Bad communication is bad business. →
Matt Drance has been on fire lately with some very thoughtful posts over at Apple Outsider. On the Google vs Microsoft mud slinging contest over a lost bidding war for patents;
Matt Drance:
The first failure was lack of clarity: specifically, letting the Chief Legal Officer write nearly 500 words of unstructured whining. How many ordinary people understand lawyers, let alone sympathize with them? A piece of communication this important should have been painstakingly reviewed: its prose; its tone; its presentation; its source; and my goodness, its facts. It’s quite clear that nobody examined the post with a level head.
He concludes:
The sad thing about all of this is that the patent system in our industry is in fact horribly, cynically broken. Google had a terrific opportunity to make that case and shift public opinion in its (and I believe in the long term, everyone’s) favor. Instead, it cried like a rich kid who lost an auction.
Definitely worth a read.
