Photo: Fall From Grace by Thomas Hawk. Another amazing shot. Bravo & Thank you!

"Luck, chance, and catastrophe affect business as they do all human endeavors. But luck never built a business. Prosperity and growth come only to the business that systematically finds and exploits its potential." Peter Drucker

Drucker went on to suggest three questions that will bring out the hidden potential of a business:

• What are the restraints and limitations that make the business vulnerable?
• What are the imbalances of the business?
• What are we afraid of, what do we see as a threat to this business - and how can we use it as an opportunity?

Writing this past weekend on development issues. Came across some excellent points made by the great David Oglivy. His "five characteristics which suggest...a person has the potential for rapid promotion:

1. He is ambitious.
2. He works harder than his peers - and enjoys it.
3. He has a brilliant brain - inventive and unorthodox.
4. He has an engaging personality.
5. He demonstrates respect for the creative function.

If you fail to recognize, promote and reward young people of exceptional promise, they will leave you; the loss of an exceptional man can be as damaging as the loss of an account."

Too much for too little: Now comes word the eBay cable net exchange was to charge 2% per transaction. Also hearing the platform feature set did not allow for any value added. Some cable folks are saying the exchange was just too expensive at 2%.

Best music in the history of TV: Little Steven says it doesn't get better than the music on The Sopranos. Read the Reuters/Billboard story via WaPo here.

100 million - the number of iPods Apple says it has sold. According to Nick Wingfield writing is this morning's Wall Street Journal Apple grabbed a 73.7% share of the MP3 market (US retail) in February. SanDisk was second with a 9.0% share; Microsoft picked up 2.3% of the February retail market. (data: NPD Group). Read A New Wireless Player Hopes to Challenge iPod via WSJ here (sub req).

Wired: Eric Schmidt interviewed by Fred Vogelstein via Wired here.

"How should we think about Google today?

Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system - Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values - all that kind of stuff."

"Google’s revenue and employee head count have tripled in the last two years. How do you keep from becoming too bureaucratic or too chaotic?

It’s a constant problem. We analyze this every day, and our conclusion is that the best model is still small teams running as fast as they can and tolerating a certain lack of cohesion. Attempting to provide too much order dries out the creativity. What’s needed in a properly functioning corporation is a balance between creativity and order.

But we’ve reined in certain things. For example, we don’t tolerate the kind of “Hey, I want to have my own database and have a good time” behavior that was effective for us in the past."

Bravo Eric! Well done Fred.

Congrats & cheers: Roger Ogden, Gannett Broadcasting CEO, named B&C's Broadcaster of the Year. “Good ideas can come from any level of the organization, from any source. We can’t sit back and hope and expect that’s going to happen naturally or automatically. So we’ve developed a culture in which we encourage people to participate.” Read B&C item here. Ellen Weiss named VP of News for NPR. Well deserved!

Google Maps - create your own personalized, annotated maps - very cool.