rise and fall

the richest physician in the world

Story here.

"Five years ago BlackBerry had 53% of the SmartPhone market; today their market share  is 2%."
- CNN

Image source here.

groups of seeds

Click to enlarge.

grand illusion

"For Balsillie, business is 5 per cent strategy, 95 per cent execution, so RIM focuses on execution in the full knowledge that most competitors cannot maintain a similar concentration. 'You never modulate, you just don't stop, you never give advantages, and you count on the other person blinking. They'll have to reorg, or they'll quit, or they'll be overaggresive, or they'll do something erratic. Methodical predictability with a high function, high trust, high execution-centric organization is an unbelievably effective strategy,' said Balsillie, who takes his work seriously but not himself. 'Do your best, live for the day, go to bed, and do it again tomorrow. Don't live with regrets, don't over-scenarioize and don't worry about the future. That's all there is. The rest of it is just a grand illusion.'"
- Rod McQueen, BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research In Motion, pg.305

Blackberry Bullet

Created by a New York ad agency to win RIM's business. The Record explains here.

buh-bye

37 year old Andrew Lahde who got an 870 percent gain last year quits Hedge Fund and writes a memorable farewell letter: 

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America. 

The entire letter, which includes a rant extolling the virtues of marijuana, is here.

He's naive about pot smoking; it can really screw up your life, especially when combined with antidepressants such as Paxil. The genius should spend some of his loot promoting awareness of potentially catastrophic dangers.