 OUR TAKE -
Difficult Decisions of Survival
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| Lasting Impressions:
To put off and end up not making decisions is making decisions by default which is not a creative way to live.
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Unknown
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Difficult times often call for difficult decisions. Aron Ralston, while hiking through Blue John Canyon in Southeastern Utah, had his arm trapped by an 800-pound boulder and he was forced to make an unimaginable decision of survival. He was at the bottom of a hidden canyon, 100 feet beneath the desert surface, 20 miles from the nearest paved road and surrounded by hundreds more miles of uninhabited desert.
He was stuck and nothing he did would free him from the grips of the boulder. He had not told a soul where he was going or what he was doing. He wasn't expected back at work for days. No one would miss him, and when they did, they wouldn't know where to begin to look. After five days trapped inside the canyon, Ralston knew what he had to do to survive. He had to cut off his arm.
Using a dull pocket knife, he separated his body from the trapped arm. After freeing himself, he was still eight miles from his truck and he had to rappel down a 65-foot wall. Today, he is a prolific mountain climber and a public speaker. He talks about not losing his hand but rather about gaining his life back.
Today, many businesses are expressing feelings of being "trapped." Rather than focusing on how the situation happened, now is the time to make the difficult decisions to become "un-trapped." Free yourself and walk out of your desert. That's my take. What's your take?
Gary Lemke, Publisher
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| Stock Ticker |
| Rainmaker | 0.57 |  | 0.09 |
| SupportSoft | 1.78 | | 0.21 |
| Unica | 4.35 | | 0.41 |
| eLoyalty | 4.5 | | 0.38 |
| Chordiant | 2.22 | | 0.12 |
| ATG | 2.08 | | 0.08 |
| LivePerson | 1.86 | | 0.07 |
| NetSuite | 8.15 | | 0.3 |
| Pegasystems | 14.08 | | 0.43 |
| Interactive | 8.33 | | 0.22 |
| ICT | 4.14 | | 0.09 |
| Teletech | 8.66 | | 0.17 |
| CDC | 0.76 | | 0.01 |
| Sykes | 13.92 | | 0.18 |
| Vignette | 6.07 | | 0.07 |
| SPSS | 23.99 | | 0.18 |
| Tekelc | 11.78 | | 0.01 |
| Amdocs | 16.2 |  | -0.03 |
| Salesforce | 30.07 | | -0.06 |
| HP | 26.98 | | -0.1 |
| Jacada | 2.45 | | -0.01 |
| Oracle | 14.47 | | -0.06 |
| NICE | 20.75 | | -0.11 |
| SAP | 31.81 | | -0.32 |
| RightNow | 6.72 | | -0.08 |
| NCR | 6.8 | | -0.1 |
| Convergys | 5.7 | | -0.09 |
| ClickSoftware | 2.68 | | -0.08 |
| Epicor | 2.59 | | -0.13 |
| APAC | 1.93 | | -0.12 |
| Selectica | 0.31 | | -0.02 |
| Astea | 1.6 | | -0.42 |
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As of 3:59 p.m. on 3/6/09 |
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Article: Harnessing Your Customers to Drive Innovation
Daryl Choy wrote an interesting post on There's No Such Thing as an Experience. The post created an interesting comment thread around how far you should or should not harness customers to drive innovation. On the one hand there are those who argue with conviction that once you know what customers need, experts should drive innovation. This approach is based upon the idea that only experts know what is possible and what is practicable. They don't of course know what customers might eventually buy. On the other hand, there are those who argue with equal conviction that customers should be harnessed through, for example lead-user innovation or open innovation, to drive innovation. This approach is based upon the idea that given enough customers or other experts, most workable innovations can be identified.(CustomerThink
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