When I ran into Steve Schwarzman at a charity dinner last month, I asked him whether his private-equity firm, Blackstone Group, was planning any “Richistan” plays–betting, for example, on the burgeoning demand for megayachts.

“The trouble with yachts,” he said, “is that when business is good, it’s really good. But when it falls, it really crashes.”

It is insight that few companies seem willing to accept right now. With the megayacht business filled with backlog orders from newly minted billionaires in Russia, the Middle East and India, all kinds of companies are jumping into business. Read more »

There has been plenty of foreign direct investment (FDI) into China over the years, and it is continuing strongly (with the help of the RMB) despite lots of laws, regulations and rising costs, many of which have been reported on this blog.

The last time we mentioned big FDI, it was in relation to China’s new anti-trust (anti-monopoly) law , now it is the turn of Coke to shake things up – with their US$2.4 billion bid for Huiyuan Juice Group. MarketWatch reports:

“The deal would value the firm at about three times its market value, and would mark the U.S. beverage maker’s largest acquisition in China by value to date. …The Chinse firm is reportedly the country’s largest maker of pure fruit juice. Coca-Cola said three of the Huiyuan’s biggest shareholders have given “irrevocable undertakings” in support of the deal.”

Read more »

There’s no Olympic medal for sports apparel marketing, but the race this summer between the category’s top two brands is hotly contested. Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Nike and Adidas are employing very different strategies to court the Chinese market.

One key difference is Adidas’ decision to invest in being an official sponsor of the games. This grants advantages like the right to use trademarked images (the rings, the event’s logo, the words “Beijing 2008″), access to prime tickets and hotel rooms and the opportunity to set up hospitality areas close to Olympic venues like the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube.

Nike is not an Olympic sponsor, and one of the consequences of that is restriction of its advertising in Beijing during the Olympic period. Until about a week ago, Nike had a large advertising presence around shopping hot spot Wangfujing, but that changed after the restrictions went into effect July 19.

Nike ads that plastered the nearby Dongdan subway station have been covered in white. The athletes whose faces hawk Nike from above the shops at Wangfujing have been replaced with “Beijing 2008″ posters bearing the images of the Fuwa (the official mascots of these games), Beijing opera singers and the Great Wall. At the nearby basketball and soccer park that Nike owns rights to, the 15-foot ads that usually hang on the fences have been taken down, though the swooshes that mark half field and center court are still there. Even Nike’s ads in Titan sports newspaper now bear only a simple swoosh and the “Just Do It” slogan. Gone are the images of Nike-sponsored Chinese Olympians.

Along Wangfujing, though, it’s hard to see a disadvantage for Nike. All of the billboards, including the Adidas ones featuring the Chinese women’s volleyball team, have been replaced with Beijing ‘08 signage. And Nike has bought up several retail locations in the area, along Chang’An Avenue (which intersects with Wangfujing a short distance east of Tian’anmen and the Forbidden City) and Wangfujing Street. It has two Wangfujing shops, including one with huge windows that afford passersby a good view of the life-size mannequins of hurdler Liu Xiang and basketball player Yi Jianlian, as well as a montage of several different Chinese Olympians wearing the brand.

The area around Wangfujing will be a favorite place for Beijing’s Olympic visitors to spend time between basketball games and swim meets, but when the action starts it will focus around the actual events, where Adidas should have a complete monopoly over its biggest competitor.

For more China sports news, check out China Sports Today.

Introduced in the Fall of 2000, the Titleist Pro V1/V1x was one of the most revolutionary golf balls of all time by incorporating a multi-layer construction with a soft urethane-covering to virtually eliminate the traditional trade-offs between distance, spin, feel, and durability. Since then the Pro V1/V1x has been the dominant ball in golf. Dominant among pros and amateurs alike.

Not wanting to be left behind, I adopted the Pro V1 as my primary ball from the get-go. I’m always open to trying the competitor’s new offerings, but I just haven’t found anything that’s materially better yet. Part of the reason is that Titleist isn’t content to rest on its laurels. There has been at least 2 major revisions to the original Pro V1/V1x. The newest adds the A.I.M. (Alignment Integrated Marking) sidestamp so that you don’t even have to manually line up your golf ball anymore! Read more »

A couple of years ago, ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski wrote an article that included a seemingly absurd proclamation that “Tiger Woods is the greatest individual athlete of our time. OK, of all time.” After Tiger’s unhuman-like performance at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, Wojciechowski’s statement might be right on the money. Winning the most difficult tournament against the world’s best with a torn ACL and a double stress fracture is nothing short of miraculous. Unfortunately, recovering from that injury will cost Woods the rest of the season. It seems that Wojciechowski might be the Carnac the Magnificent of golf with his prescient statement: “Only injury stands between Woods and any record worth owning.”

But there are always haters out there who will try to bring you down. Surprisingly, the sharpest barb came from the usually docile Retief Goosen, himself a two-time US Open champion. When asked whether he believed that Woods was faking the extent of his pain, he said: “I think so. It just seemed that when he hit a bad shot his knee was in pain and on his good shots he wasn’t in pain. You see when he made the putts and he went down on his knees and was shouting, ‘Yeah’, his knee wasn’t sore. Nobody really knows if he was just showing off or if he was really injured. I believe if he was really injured, he would not have played.” Retief later tried to downplay his jealous-tinged remarks saying, “I was being light-hearted. No one but Tiger himself knows how badly hurt he was. But if he was really badly hurt, he would have withdrawn, wouldn’t he?”

Well Retief, maybe your wuss ass would have withdrawn, but Tiger is tough as nails. In addition, you just gave Tiger the extra motivation to crush you every time you set foot on the same course that he does. Get better soon Tiger, and when you get back it will be open season for Goose hunting. He may or may not be the greatest athlete, but Tiger Woods is the greatest competitor!

Can companies actually grow stronger during a recession? What can they do to capitalize on the problems that their rivals encounter during tough economic times? Suppose you have a sturdy balance sheet, low debt, and plentiful amounts of cash. How can you employ these strengths to take on rivals who have been weakened considerably?

I’m reminded of the importance of considering these questions when I read Steven Jobs’ recent quotes about Apple’s strategy in the days and months ahead. Jobs promises to expand the firm’s research and development efforts this year, even if economic growth does turn negative. Here is what he told Fortune magazine a few weeks ago, reflecting on the last recession as well as the current economic climate: “In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did.

And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.” Of course, Apple sits in an enviable position. They have an impressive balance sheet, mountains of cash, and no debt. If your firm also finds itself in such a position of strength, remember that it too can use the recession to become even stronger relative to the competition.

Here are four steps your company should consider now: Read more »

I am speaking today at the FastForward conference in Orlando. I’m talking about analytics and how they relate to search, but I came early and caught Andy McAfee’s talk last night about Enterprise 2.0. As usual, Andy was articulate and perspicacious. He justifiably shifted the focus in his talk from praising the glories of E2.0 to a discussion of how to make it real within organizations. In doing so, he talked about the need for trust, cultural change, for senior management leadership, and even for some “slack” within organizations. “OMG,” I thought. “He’s talking about knowledge management!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, we had brought in Andy to speak to our Working Knowledge Research Center at Babson a while ago. We’ve talked with that group about how blogs, wikis, and tagging change knowledge management. I have argued with Andy in several settings about the fact that Enterprise 2.0 isn’t as new or revolutionary as some would have it, and I had knowledge management in mind.

Still, that E2.0 is the new KM didn’t hit me for a while. But when Andy said the ultimate value of E2.0 initiatives consists of greater responsiveness, better “knowledge capture and sharing,” and more effective “collective intelligence,” there wasn’t much doubt. When he talked about the need for a willingness to share and a helpful attitude, I remembered all the times over the past 15 years I’d heard that about KM. When he described the need for “lateralization” (by which I think he means simply the lateral flow of information), I wasn’t sure that a new word was necessary, because I’ve heard about the same topic in old words for many years.

Sure, there are a few differences between classical KM and E2.0. The tools are largely different, for one. Perhaps the most important difference is the emphasis on emergence of content structures in E2.0, rather than specifying them in advance, as early knowledge managers had to. But I’ve always felt that most information environments require some mixture of structure and emergence. Andy’s comment that E2.0 requires “gardeners” suggests that he agrees.

I admit to a mild hostility to the hype around Enterprise 2.0 in the past. I have reacted in a curmudgeonly fashion to what smelled like old wine in new bottles. But I realized after hearing Andy talk that he was an ally, not a competitor. If E2.0 can give KM a mid-life kicker, so much the better. If a new set of technologies can bring about a knowledge-sharing culture, more power to them. Knowledge management was getting a little tired anyway.