Here’s a Top Ten list you don’t want to find yourself on: Business 2.0’s Ten People Who Don’t Matter.
“And the Wet Rasberry goes to….”
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft (pictured)
Jeff Citron, Vonage
Reed Hastings, Netflix
Ken Kutaragi, Sony
Warren Lieberfarb, HD-DVD Promo Group
Rob Malda, Slashdot.org
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems
Linus Torvalds, Linux
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
So what sorts of Sins of the Suits got these guys on the list of people it’s “okay to snub at conferences” (as News.com put it)? Here’s what the piece says about two of the worst sinners (as far as we’re concerned, anyway):
Ken Kutaragi
President, Sony Computer Entertainment
Remember the Betamax debacle? Sony seems to have forgotten all about it. Under Kutaragi, who is the power behind Sony’s PlayStation videogame consoles, the company is launching another format war with its Blu-Ray high-definition videodisc, the successor to the venerable DVD. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 3, which was supposed to put Blu-Ray into millions of living rooms, is months late and hundreds of dollars more expensive than competing consoles from Microsoft and Nintendo – largely because it includes one-of-a-kind technologies like Blu-Ray. The delays and cost overruns are likely to make both the PS3 and Blu-Ray nonstarters. But there’s also another problem, which leads us to Warren Lieberfarb …
Warren Lieberfarb
Senior Consultant, HD-DVD Promotion Group
Lieberfarb, known in Hollywood as the father of the DVD, has been around long enough to recall the Betamax/VHS wars. But rather than broker a peace settlement between Sony and the rest of the industry – as he did with the DVD – he’s working with Microsoft, Toshiba, and other backers of the competing HD-DVD format on how to beat Blu-Ray. Ironically, the whole debate may well be pointless. There’s little evidence that consumers are eager to upgrade their existing DVD collections, and by the time the latest format war is settled, most of us will simply download movies in our living rooms instead of hoarding them on little plastic discs.