What Command & Conquer Taught Me About Business

As I built my outline for this editorial, I nearly halted the piece altogether because of a little known gentleman named Sun Tzu – you may have heard of him.  While The Art of War is sitting on my home office desk’s bookshelf right now, I decided to follow through with this article because while there will be similarities, I am writing this through my own lens – a lens which arguably pulls the worlds of business and war together perfectly through maybe my most beloved gaming series of all-time, Command & Conquer.  While I am still a fanatic of the series, this post could easily be re-titled to encompass the entire RTS, or real-time strategy, game genre since fundamentally they are all pretty much the same.  That being said, as I approach the end of my MBA, and having been in the business world now for nearly six years, I bring you six key tenants that Command & Conquer has taught me about business – there are actually dozens more, but I’ll leave those for the comments!

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Microsoft Claims Xbox One Will Be Break-Even or Profitable on Launch

Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president of the Windows giant’s Online Audience Business Group has placed Microsoft’s profitability bet, and it’s a steep one: “break-even or profitable on Day 1”.  Mehdi, a 21-year veteran of Microsoft Corp. with degrees from Princeton and Washington (BA Econ + MBA, respectively), is not only a smart dude, but incredibly successful.  According to his CrunchBase profile, he has led or been at the forefront at some of Microsoft’s, and even Reuters’ (his previous professional stop) biggest achievements.  He’s looking to add the Xbox One to his list of professional accomplishments, and with launch day just 16 days or so away, the day of reckoning is just around the corner.  So how realistic is this bet that he dropped this past Tuesday at the Citi Global Technology Conference?  Would you take it?  Based off his credentials alone, I think many folks would; as always however, there is more to the story line.

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