Although many have called it an “anti-business” organization (among them Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, who characterizes it as such in the second paragraph of the Introduction to his book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist”), I have been reluctant to categorize Greenpeace in this way. I have been reluctant to do so, that is, until today.
The reason for my reluctance is I haven’t actually seen a statement from them saying that they are anti-business. Yes, many have intimated that Greenpeace is anti-business, but that’s their opinion. (And if you follow Greenpeace’s actions, you’d be hard pressed to regard them as pro-business.) If you read this blog regularly, or have read any of my books, you know that I prefer to have a lot more foundation for my conclusions than just the opinions of others. I saw that foundation today.
In an October 19, 2011 Greenpeace blog post titled “Greenpeace Supports Occupy Wall Street Peaceful Protests,” by Mr. Phil Radford, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, he states that his organization stands behind the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Although OWS has no stated objectives, it seems clear that the OWS is clearly anti-business or anti-corporate and, perhaps in a larger sense, even anti-capitalist. In fact in his post Mr. Radford says:
What I hear are people – first Americans and now across the globe – saying to multinational corporations: “You’re paying out bonuses while jobs are an endangered species. You’ve taken the American Dream – for the first time in generations might leave our kids a worse life and a worse world to live in. You own the courts and have corrupted our Congress, so we’re here at your doorstep.”
Let’s set aside that the paragraph is poorly written as well as the fact that his assertions are a matter of opinion and therefore debatable. He offers no facts. Still it’s clear that the sentiments he expresses in that paragraph are anti-business, and they set the theme for his entire post.
But I thought Greenpeace was supposed to be an environmental organization. Why are they weakening their position as “environmental experts” and throwing in with the anti-business crowd?
Is this a “Duh?” moment? Are you thinking me “slow on the uptake.” No, it’s not a “Duh” moment. Yes, there was gambling going on at Rick’s Café Americain.
Of course I’ve suspected that Greenpeace are “anti-business wolves in environmentalist sheeps clothing,” but before saying so, I wanted to wait until they admitted it.
Now, they have.
This post picks up the story of how I became an analyst of “irregular competition” which we know here on Telofski.com to be anti-corporate activists and NGOs.
In the previous post, “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume,” I discussed my foundational experiences and knowledge that support my current expertise in the analysis of anti-corporate digital activism. If you haven’t yet read that post, you may do so by clicking here.
Now, here in Part 2, I pick up the story where I left off. Here in Part 2, I describe how The Kahuna Content Company, Inc. and I evolved from an Internet content supplier to that of anti-corporate digital activism analysis.
Web 2.0 Appears
Through 2001 I had acquired quite a bit of experience in competitive intelligence analysis as well as an expertise in online business. In Kahuna Content’s early days as an independent supplier of online content, I learned about what people wanted from their online experiences. During that period of time the web was a relatively static communicator of information; there was little “interaction” due to the technologies that existed then. However, around 2005, as the web started to evolve into the more interactive environment that I knew it could and would ultimately become, I began to learn about and experience what later became known as “Web 2.0.” At that time the Internet was truly becoming an “environment,” a social one. Because of technology shifts, it was then that people began to convert the Internet into an “environment,” one which affected them and one which they affected back in return.
It was at that time, in that “2.0″ shift in the Internet, that Kahuna Content, and I, began to change focus. As the wave of what later came to be known as “user-generated content” rose, I saw that the need for independently supplied online content would fade. So, Kahuna Content made a gradual move away from content supply. Watching the rise of the “social web,” I saw that with the tools that were starting then to become available, people could and would transfer their human “conversational jones” for interaction from the real to the virtual, taking it global and making it a 24/7 activity. I saw that people would start talking about every thing under the sun, and out in public. Going back to my roots as a competitive intelligence analyst, this shift told me that people, everyday people, could become “competitors” to the very companies from which they bought their goods and services.
The Insidious Competitor Threatens
Now, I wasn’t really the first person to realize this. The Cluetrain Manifesto had forecasted this change about a half dozen years prior. But at this point in the story, I realized that individuals could actually do what the Cluetrain had predicted. When Cluetrain was written, the “social media” tools that could enable markets to “laugh” at the companies who supplied them weren’t fully configured enough
Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume – Part 2
Recently, I’ve received some enquiries regarding my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in competitive intelligence, and in the analysis of online media. Since this is an unusual profession, I can certainly understand the curiosity. I appreciate all of your questions and hope that I have responded satisfactorily. Knowing that FAQs are popular on many sites, I am today writing an FAQ of sorts.
Today, I write this post to help future enquirers and to give you some background on my previous experiences. In this post, you will learn about my credentials and the experiences I have had which have built my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in general, and in digital anti-corporate activism analysis, in particular. You could say that this post serves as my “annotated resume.”
Educational Background
My specific experience for my profession began just before I received my MBA in Marketing from Rider University. While completing that degree, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Marketing Department. In that capacity, I extended what I learned from the classroom into the real world. Having learned much about performing objective research, with special attention paid toward the reliability and integrity of sourcing, I performed many market research studies across different product and service areas. Upon completing my MBA, I served several years as a faculty member at Monmouth University and at Georgian Court University. Between both of those schools I taught international economics, finance, and marketing courses.
Out-of-the-Ivory-Tower
After several years as an educator, I received an offer from a consulting unit of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. This consulting unit was the Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (TAAC) which was a U.S. Department of Commerce program administered by the NJEDA. In my role there as a Senior Project Officer, my responsibility was to work with New Jersey manufacturers who were getting “hammered” by foreign competition. Specifically, I was tasked with the duty of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of those manufacturers with the intention of creating strategic plans to accentuate their positives and eliminate their negatives.
It was at NJEDA that I first formally became involved with competitive intelligence. When writing the strategic plan (or the “adjustment plan” as it was called there), it was necessary for me not only to analyze my client’s strengths and weaknesses, but it was imperative for me to analyze those of the competitor, as well. Please note that those competitors were, of course, foreign. This was during the late 1980s, before the Internet became the research avenue it is today, and gaining critical, public-domain, information even on American companies was difficult. So, you can probably imagine that obtaining information on foreign companies was even more difficult. However, from my experience as an academic researcher, I knew how to dig and from my training as an MBA, I knew for what to dig. So I dug. And from my efforts I was able to uncover much information that went into my analyses and the creation of effective strategic plans
Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume.
Activist and NGO calls upon companies to act in a more transparent fashion are fine, but only up to a point.
Although I am a business advocate, I’m absolutely not in favor of companies adopting questionable processes, cheating consumers, or raping the land. I am a business advocate to the point of business being necessary and beneficial for the larger society.
So when I hear calls for “transparency,” such as is the mantra of many a social media guru, I think that transparency directed at the interested consumer is good, but we can’t take those calls too far. As the adage goes, “Too much of anything is not a good thing.” Why would I say this? Let’s use the following quote as a point of illustration.
In a June 2008 Fast Company article entitled “Buying Local - Isn’t it really about Social and Environmental Responsibility?“, we see the oft-repeated call-to-action under the topic: Questions Conscious Consumers should ask:
Transparency and Accountability: is it possible for me to learn where the materials to make the good came from and who made, transported, distributed, and retails the good? Can I contact anyone of these organizations if I want to learn more?
Before I moved into the area of macro-marketing consulting and analysis of anti-corporate activism, I was a competitive intelligence (CI) analyst. I made my living by examining the strengths and weaknesses of my clients’ competitors. One thing that would have simplified my job as a CI analyst would have been more “transparency.” When I was a CI analyst, had I known: where my clients’ competitors sourced their materials, who transported them, who distributed them, and exactly who retailed them, my analyses would have been absolutely devastating to the competitors my clients were paying me to examine.
With that intelligence, I would have been able to easily zero in on the competitor’s cost profile and from there I would have easily been able to back into the competitor’s profit margin. Easily. Devastatingly. My clients would have been ecstatic. Good for my clients. Not so good for the competitor. That transparent competitor would have “shot themselves in the foot.”
In capitalist markets, and in America we still are a capitalist society at least for the time being, too much transparent information floating around can be bad for the business that releases that info. Excessive transparency can cause reduced competitiveness and with that reduction in competitiveness can go the company itself. “Self-imposed” transparency can cause a company to leave the marketplace, i.e. go out of business, taking the jobs of hundreds or thousands of individuals with it.
And with that company goes competitiveness across the industry. The companies left to compete in that marketplace, companies that are perhaps not as transparent, read that as “stupid,” become fewer, consolidating market power. With consolidation of power comes higher prices and fewer jobs through which the work force can finance those higher prices.
In other words, based upon my experiences as a CI consultant, what I can see as a product of too much corporate
Continue reading Will Too Much Transparency Be Bad for All of Us?
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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