Will an American Diamond keep his lustre at Barclays?

Now that Britain’s biggest bank has an American CEO, will he change the culture of the business to infuse it with more of an American flavor?  As the former head of Barclays Capital, you could say that he’s already changed that organization to join the global banking fraternity which is fairly homogeneous anyway.  But the retail bank could benefit from more of an American service culture which could allow him to make his mark and capture share from other sleepy high street banks.

Netflix Wins with Apple TV Partnership and Blockbuster TKO

What Blockbuster didn’t accomplish in achieving a “transformation” is leveraging its customer base before they jumped ship.  Now even YouTube is getting in on the movie rental market and may eat Netflix’s lunch given the marketing muscle (and budgets) that its owner Google has.  Google is also muscling in on the TV set-top box market imminently, so it’s well-played by linking in YouTube’s vast and ever-expanding content base.

With the announcement of Apple TV, their partnership with Netflix, as well as offering YouTube as part of the package, we’re seeing the convergence of devices as computer and TV become integrated.

Convergence was predicted many years ago – BUT – the ultimate question is:

• does this improve the quality of life for the consumer?
• does it make life easier, happier or cheaper?   If I can’t tick at least two of those boxes, this trend won’t catch on
• We always need to keep focused on the consumer – or is this product just for Apple geeks?

The messages we need to hear should be:

• what about for non-Apple users?
• does it work with Windows platforms?  Or are those users (the vast majority of the population) excluded from “The Club?”
• Is Apple ‘narrow casting’ and not ‘broad casting’?

Read Business Week‘s coverage on the Apple TV announcement and  more on Fast Company‘s excellent piece on the demise of Blockbuster.