I’ve long leaned toward the service business model over the product business model. This is not only because in shooting for excellence one can’t help but think the chances of building the next most brilliant Facebook or Twitter application are much lower than the chances of successfully taking an organization to the next level of sophistication, but also because it is a much different dynamic of creativity when building something with a service business model than with a product model.
In the service model, you’re involving more people (the client) in the process of building a product that meets the needs of a sector of the public, and not just any sector but a sector that the client has already built a relationship with.
… thus, as a business, you shooting for satisfying one group of people’s needs, the client, and rather than aiming at the public market and trying to meet their needs
…resulting in a lower risk of success if you’re basing success on the happiness of the people you’re serving.
Because of this nature, I believe it’s wise to interview the client as much as their interviewing you, so that you’re smartly making moves through the public market, and building up a community around your brand. With this in mind, you could shrewdly position yourself market to have the luxury of being very selective of the type of people you bring in as clients, to be an arm of your team for whatever the length of the business relationship.
In business a product is always produced, as, there must involve a result or deliverable at the end which must be worth the money invested, both from the client or from internal R&D alike. But the important part is the structure surrounding that product.
Barack Obama’s campaign for presidency hired Blue Digital Media to put the online social networking strategy. Obama’s campaign group had already decided that social networking would be at the center of their campaign. The product, my.barackobama.org, allowed the public to donate money online, download, print and distribute flyers online, receive a list of the closest neighbors and phone numbers, write letters, organize a house party… all online. This armed the public with what they needed to get involved and take action in the campaign at their own discretion. The reason why Obama’s social networking campaign strategy worked is because the product was supported by thought-through technical infrastructure, budgetary priority and a team of web professionals to carry the project through to success. But another very important part is that the leaders of the campaign, or the client, valued and believed in this product.
McCain only saw the value of the online social media campaign mid-way through his campaign, after Barack Obama had clearly illustrated success. At that point he tried to catch up, with online apps that threw errors with too much traffic and by enlisting his daughters to publish innovative blog posts, but he couldn’t possibly because it was not a valued core to his campaign from the beginning.
Blue Digital Media provided a service for a client, Barack Obama’s campaign group, and together they created a product that hit records and made waves because of how much both sides of the team, client and service provider, believed in what they were doing.
Apple is credited with making a brilliant move when the ipod was launched, but really the launch of the digital music player itself wasn’t a success in isolation. At the time of the first ipod, around the year 2000, other companies had launched their own versions, just as good and just as new. But what really took the ipod to the next level was the integration of the ipod with itunes, podcasts, videos, etc – leveraging the product with a strong support of services to get the most out of your digital music player.
The quality of the product itself can never be ignored nor compromised, but the business model surrounding that product must be just as strong to challenge the quality of the product, so that both the business model and product are working hand-in-hand to make an impact in the marketplace and society surrounding it.
Levon is working at City Bank as an investment planner for emerging economies. He hears a lot of different languages at work, both with his colleagues and clients. He’s described his work as having one “right” way to do it, and another “real way”, as is the case everywhere I suppose. But in his case, he should know economic factors such as how much of the profit of a dairy farm comes from the milk, and how much from the cheese. It’s near impossible to get that information even when you’re lucky to have direct communication with the business owners. So, there’s a lot of guesswork, and it sounds to me a lot of being good at your job comes from experience. He’s 3-4 months into the job, 2 internships deep, and works from 9am – midnight generally each day, so I’d say he’s doing all he can to get the experience he needs.
Web development education is taught differently at every education institution. Just in the last 2 years, a movement to standardize the education of web development in the field has begun. I’m involved in this movement now, in an environment so close to my heart – working to benefit Armenian kids – in Armenia! I’m taking a brand new 
Greece was phenomenal. We went to Athens for 4 days, Santorini for 3 and Rhodos for 3. Ancient history is embedded all throughout Greece in the buildings, excavations, stories, etc. We saw the posts where the Rhodos 8th wonder of the world stood, and heard the story and saw the rendition of the statue elsewhere. It fell a while back and because it was made of bronze the people stole pieces of it and there are not enough remains left to reconstruct it from it’s original material.
Santorini is like walking through a postcard. Everything is perfect. Rhodos, you can see more of the real life aspects, villages, locals, etc, scattered among the heaven-like beachfronts and ancient acropolis’ and gorgeous nature there. I stayed at friend’s families places the whole time, so this is why I was able to go financially, not having to pay for accommodations. Greece will suck up your money faster than you can blink an eye if you let it. 12 Euro for a launchair and umbrella, 6 Euro for a coffee, 3 Euro for a bus ride, the cheapest thing I saw was 1.20 Euro for a gyro on the street.
I saw a peaceful happiness in the Kharabaghtsi family that we stayed with. The mother she woke up in the morning and worked hard, without complaining. They weren’t supposed to have us as guests, it was their first time hosting volunteers from 
We shared the bathroom like sisters. There was one point where I knew these girls were my kind of girls. They had both taken a shower the first day, I didn’t because I was comfortable and there was no need. So the other volunteers are all comparing their bathroom facilities, and Talene and Tsoler are both describing how great ours are. There’s a shower head, there’s a system with levels of heat, they loved it so much that the others got jealous. When it came time for me to take my shower, I went downstairs and outside to the hut with the shower. It was functional, it was all anyone needed. Inside there’s the water system that’s the newest thing in there, the walls are cemented together haphazardly, the floor is uneven and broken with two or three types of cement, tile or crates, there’s flies around it, the door is a wooden door with a rickety slide lock. There was nothing fancy about it, and nothing wrong with it. I felt just as refreshed, if not more, from that shower than from one at a Marriot hotel. But these girls were raving about it. I thought that was awesome. This is when I knew I was not with complainers, I was with girls who understood and appreciated the way people lived here in Shushi. It made me smile.
