Archive for 26 May 2008
Remixed Movie Trailers
| Peter Klein |
As I noted in my review of Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, I think that Web 2.0 enthusiasts tend to overstate the novelty of “user-generated content.” It’s true that the costs of creating and disseminating movies, music, and even the written word have, in many settings, fallen dramatically (look at blogging, for goodness’ sake). On the other hand, as Paul Cantor, Tyler Cowen, and others have pointed out, commercial culture has always been, in an important sense, consumer culture. Benkler tends to portray twentieth-century consumers as passive recipients of culture, easily manipulated by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Yet individuals have always played an active role in shaping the plays, books, songs, and shows made available to them, in their decisions to buy or not to buy, to patronize or not to patronize, to support or reject particular artistic producers and particular products.
Having said this, I do enjoy clever bits of user-generated content. For instance, check out this trailer for Sleepless in Seattle — number 5 on this list of The 20 Worst Chick Flicks of All Time — remixed as a horror movie. It reminds me of the brilliant Brokeback to the Future trailer from a couple of years back.
Of course, the greatest of all such parody shorts is Kevin Rubio’s Troops, now more than a decade old. And don’t miss George Lucas in Love.
Do What Consultants Say, Not What Other Firms Do
| Peter Klein |
McKinsey suggests this strategy: when other firms ignore strategy consultants, earn rents by listening to strategy consultants.
- Companies don’t react to competitive threats in the way management theory says they should, according to a McKinsey Global Survey.
- Instead of undertaking extensive, sophisticated analyses when faced with a competitive threat, most companies assess just a few responses, and they often choose the most obvious one.
- These practices give companies an opportunity to seize a competitive advantage by understanding how their competitors are likely to react to their moves.
The pointer is from the ever-valuable Luke Froeb. Most economists are puzzled management consulting, believing that consultants add little real economic value. I am sympathetic to a signaling explanation with a separating equilibrium in which high-quality firms can afford to signal quality by hiring expensive consultants and low-quality firms cannot. But I haven’t studied this closely. Can anyone recommend literature on the economics of consulting?
Organizations and Markets 
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