How Successful Are Your Responses To Changing Market Conditions?

Reading and listening.  Basic functions of many of our lives.

How we read and listen has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years.

For thousands of years, we shared our stories and songs in person.  Then recorded music and books came along.

Now the digital world has flattened the hierarchies associated with delivery of music and reading material.  This blog, for instance - a combination of "letter to the editor," opinion column, short story and personal diary, any one of which would have been used to make money - is available to the public essentially for free.

What about those who deliver your news and music?

One man, Mr. Anderson, offers his take on the business.  He feels like he's up against the "nearly-free content for our hardware platform" model sold by Steve Jobs and the "nearly-free hardware platform for our content" model sold by Jeff Bezos.

Another comments on the demise of a local bookseller, ending with a timeless quote from John Donne's work.

So, no matter whether you make your money as a street vendor or as owner of all products supplied to street vendors, you've got to keep up with what your customers want that'll also help you stay in business.

Thanks to the Internet, I found an interesting article breaking down a report by Credit Suisse about distribution of wealth around this planet.

Being part of the top 1% of the world's wealthiest might seem like a life of jetsetting from one pleasure spot to another but it's not.  At least not for those who like to put themselves to others' use - keeping their employees happily well-fed, funding parts of society that aren't easily able to see how they can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and generally staying busily engaged in the businesses that brought you to the Top 1% Table.

I'm tired of all the negative news headlines trying to sell you advertising.  Not that I'm against advertising.  I mean, how else can we compete for your attention and get you interested in a product you may have never known you wanted or needed?  Seriously.

Therefore, I'm not going to compete against the headlines for your attention.  Instead, I'm focused on getting you focused on caring for one another again.

No more petty arguments about who's got the best idea about [fill in the blank].  Let's try all the ideas and keep moving along until one idea or a few of the ideas bubble to the surface with success for those whom the idea(s) best serves.

Reiteration, reiteration, reiteration.

If distribution doesn't work, then try another business.  If construction engineering is petering out, try pollution engineering.  If pollution engineering isn't profitable for you, try biomedical engineering.

Hire a bunch of enterprising young people to become your farm of apps for the iPads, Droids and Google TVs of the world.

Hire farmers to host a server farm in a corner of their property to cover costs when times are bad because of weather, precipitous produce price drops, etc.

You don't have to think outside the box.  You can reinvent the use of the box and stay firmly planted in it!