points to the concept of Peak Hierarchy.
In my view, we have already reached the point in history, where ‘peer to peer plays’, i.e. interconnected horizontality, outcompetes hierarchical and diagonal plays. The two examples we have are of course Linux and Wikipedia.
In other words, we have reached a point in history, a true turning point, where a new form of social organization, starts to outcompete hierarchy. (But of course, just as early hierarchy was a hybrid with the system out of which it arose, so the new early forms of p2p are hybrid forms within the dominant system)
If this is true, and I of course believe it is, then we have indeed already reached Peak Hierarchy. It should be historically situated at the mid-point between the moment that Linux became the dominant technological force in the internet, and that the Wikipedia was outreading and outproducing the Brittanica. From that moment on, faced with these undeniable examples of success, the scramble for adaptation to distributed forms of organization, to integrating participation in the very heart of hierarchy, has started to make itself felt. There has been a magnetic reversal of the poles. The chaotic attractor has become the peer to peer mode. Hierarchy is still dominant, and will stay so for a determinate amount of time, but social forces are already looking elsewhere, mostly unconsciously, but nevertheless.
This is unprecedented, and is changing the whole course of human history. Of course, it will take time to play out, see how difficult it was to realize the truth of Peak Oil, how adamantly the forces of biospheric destruction fought and are fighting back. But we can also see that it is ultimately a losing battle for them.
Not only does this thesis capture the essence of the issues facing the prevailing global political and economic paradigm but it neatly frames the diminishing returns characteristic of the twilight of a golden age and the accompanying bewilderment of the existing elite who either fail or refuse to understand the tectonic changes inevitably undermining their comfortable sinecures. Shades of the fall of the Roman Empire? Listen to Michel’s take on this:
Not only is the concept of ‘Peak Hierarchy’ an important pillar in our investment thesis, but it also directly colours how we think about building and organizing our own firm over the coming years. We are convinced that this will give us an additional competitive advantage, especially as many of our potential competitors are likely to continue operating more traditionally for many years to come.
So I’m adding it as a category here at the Park Pardigm and expect to read more of my thoughts on its meaning and implications on business and finance going forward.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=d8c5706e-8417-408a-a91e-b05987719cc9)
When I read this story on 
pops into my head…
Well now they are paying for it. We all are paying for it. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=5a146aa2-03b8-4e06-8804-34b683c960f2)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=b6d947ca-8aa8-4356-bcd4-b1e50c5a9745)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=84124952-6e1f-459b-a5c9-044bdb82f48b)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=53558cec-1040-4551-874e-77a5781b85b9)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=61a4f0ea-a569-416a-a8fd-014715d092d9)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=8c5d64cc-40c6-4cda-8570-ddb288ba5f07)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=d9b3eaf8-d906-4656-b7a7-9377fdfd8f0f)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=51fcc91d-50cb-40ee-8d17-0202e484de1a)
