No Random Walking!

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.”
- Steve Jobs

In the now-famous Commencement address Steve Jobs delivered at Stanford in 2005, he also mentioned about “connecting dots” : http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

From BusinessWeek.com: Psychologists have spent years trying to discover the answer to the question: "What makes innovators different?" In one of the most thorough examinations of the subject, Harvard researchers spent six years and interviewed 3,000 executives to find out. According to the Harvard research, the No.1 skill that separates innovators from noncreative professionals is "associating"—the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields. The three-year Harvard research project confirms what Jobs told a reporter 15 years earlier: "Creativity is just connecting things."

The following setup is needed to browse gb2312-based web sites using the ‘lynx’ command under the linux/putty environment:

1. In putty, “change session” such that
• In “Appearance/Window” tab, set font is to 仿宋 and “Script” to CHINESE-GB2312
• In “Translation” tab, set “use font encoding” as the translation scheme.
2. At the bash shell prompt, run
• export LANG=zh_CN.gb2312   (instead of en_US.UTF-8)

I still don’t know how to display GB code using the ‘elinks’ program.

Seven Hints for Selling Ideas

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business Review

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2010/05/seven-hints-for-selling-ideas.html

Also sold on net by HBR:

• 10 Must-Read Articles from HBR;
• How to Get the Right Work Done;
• HBR’s Must-Reads on Managing Yourself; etc.

Regardless of how good it is, no idea sells itself. Before getting commitment to proceed with an idea for a new product, process, venture, technology, service, policy, or organizational change, innovators must sell the idea to potential backers and supporters, and neutralize the critics. They must find resources, expertise, and support. They must convince colleagues to advance the idea in meetings they don’t attend.

People whose ideas get traction — that manage get out of the starting gate — take advantage of this practical advice for selling ideas.

1. Seek many inputs. Listen actively to many points of view. Then incorporate aspects of each of them into the project plan, so that you can show people exactly where their perspectives or suggestions appear.
2. Do your homework. Be thoroughly prepared for meetings and individual discussions. Gather as much hard data as possibly to have command of the full facts, and speak knowledgeably from a broad information base. Know the interests of those to whom you’re speaking, and customize the message for them.
3. Make the rounds. Meet with people one-on-one to make the first introduction of your idea. It’s always a good idea to touch base with people individually before any key meetings, and to give them advance warning of what you and others are planning to say at the meeting. Then they can be prepared (and coached) in your point of view. And you know theirs, so you can modify your proposal accordingly.
4. See critics in private and hear them out. One-on-one meetings are especially important when you expect opposition or criticism. Groups can easily turn into mobs. Avoid situations in which critics can gang up on you, or when a group of people leaning positive turn negative because the listen to a few loud voices. Never gather all of your potential critics in one room hoping to hold one meeting to brief everyone all at once. This kind of event mainly helps them discover each other and their common concerns, so they coalesce as a group united in opposition to the idea.
5. Make the benefits clear. Arm supporters with arguments. You might rehearse them for meetings in which questions about your project will come up. Stress the value that the idea will produce for them and other groups. Remember that selling ideas is at least a two-step process. You sell one set of people so they can sell others. You convince them to back you because you reduce the risk to them by giving them the tools for selling their own boards or constituencies.
6. Be specific. Make your requests concrete, even while connecting your idea to unassailable larger principles. Wait to approach high-level people until your have tested the idea elsewhere and refined your vague notions. The higher the official, the more valuable and scarce his or her time, and thus the more focused your meeting must be. Use peers for initial broad discussions, then ask top executives for one simple action.
7. Show that you can deliver. People want to back winners. Early in the process, provide evidence, even guarantees, that the project will work. Later, prove that you can deliver by meeting deadlines and doing what you promised.

Correction: The analysis below appears flawed. SOHU’s market value (revenue, cash, etc) includes the portion of CYOU that SOHU owns already?

———————————-

I am sure that I am not the only person doing this math:

• SOHU owns 71.4% of CYOU, a cash-cow and growing business.
• CYOU’s market value is 1620M today.
• SOHU has 600M cash and no debt.
• SOHU’s market value today is 1750M.
• So SOHU’s non-gaming part of the business, i.e., advertising, search engine, and others, is valued at
  • SOHU – (71.4% * CYOU + CASH) = 1750 – (0.714*1620 + 600) =  -6M

In other words, SOHU’s main business (online advertising, Sogou’s search engine, the SOHU brand, etc.) is valued below ZERO as of today!

So in theory, one could buy the whole SOHU company, sell its CYOU stake and gets SOHU’s main business for free. He will probably make about 1000M instantly (if using SINA as a benchmark)!!! And if he’s good at running business, he may even spin off Sogou and make another billion!

Of course, the key assumption for the analysis above is that CYOU is indeed worth that much (1620M) and that SOHU’s other businesses won’t collapse. Note CYOU’s P/E is only 5.53(GOOGLE) or 11.02(YAHOO).  It just released a new package for game TLBB and the second major game LDJ is to be released during second half of the year.

Now what if CYOU is NOT worth that much, no problem! One strategy would be to buy SOHU and short CYOU in a 1:0.714 dollar ratio. It’s equivalent to buying SOHU the Company now and sell CYOU the Company right away, both at today’s market price (and pocket the difference).

The weird thing is, if we remember what happened last year, SOHU’s price can go even lower, thanks to the madness of the market. People are so irrational they actually throw away cash, or sell $1 cash for, say ten cents!

In the meantime, analysts have been busy down-grading SOHU lately.

Found a new Firefox add-on, which will add the Google.com US site to the Search Bar. Especially useful in China where Google redirects searches to its .hk site.

Tired of being redirected to a local Google site when you really just want Google.com?

Use ‘Google dot com’, not ‘dot something else’. Use Google.com, in English, without being redirected to a country-specific Google site when you’re not in the US.

 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/51000

It’s assumed that Baidu, among other domestic search engine players, will benefit the most when Google decided to leave China. After two weeks since the official ‘exit’ by Google, below are the Alexa ranking and trend for baidu, Tencent’ Soso（搜搜）, Neteas’s Youdao（有道） and Sohu’s Sogou（搜狗）, defined by the “percent of global Internet users who visit the site”.

Last six months:

Three months, Baidu:

Others:

Two observations:

1. While Baidu appears gaining some market share since the official exit by Google, Sogou seems to be the site that is having the most incremental increase in traffic while Youdao and Soso are not really benefiting from the event at all.
2. Over the past six months, baidu and soso are clearly trending up, performing much stronger than the others and reflecting the dominant market positions held by Baidu and Tencent(QQ).

Note:

1. The “trends” may only be temporary.
2. Sogou’s recent strength could be due to something else, e.g., the new release of Sogou Pinyin 5.0 and Sogou browser.
3. While sogou is trending up, Sohu.com is trending down in alexa rating. So is Sina。
4. Alexa is not necessarily accurate in ranking website popularity in China.
5. “正望咨詢發布《2009年搜索引擎用戶調查報告》顯示，在所有調查城市中，百度的市場份額為69.9%，谷歌的市場份額為19.8%，搜狗和搜搜分別為3.5%和3.3%。”, which is different from Alexa data that clearly show Soso is more used than Sogou in 2009.
6. I like Sogou’s technology and search results, but hate the name ‘sogou’! 

@ $600 per share. Right stock at right time, to go short with!

(And to be safe (e.g. from RMB re-valuation against US dollar), apply hedging by going long with another China play that is sound and cheap)

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