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You hear of a great idea taking off with its backers cashing in on a payday, and
you scold yourself: "Why didn't I do that, I knew how to do it!" On
another day you hear of a venture going terribly sour, heading into a Mayday, or having a negative judgment day. You count
yourself lucky thinking: "Why didn't they see it coming!"
Business requires decision making. Perfect knowledge is not attainable. Judgment calls are often required.
You can improve your results in business decision making by observing business journeys taken by others to paydays, Maydays and judgment days. We'll close with a definition of "codified knowledge" to highlight impediments to overcome in decision making.
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C7 litigation
[Judgement day in Sydney]
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Channel Seven's massive litigation against its rivals in the Australian media was soundly rejected today by the Federal Court of Australia. The case is Seven Network Limited v News Limited [2007] FCA 1062.
Seven's claim was that News Ltd, Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd and Telstra Ltd (all joint owners of the Foxtel pay TV service) together with others colluded to outbid Seven's pay TV channel C7 for Australian Football League rights. Seven claimed this effectively led to C7's demise. The court rejected Seven's claims. Justice Sackville said: "...Seven was the author of its own misfortune".
Statistics: Justice Sackville observed that there were 120 hearing days, involving an electronic database containing 85,653 documents, comprising 589,392
pages. He also said: "My estimate is that the parties
have spent in the order of $200 million on legal costs in connection with these
proceedings." Seven's shares fell nearly 5% on news of the verdict.
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Opsware shareholders cash US$1.6 billion
[Payday in Silicon Valley]
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Having sold Netscape to AOL Time Warner for billions, in September 1999 Marc
Andreessen and his colleagues established Loudcloud.
Like Netspace, Loudcloud went on a roller coaster but Andreessen and his colleagues held on. Loudcloud became enterprise software company, Opsware. Opsware has US$100
million in annual revenue and 550 employees. News reports indicate that
Andreessen had 9% of the Opsware shares when it filed a proxy report in
May 2007.
The sale of Opsware was announced this week to
Hewlett Packard. The price? US$1.6 billion in cash. Here's Andreessen's announcement.
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Facebook Website concept - stolen?
[Mayday in Boston]
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Facebook started in 2004, a few months before ConnectU went online. Facebook now claims 31 million users, compared to about 70,000 for ConnectU. With additional attractive applications added to it, the Facebook user base is likely to escalate substantially in coming months, including in Australia. Interestingly, Duncan Riley notes in TechCrunch that Facebook applications are like those of Microsoft - neither open source nor cross-platform.
In late March 2007, ConnectU, Inc started Connectu, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc. et al,
an action in the Massachusetts District Court. It claims business torts
and unfair business practices. So far the judge seems to have been unimpressed by ConnectU's claims.
The Facebook team have their own case in response, The Facebook, Inc. v. Connectu, LLC et al, also claiming business torts and unfair business practices.
The cases continue in Boston. Jay Lindsay, Associated Press via Wired has more on it.
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bigbrother.com Domain Name
[Judgement Day in Geneva]
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Endemol Nederland B. V. are the producers of the Big Brother program. However since October 2004 they have not owned the bigbrother.com domain name.
After a dispute resolution process before the Geneva-based World
Intellectual Property Organisation, Endemol recently won over the domain name.
"... Big Brother has been sold to 39 countries and is set to be broadcast
this year in over 20 territories around the world including the USA,
UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, Pan-Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Australia." For more, read the Melbourne IT press release style post.
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American Idol trial by Website
[Mayday in LA]
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In May 2006 in the Los Angeles County Superior Court,
Adam Pick filed a complaint in his case against American Idol Productions, Inc. and Fremantle Media
of North America, Inc. and Fox Television Stations, Inc. The case shifted to another court.
Pick alleges that the owners of American Idol "stole an ingenious and highly lucrative website idea from Mr. Pick, a local businessman and American Idol fan." Pick tells all at idolgohome.com and in particular on this page. The case continues, as its list of trial events confirms.
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The above events are all the results of decisions made by lawyers and other people in business.
The quality of the decisions helps determine whether they are about paydays, Maydays or
favourable judgment days.
Codified knowledge and its impediments
Perfect knowledge is not attainable in
business or law. Our following definition of "codified knowledge" provides a reminder on many impediments to perfect knowledge.
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Definition of codified knowledge
Codified knowledge is recorded data,
information or knowledge. Because it is codified, it is more easily defined,
collated and transferred and under intellectual property law it is generally
protectable. Yet even with codification, perfect knowledge is unattainable due
to the following impediments:
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known knowledge gaps;
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unknown knowledge gaps;
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errors in knowledge;
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tacit knowledge - knowledge we do not know we
know;
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hidden knowledge - includes psychological
denial; and
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taboo knowledge - forbidden knowledge.
Additional impediments arise from corrupt data; gaps in information and
knowledge flows; deception achieved by using omission, generality,
timing, information dribbling, information overload, rumour, and big
lie tactics.
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Photo credits:
- First photo - Payday in Persepolis. "Armenian tribute bearer, relief sculpture on the stairway leading to the Apadana of Darius at Persepolis, Iran, Achaemenian period, late 5th century BC". Souce: Britannica.
- Second photo (by the author) - Mayday in Rome. These four Roman emperors (Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius I and Galerius) ruled the
four corners of the Roman Empire together from the late 3rd century AD. It was a time when more decision making heads was
better than one. The porphyry statue is originally from Syria, it is fixed on a corner of Saint Mark's Cathedral, Venice.
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