Back to basics: Supply and demand

 

     The economic theory of capitalism has, as one of its basic aspects, the idea of supply and demand. This blog may be "old news" to many -- but not to others.

     The amount of product (supply) at a given price tries to reach a balance of demand and willingness/ability to pay. Under many conditions, this works as a self-maintaining mechanism. There are quite a few cases -- sometimes called "edge conditions" -- in which it does not work well. These cases include newly introduced products, pandemics, shortages, monopolies/cartels, and other cases where the balance gets thrown off rapidly.

     No company wants to sell a product below the cost needed to manufacture and provide. However, there are cases where this may be to their advantage. One is when demand has gone down so much (temporarily or permanently) that they have the cost of storing a large amount of inventory from which they don't expect a profitable return on investment. Another is as a "loss leader" -- making the price attractive to attract potential buyers of other, higher profit, items (often done by grocery stores). The final one mentioned here is that of forcing the competition to quit. A company with "deep pockets" (money available in reserve) can force their competitors to stop making competitive products. Usually this is legal but will often leave widespread bad feelings.

     Newly introduced products will require development, marketing, and promotion. The creator of the products hopes that these costs will be covered by eventual sales. But, at the beginning, they will likely need to sell below cost while building a market. When Honda introduced the higher-end Acura line, they priced the cars very close to that of their Honda line -- increasing the price as the brand-name recognition developed.

     Pandemics are special cases where both shortages and surplus can exist -- even at the same time. When most people stopped driving and stayed at home, the need for gasoline plummeted and the price of gas went down (not to the same extent). But fewer trucks on the road, and ships and trains moving product, and fewer people to staff the fields and factories can (and did) lead to shortages.

    Shortages indicate less supply than potential demand. In addition to pandemics, it can be part of a situation where production is reduced on purpose (oil, for example), because of disease (bird diseases causing reduction in chicken numbers), because of environmental problems (droughts, floods, unexpected hot or cold temperatures, ...), and deliberate reduction in cases where there is little competition (arson of facilities and other methods). There is usually no inherent requirement to raise prices when supplies are not enough to meet the demand. But, with only some product available to a larger set of potential consumers, how is the final market determined? By lottery (this does happen for certain products -- like the PS5, for example)?

     More often, the company increases the price. The higher the price, the fewer people want/are able to buy the product. At some price, those willing and able equal the amount of product. Record profits can be made and the supply and demand balance. For optional products, this works well. For required items (such as food), lower income people are greatly penalized. Note that, for longterm production shortages,  it is expected that other companies will start manufacturing (not true if it is caused by limited resources) and the competition will force prices back down as the supply increases.

      Monopolies and cartels allow companies to control the supply and price directly while eliminating (through agreements, buyouts, or less legal methods) competitive pressures. In the US, many laws were enacted following the Great Depression hoping to bring such under control.  A desire to increase or decrease such laws and the proactivity of enforcement of such laws depends upon current political vision. Other than those laws, business practices and prices are (in the US) controlled solely by the companies.

     In theory, the number of products at a particular price will (eventually) balance against the number of people willing and able to purchase at that price. But there are many detours around theory.

     

Judging versus Awareness: A difference of right and wrong

 

     I love books. But I also want others to be able to share in my love of books. So, I share them with others that I believe will appreciate them. Sometimes, they don't come back in the same condition that they went out in. Coffee rings. Bent covers. Folded over corners. Sometimes even rips or markings. The book will never be the same again. Who cares?  Many see a book as a transient physical object that has a limited lifetime. To them it's just not a big deal at all. But to me, it is very sad.

     When I was young, I would get angry at things of this nature. As I have aged (the jury is still out as to whether I have matured), I have recognized that this is not an issue of "right" or "wrong", "good" or "evil". Nevertheless, it is known to be a likely behavior that the person will treat books in this manner. So, from that point on, I will only share a book with them that I am willing to consider a gift (in fact, rather than loan I may just give it outright).

     Moving from judging to awareness. When you are judging -- there is a verdict. That verdict is based on societal, and your own personal, standards. For some things, those standards are close to universal. For other things -- definitely not. My wife and I were greatly surprised, when eating in Norway, to see the other diners eating their hamburgers with a knife and fork. They were probably equally surprised to see us pick them up. Good or bad, it would be appropriate to make sure that new guests have a knife and fork available when inviting them over for hamburgers.

     If someone you know often loses things, you try not to loan them things you want back. If someone is a driver who gets many driving tickets and is in accidents more than average, you may not want to loan them your car or accept a ride from them.

     It is difficult to come up with examples that won't be offensive because, for almost all of us, the standards that we grew up with are "the way it is". Especially in the US, where only a small percentage have learned other languages or visited other countries, it is difficult to recognize that such standards are not universal. The new global online society is beginning to expand that circle of awareness but, as is true of many things, change comes with the young.

     For me, pirating is bad. If someone has created music, video, software, games, or whatever then they should receive value back for what they have given (the value does not have to be money). But I have had it repeatedly pointed out to me that, if something is pirated, no loss of money exists because the person otherwise would not have obtained it. Parts of me can see both arguments but it is not a universal standard. Still, companies and people are allowed to be aware of it -- even try to prevent it -- even if they don't all agree on the morality of the issue.

     So, judging requires a verdict. That verdict is not universal. But awareness of the action, or behavior, is universal and is appropriate to be used as a criterion for how you interact.

Deepfakes: a growing dilemma

 

     In the movie "Rising Sun" (1993, Wesley Snipes, Sean Connery), a murder mystery is put forth. The focus of the movie is that of an examination of Japanese culture (from a gaijin point of view) and how it factors into matters of guilt, innocence, and the assumption of penalties. However, a very important part of the plot is the existence of a video which appears to indicate a certain set of circumstances. As a spoiler (but a spoiler of a 30-year-old movie), it turns out that the video has been faked. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first use of deepfakes as a plot point in a movie. But this was not a perfect deepfake and discrepancies noticed were used to break the case.

     This was 30 years ago. The plot indicated that the fake was created at speed due to an immediate need for it. Still, it was pretty good. Technology developed over the past 30 years has gotten to the point where it is more and more difficult to be able to definitively determine whether something is accurate.

     "Live" broadcasts cannot (yet) be faked. But, the contents of such broadcasts require the constancy, and accuracy, of human memories. There are instances of live videos whose contents are drastically reinterpreted within days or weeks. And, like the plot in "The Sting", it is possible to put a delay into "live" broadcasts to allow for alteration before release.

     Deepfakes of video or audio can either be altered or synthesized. Faces or voices can be substituted, clothes can be changed, the background changed, parts of one video can be merged into another. All types of changes can be done. In the case of synthesis, we are looking at a CGI movie situation. Completely creating human, and animal, images which seem real upon close examination is very close (perhaps, in lab situations, already accomplished) to reality. If there is "cheating" by using archived video footage then it is even closer to impossible to detect.

     In addition to the possibility of something being faked, the mere possibility adds to what is referred to as "the liar's dilemma" -- where something is called a fake even though thorough analysis is convinced that it is not.

     Of course, this is presently expensive to do. It is only done by those groups, companies, or governments with great resources and no limitation on use. The closer to being undetectable (unprovable) that is desired, the more expensive. But it gets cheaper, and easier, by the day. There are small minorities within the world that already think that past events never happened -- even though, at those periods of history, deepfakes were not technically possible and certainly were not cost effective.

     What will happen as our documentation, and historical storage, of events is created now and into the future?

Assumptions: a deadly block to communication

 

     We have a good friend of the family who has a saying. "To assume is to make an ass of you (u) and me". It's a good way to remember the danger of making assumptions.

     So, what's so dangerous about assumptions? Just what IS an assumption? An assumption is a lack of communication. Even though the other person, or persons, have not said something you tell yourself that you know what they are thinking, how they would react, what they would say, or what they would do. Just writing that out makes it easy to recognize how absurd it can be.

     Yes, there are people in our lives that we may have a good chance of knowing how they would behave -- say, greater than 50% chance. Even in those cases, there is also a significant (depending on how much we REALLY know them, maybe from 5% up to 80 or 90%) chance that we are wrong.

     So, why do we continue to make assumptions? First, because it is easy. Not communicating may not have many positive benefits but it is easy. Another purpose may be because we want OUR viewpoint to be in control so by not giving the other party(ies) a chance to establish their point-of-view, we maintain the status that we want. Yet another is that it can give us the feeling that we know the other person better than we really do.

     The first step to fighting the use of assumptions is to recognize it. I might go even further to say that recognizing the use of an assumption gives us the ability to override it. That can be very hard. Just like rationalizations, assumptions are a large part of most people's everyday lives. There may be some people who seem to like to make other people's lives harder to live but there are few of us who, consciously, try to make our own lives harder.

     Once it is recognized, the next step is to stop doing it.  You may say to yourself "well, if I recognize I am doing it, why would I continue?" The same "advantages" exist with conscious awareness as in a subconscious manner. Easy, maintain control, keep an illusion.

     Stopped, the next step is to establish communication. There may be some aspects of communication that are focused enough for a blog of this nature but it is way too large of an area to discuss in general in a blog.

     But there are useful courses.

The Elasticity of Time: Faster, slower, in reverse?

 

     One of my blogs from five years talked about the "inner child". Actually, it was more that -- within us -- about the reality that we still have that 5-year-old and that 15-year-old and such other periods in our lives. But, there is another aspect of time and that is our perception of it as we move through our lives.

     When we are young, perhaps five years old, then that final month until the holidays takes forever. But, at a modest sixty-five years of age, that month takes only an instant. One way of approaching this difference is that, at age five, a month is 1/60 of our life so far. And, at 65, a month is only 1/780 of our life so far. So, that period of a month is proportionately much longer when we are young.

     But the difference in perception does not necessarily depend on chronological measurements. Time is, after all, a human definition according to perception. The amount of experiences may change the perceptions also. In general, a 65-year-old would be expected to have more experiences than a five-year-old. But, a five-year-old who is growing up in a war zone will have different (and perhaps more) experiences from a five-year-old growing up on a rural farm or a five-year-old growing up in a poor section of a large urban center. Those experiences will vary according to physical, social, and societal environments. And those experiences will also affect perception of time. I propose that future time perception is shortened by greater amounts of experience.

     But an hour to that five-year-old is not always the same. That hour until school lets out is not the same as an hour until they have to leave an amusement park. Yet the time that has elapsed on a clock indicates the same number of minutes. What is the difference? One way of looking at it might be that of desire. When you are anticipating, or desiring, an event in the future it seems slower. When you dread it, it seems slower.

     But that may be a matter of focus. When you focus on that future event then you are NOT focusing on what is going on from minute to minute. Those things that are happening in the now shorten the distance to the future if they are focused upon. Ride the roller coaster one more time. Read one more chapter of that fantastic book you hope will never end. If your focus is on other things then that future period of time can come so quickly. In the world of work, that means that if you are doing something interesting and challenging, which requires focus, then quitting time gets forgotten (for better or worse).

     All of the above is about the speed of advancing towards the future. But what about the past? Well, so far at least, there is no going back in time to the general past. But OUR past? Every time we find ourself thinking about something that once happened, we are on a personal time trip. Within dreams, they may vary and become more detailed. It is even possible to reach a depth where time is perceived as being re-lived. And, unfortunately, some can get stuck and disappear from the present.

     As best we know, time goes along with entropy -- as the universe decays and becomes more chaotic, our perception follows along. But, within that general direction, our perception of time can do many things. What is particularly interesting about time to you?

Influencers: celebrities both notorious and admired

 

    I suspect that it is often the same worldwide but, in the US, there is a tendency to take one characteristic (positive or negative) and allow the value placed upon it to expand and be applied to the rest of the person. The characteristic may be an action, a behavior, or anything.

     We most often think of celebrities as those that we see, and hear, often. Actors, sports stars, famous novelists, politicians, royalty, content creators, and so forth. Because of their visibility by many, they enter the arena of "influencers".  But celebrities can also be less visible -- but still very impactful -- within an industry or segment of economy. People pay attention to their opinions about all kinds of things -- of which they may actually have little, or no, knowledge.

      A person may be a marketing genius (though, perhaps, ruthless) -- people fall over themselves asking for advice in all kinds of other areas of knowledge. Another person is a magnificent technical evangelist -- but is expected to also be a good manager and administrator. Most of us in technical fields are very aware of excellent technical people who were rewarded by being put into management positions for which they had no applicable skills. (Many companies now have dual ladders -- but many still do not.)

     People high on the social scale (based on heredity or money amassed) are given credit for that which they have not done (and would not be able to do). Their advice is sought even if the reality is they have only had the fortune to be born to wealthy, or high social-class, parents. The "higher class" are elevated upon pedestals and expected to do miracles in all ways. In a parallel way, the stigma of "lower class" roots, or current situation, may cause people to have their knowledge, abilities, and experiences disregarded.

     We can make these expectations come true. If you have confidence in someone, then that helps them to have confidence (perhaps even arrogance) and a person with confidence can often do better than one without. The opposite holds also -- as demonstrated in many psychological experiments -- that lack of confidence in someone can create a situation with terrible results. The best overall results can occur by treating everyone, of whatever background, with respect and appreciation for what they have actually done.

     Perspective from the other end -- that of someone who has done something very bad and is extrapolated to be a very bad person in total -- is hard to argue against. That one area of wrongness may, indeed, overshadow all other aspects. If a person is a serial murderer then the fact that they volunteer to deliver food to the needy, treat their pets well, and contribute to their church are truly not very important aspects. The reality may be that, like everyone, they are a complex mixture of "good" and "bad" but the bad outweighs the good.

     There have always been "influencers" -- not just in the age of electronic media. Sometimes that influence can be used in great, and noble, ways. Sometimes not. As long as we are conscious about what we are doing and about what they truly know, there is no problem. But, that is not always the case.

Fault, Blame, & Responsibility: What's the Difference?

 

     One thing that President Harry Truman is best remembered for is a plaque he had made for his desk indicating "The Buck Stops Here". He had seen such a sign on a tour and asked if they could make one for him, The slogan emphasizes the opposite of "pass the buck". The first says that final responsibility resides with them. The second is avoidance of all responsibility. We have probably all known people who avoided responsibility. If we are fortunate, we have also known people who accepted final responsibility. Alas, those who avoid appear to be greater in number than those who accept.

     But, what is responsibility? Being responsible means you accept the consequences of results of actions. You apologize and act to prevent future occurrence of the event. If possible, you correct and amend effects such that any bad outcomes are lessened. There may be repercussions -- you might be fired, or not re-elected, or publicly (or privately) rebuked. Taking responsibility means not avoiding repercussions.

     There were surely many things that President Truman had no direct knowledge of, made no direct decisions about, and had no known way of affecting outcomes. Why would he be responsible for such events? Responsibility includes indirect responsibility. Indirect responsibility implies delegation and this is the primary reason for Truman's plaque. As President, he had people delegated and those people had other people delegated and so on -- but delegation does not eliminate responsibility. All of their actions (or lack thereof), and that of those reporting back to your delegates, and so on are the same as a "virtual" you.

     But how about fault and blame? Fault is the cause of the problem. It may involve an action or the lack of a needed action. It may involve an "act of nature" (earthquake, hurricane, flood, ...) It may have been something deliberate, accidental, or spontaneous (without direct initiation). The initial known point of fault may have one, or many, other problems which have cascaded into the visible fault. The fault observed may not be the place that needs to be changed to prevent (or lessen the likelihood) of future faults.

     Blame is an action that is an expression of emotion. It may be based on anger, fear, frustration, shame or something else. Fault is the action but blame is the emotional reaction. Blame is not the same as discovering problems or discovering the person, or group, responsible for problems. Blame is often directed at those we perceive as causing a problem -- those with direct responsibility. But those we blame are not always those who truly caused the problem. The emotionally charged action makes clear analysis difficult. Blame is a destructive action. Changing things such that a fault does not occur again is a constructive action.

     Note that this blog is focused on problems -- negative results. Responsibility also exists for positive results and is sometimes recognized -- but, perhaps, not often enough. The positive side of faults are accomplishments. Appreciation is the positive side of blame.

Simple does not mean Easy

 

     "Pay attention", "Love your neighbor as you do yourself", "Don't stress out over the little things", "forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you". "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Such wonderful adages. There are business segments that have a primary product of manufacturing posters, plaques, and other items to spread these adages (and proverbs) far and wide. We can read them and say "of course, that is obvious". But, if one examines society and talk among ourselves, we find that even though the adages may be very easy to state -- and, perhaps, understand -- they are not put into action very often.

     "Love your neighbor as you do yourself." One of the difficulties in putting adages into action is that we are so awfully good at taking them apart and reducing them to small edge conditions. "Love your neighbor". Who is our neighbor? Are our neighbors the people who live next door with whom we have never spoken -- or are they people within our common religious community who are neighbors of spirit even if they live in a different city? Are they people that look like us, pray like us, have the same amount of spendable income as we do?

     Or are they everyone? In that case, it can lead to a more active separation of people -- leading some people to say that only this set of people are really people and the others are not really people. One of the first actions taken by any group wanting to initiate hostilities towards, or take advantage of, another group is to start emphasizing differences and start to separate them from the "correct" pool of people.

     "Don't stress out over the little things." What is a little thing? It surely varies between people -- one person's "little" thing may be another person's "big" thing. Or, if looked at from the view point of someone examining our lives from the vantage of Alpha Centauri, maybe everything we do is a little thing? But such an evaluation must surely be from a subjective, personal, viewpoint. And is it stress that will keep us actively working with the "thing" -- or is it stress that will cause us to neglect other "things" and negatively affect our health?

     "Pay attention". Oh boy! Sure, we want to pay attention but it is physically, and neurologically, impossible to pay attention to everything. When someone says "pay attention" they usually are saying "pay attention to me" or "pay attention to the thing I have assigned you to do". But those don't make good adages.

     "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". OK. Sounds reasonable. But, it is similar to someone giving you directions such as "turn left a street before you see a white church on the right". Unless you are aware of the situation for which you can enact the prevention, there really isn't much to be done. Sometimes you may be aware but, in that case, what you are really doing is preparation -- not prevention.

     Perhaps you have a favorite adage that sounds great, you'd love to follow it, but it just doesn't seem to happen? Or you have one that is not only simple to say and remember but also easy to follow?

     Personally, I work with a line from an old Christmas movie ("Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). "Just put one foot in front of the other and soon you'll be walking out the door." Sure hope I am pointing towards the door as it will be a lot harder walking through the wall.

An extension of thought and body: music, programming, and art in general

 

     Once upon a time, after I had been working on developing a project for Bell Labs for about a year and a half, I woke up with a line of code staring me in the eye (not literally -- this was before laptops -- it was all in my mind) and showing me how to fix a bug I had been told about the day before. I went to work, fixed the bug, tested it, and submitted it to the code base. Then I started looking around for a new project to work on. It might have been useful to the company but getting that merged with the software (tens of thousands of lines of code which I had written) was not a healthy sign.

     As a child, I took various music lessons. The first -- and still my favorite -- instrument was the violin. I started off really horrible (but almost everyone does). But I got better and by the end of elementary school, I was part of a string quartet. No danger of a record label but no one stood up and ran out screaming. I was getting decent but then, as part of a perpetual budget cut, the school district said goodbye to the string instructor and my family couldn't afford private lessons. Later, because brass was still possible, I tried cornet but just didn't get excited. I then tried organ which I liked but schoolwork was taking more and more time and choices had to be made.

     So, how do these experiences relate? I worked so hard, and long, on the software that I could remember, and visualize, it. I could do a virtual execution of the code, in my mind, to track down possible data paths where there might be bugs. In music, I reached the point where I no longer thought about how to play a note. The connection between written music and playing was starting to disappear as fluency was being established.

     Music, programming, art, language. Once the tools are mastered you can get an idea and then put it down in the appropriate form. For programming, that might be Java, or 'C', or machine language, or whatever. In music, it might come out as sounds from a piano, or guitar, or a sax. But the cool part is that moment when you stop making the transition from thought to action as a conscious act. The piano becomes an extension of your body. You tell it to play notes and chords with timing and rests and it does it. The more you practice, the less the conscious mind is involved. It can be equally true with software or charcoal or driving a race car.

     Of course, not all has to go through the process of conscious to automatic. The brain stem is largely ready for us at birth -- so we (most of us) can breathe and see and hear and have our bodies respond properly to food and such. There are disciplines that appear to allow conscious control over the activities controlled by the brainstem but we are fortunate that most arrive pre-programmed. Although I do not know whether it is true, perhaps fluency in conscious activity may start to intrude into brain stem use.

     Perhaps after another one or two hundred thousand more words of writing, my writing will enter into that state of fluency.

Remember the goal: moving towards a destination

 

     I am a Myers-Briggs INFJ -- for those of you who have any interest in such personality categorization methods. I have lots of other results from other inventory methods. They are of interest to me because I am always trying to understand, and improve, myself as well as gain greater insight into others so that I can better communicate with them and be of assistance to them.

     But, for this blog, it is that "J" (Judicious) categorization that is of interest. My wife is of the P direction (it's a sliding scale -- no absolutes) or "Process-oriented". I am goal-oriented. She is see-what's-on-the path oriented. Within our marriage we have each worked hard to become more comfortable with the other's inclinations. At the least, it is important to be aware so that explosions can be avoided.

      I have come to grok the reality that the journey really is important. Not only that but I now recognize that changing the goal does not indicate a failure. These are a couple of the many blessings that have come from my marriage. Such blessings arise out of the continuous work that a marriage requires.

     Just because it is important to smell the flowers along the path, stop to move the worms off the sidewalk, and watch out for uneven bricks it does NOT mean that you should not have a destination. Although I can envision the idea of trying to stay in the same place for the rest of one's life, it really is not possible. Our bodies age. Things need to be done to stay alive. Others exist as a part of life and the interaction with them will cause perturbations just as two celestial bodies do a dance through the heavens.

     Given that staying still is not possible, the direction we choose will affect what things we can observe, enjoy, learn from, and participate in along the way. If we choose to change directions because of how we, ourselves, have changed on our journey then count our blessings and move along.

     Changing goals is OK. Changing goals may be important because of changes within yourself or your environment. Changing goals may mean changing directions and that change of direction will affect what you encounter in your journey.

     Enjoy!

Plan for Success requires a different mindset than planning for problems

 

     Failure often seems to help itself be planned for -- because it is an ongoing, inevitable process of life. People get sick. Equipment breaks. Contracts are not obtained. Someone drives a car through the front store window. And so forth.

     But, even though we (all) want to achieve success, we rarely explicitly plan for it.

     When a business is starting out, it is a good thing to be "mean and lean". This means that people are putting lots of effort into it with as few people as possible. Many do multiple jobs. When I, and my business partner, started our business, I was Vice President of Engineering, head of client support and training, head of sales support, coordinating head of project development and product management, and I was also in charge of cleaning the restroom when it was necessary. We all worked 60 to 70 hours a week -- because we all had a dream of being able to build something that we could profit from and which would provide a useful societal service.

     At Bell Labs, we had a department head who was a very strong technical person and also had a lot of extra energy. He had been quickly promoted from Member of Technical Staff to manager. While at managerial level, his team did great -- because he did all of the work assigned to his team. He had no managerial, or delegating, skills and he chose to not develop them. He did what he did best -- produce products. Not quite as quickly, he was promoted from manager to department head. And there he stuck. He no longer could do all the work (it was amazing he could do the work of seven people -- 40 people was just too much). He slowly developed some managerial skills -- enough to keep his department from falling apart (and he had some good managers reporting to him) but he had reached the top for him.

     Mean and lean -- until you can't do that anymore. People can work 60 hour work weeks for a while -- but not forever. Putting more wicks on the candle just means the wax will be used up more quickly. Juggling tasks can be done when there's only a bit to be done on each -- past that and things will be dropped.

     The "best" time to plan for growth, and success, is when you aren't in the process of running as fast as you can. If you have to do several different roles, clearly identify them, decide on processes that can be used when you are dealing with much larger amounts. Be prepared to split and expand. Tools that are overkill at the beginning can be indispensable as you grow. When we started our company, we were strong on marketing and sales and technical development. We were weak on management and finances. Management skills we succeeded in developing as we went along -- though I am certain that having good, strong, managers would have greatly helped us to build the company. Finances -- that is what eventually doomed us. We made believe that we knew what we needed to do and when we needed to do it. We didn't.

     The first part of growth, and success, in business is structure and function. The second part is product. We had a great portfolio of products. Well respected in the field. An architecture that expanded and met our needs for more than fifteen years. A general base that we could continue to expand in kind -- until we couldn't. At some point, the market gets saturated or technological directions change. "The shark must keep moving or it dies."

     What did we need to do to succeed in this area? Networking would have been number one. It is vital to know what is actually being deployed, what is being marketed, in the field. You can read about maybes in technical and business magazines but the conferences and market displays is what companies are actually investing in and betting on. Second would be partnerships. They aren't vital -- but they disperse the risk in going after the "next great thing". With partners, perhaps you can have four irons in the fire rather than one or two. It is similar to venture capital. Lose on a couple, break even on a few, and hit a home run on one. It is partially a matter of numbers.

     Finally, luck is still part of the business. Luck, as defined as things happening about which we have no known control. Bet on three possible new product lines. All three can fail. Design a new widget that everyone has been demanding. A major company -- with which you don't have the least chance to compete -- brings out a parallel product three months after your launch. Things happen.

     But you can minimize the risk.