Lost Battles I- VHD

Here is a serie of articles i would like to start today.

Again inspired by Richard Bransons perfect book Business Stripped Bare.



Branson faced some dilemmas while doing business in music industry. The worst was the emergence of CD's. As always CD had fierce rivalry when founded. It was founded by Phillips company. However Japanese giants JVC  announced VHD  in 1978. Virgin and many other companies questioned the technologies and had huge difficulty selecting the one over other.

If you were wrong, the investment could have taken down your company.

JVC lost the battle in music. However tried to win it on kareoke and 3D movies on tv. They probably made some money on it but lost the battle to CD's. I wonder how much Phillips made out of invention of the CD's. Probably the first production licenses worth a fortune.

By the way 80's were the days of VHS and BetaMax. They were storming the home market, but eventually they lost. 

I am wondering what would have happened if we are using these 25 cms discs today.

We've started so we'll finish...

We've started so we will finish...Magnus Magnusson

People from Britain know this phrase pretty well i suppose. It is the catch phrase of Magnus Magnusson who presented BBC trivia show Mastermind.

I read it Richard Bransons latest book Business Stripped Bare.

This phrase is an everyday sentence from Turkish business life. When started they will finish but the final job may well be poor/not high quality/etc. However this approach is very hard for foreigners doing business in Turkey. 

Probably the best thing about Turkey is people are not blaming fate for every mistake. It is true that everybody keeps saying İnşallah but not with the belief of people from the Gulf.

Here is some info on Magnus Magnusson; I quote it from Wikipedia:

"Magnús Magnússon KBE (IPA: [ˈmaknus ˈmaknuˌsɔn], 12 October 1929 – 7 January 2007) was an Icelandic television presenter, journalist, translator and writer. He was born in Iceland but lived in Scotland for nearly all of his life, although he never took British citizenship. He came to fame as presenter of the BBC television quiz programme Mastermind, which he hosted for 25 years."