red sox performance from a business framework view

the author of this article indicates that there was never any reason to believe that the red sox were not going to win the world series. as many a new investor is taught, and as many a prospectus contain, past performance is not indicative of future performance. but this article falls short of evaluating the real reasons why the red sox were able to outperform their competition. in my opinion, this success is most ammenable to a resource based view of the team. it is without argument that human resources have the greatest impact on the teams success. superstars and allstars are obviously very valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate. if these stars are playing, then they are definitely being exploited by the team, leading to a sustained competitive advantage. along these same lines, the team possess great financial capital that is needed to obtain the aforementioned human capital. it could be argued that red sox management in previous years failed to exploit their financial capital by not obtaining the correct human capital.

what this model fails to adequately take into account is the notion of free agency, and the fact resources can be moved from a team to its competitors. thus, the concept of a sustained competivie advantage is somewhat misleading, as a prolonged advantage can only be obtained by retaining the valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate players. more often, especially in the current heavy free market system, competitive advantages are almost always temporary as evidenced by the lack of true dynasties.

the invasion of blogging in corporate america

blogging is ubiquitous, having recently infiltrated the corporate world (see article). executives of major corporations are beginning to create their own personal blogs. primarily, these blogs are being used to bypass the media filtering of disseminated information. while the immediate intrigue of peering into the mind of a CEO to the public at large is apparent, the long-term of success of these blogs is not guaranteed. all too easily, these blogs could easily transform into a boring regurgitation of company press releases. in order to maintain their audience, the executives must keep their blogs interesting, not necessarily easy for often robotic individuals.

the premise of blogging is also based upon truth. it is expected that blog entries are truthful representations of an individuals thoughts and beliefs. when dealing with large private companies trying to maintain their competitive advantage, being truthful and forthright is not always an option. with each post (not nearly as revised and rewritten as a press release), the executive is walking a fine line between making entries interesting and revealing too much information. also, the role of blogs with regard to insider information and SEC concerns hasn't yet been established.

similar to above, privacy and confidentiality are the biggest concerns when rank and file employees start blogging about their job. while the best intentioned memos and policies will help mitigate this risk, companies do not have the resources available to be monitoring the blogging activities of all employees on a daily basis. furthermore, once information is posted to the blog, subsequent removal of the post will have little affect on those who have already read the entry and web caching servers. lastly, if personal information is located on the blog, the company runs the possible risk of losing its workforce to headhunters.

o'brien to take over for leno in 2009!

5 years from now...that's when conan will take jay's job. seems awfully early, but when one is talking about human resources, and especially a singular human resource, it is imperative to secure the resource. there is no question that as a human being, conan is rare and without the miracles of cloning, most definitely impossible to imitate. the question at hand thus becomes: is conan valuable?

to a television studio, there is only one way to answer this question...viewership. increased viewership is indicated by increased Nielson ratings, which in turn allow for increased fees for commercial advertisements, and finally increased revenues for the studio. for the past 10 years, NBC has led in the ratings for the 11:35pm time slot (leno), though this gap is narrowing. in order to sustain this advantage, NBC will need an appropriate human resource to take over for leno. enter conan o'brien. conan is dominating his current 12:35am time slot with 2.5M viewers. while conan's viewership is approximately half that of his 11:35 compatriots, this disparity can be attributed to his later time slot. in this light, it is shown that conan is most definitely valuable, this fact is further insinuated by the interest of other television networks in obtaining conan.

having established that conan is valuable, rare, and hard to imitate, it is also noted that conan is being exploited by NBC by signing such a long contract. under barney's VRIO framework, conan gives NBC a sustained competitive advantage. at this point, the only thing that could harm NBC is if its resource loses value. as mentioned before, it is the american populous that determines conan's value. NBC is banking that americans won't change their mind in the next 5 years, an iffy bet at best. but if conan is half as good as this contract implies, he too will change to adapt to the changing environment, and NBC will reap the benefits.