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Liminal Group Mission Statement crafted by Velocity Associates.

The Liminal Group is an executive educational institute focusing on inculcating in its members those facets of their professional careers not taught in Business School, i.e.,

• Innovation & Creativity
• Leadership Communications
• Ethics & Values
• Vision & Strategy

We are a pioneering business teaching institution with possibly the most accomplished and inspiring executive development faculty ever assembled.

We are introducing new creative processes which brings to our clients the special knowledge, intuitive responses and exceptional performance "how-to's" once known only to business super-achievers.

We see human capital for what it is – a critical investment in productivity, profitability and constant improvement. Human capital is arguably the single most critical factor in a company's ability to innovate, compete and grow. Highly motivated, highly capable people breed a contagious culture of success; however, creating this necessary environment requires insight, talent, and a deep understanding of human interdynamics. It also requires a serious commitment to continuous learning and a consistent, systematic approach to the training experience that is not only ground-breakingly fresh, but with a tap root fused into the very fundamentals of human nature and spirituality.  

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Boston Business Journal (Published Oct 1-7, 2004)
 

READER FEEDBACK by Tom Holzel

Beware of nasty patent tactics

 

David Dykeman (Sept 24, "Building a strong patent portfolio a must for start­ups") couldn't be more correct when he stresses the impor­tance of a strong patent strategy for startup companies. But there are two catches all too easy to overlook.  First, many start­ups under-estimate the very substantial cost of  creating and maintain a vibrant portfolio.  The actual patenting cost is one thing; extending the patent to the most important foreign countries is quite another, as are addendums, improvements, etc. And, CFOs will wince as the renewal fees start rolling in.

 

The second catch is the very nasty tactic large competitors have of using frivolous patent suits to pressure a company whose patent stands in their way, or which they want to ac­quire. A startup display compa­ny I was working for invented a flat panel that became the apple of a Japanese competitor's eye. They initiated a patent suit, and the cost in executive time and corporate money became so onerous, the board of directors caved in and required us to come to a licensing accommodation.

 

The only viable strategy to avoid being taken over because of your strong patent is to li­cense it to a large company of your own choice, in whose interest it then becomes to protect its position by helping you defend your patent.

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13 March 2004.  Lecture at American University of Beirut (Lebanon) as reported in the Lebanese Daily Star.

" New Lebanese search engine aims to overtake Google
Coneteq will be launched at the end of the year and will face tough new rivals from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo"

By Natasha Tohme                                                                                                                                                                                          Daily Star photo
Daily Star staff

An advanced search engine being developed in Lebanon has the ambitious goal of overtaking the likes of Google. Coneteq, which is to be launched at the end of this year, is going to be “an enormous success,” said a very confident Tom Holzel, founder of Velocity Associates, a US-based consulting company that has been employed to promote the search engine.
 
What exactly does Coneteq have that the world’s undisputed search engine leader does not? The problem with Google is that it gives “very fast and nearly useless results,” said Holzel, who conducted a very simple test to prove this point. It involved a search for ‘sleeping bag’ using Google. The outcome: 1,250,000 results in 0.18 seconds. “They brag it took 0.18 seconds to find. But, it would take a lifetime to look at 1.25 million sites, so 0.18 seconds means nothing,” said Holzel. “Fast search is not fast find.”
 
Coneteq, however, has the capacity to provide fewer results, all of which meet the exact specifications that users ask for. “It does this by way of a multi-parameter search engine,” said Wissam Rachid, a young developer working on Coneteq. “This means that you can search for a number of parameters at the same time. For instance, you can specify a product, brand, price and location,” Rachid said. (Continues)

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3 March 2004. Lecture at  “Displays in the Telecom industry” conference held by BNP PARIBAS (the major international French investment bank), London, UK , by Tom Holzel.

(Excerpt:)   "Let’s look at another consumer-oriented [cell phone] discriminator: Monochrome vs color display screens.  The figures from the latest forecast are shown on the left.  It shows color cell phone screens gaining ground on monochrome screens at a rapid rate.  This study used a bar chart to show these figures, and then raced right on to another bar chart, showing some other set of data.  But if we just slow down a bit and re-graph the bar chart information as an x-y plot, we can learn some interesting facts–facts that we can use to help plan the product .  For one thing, we see that the sales volume of color and monochrome screen sales cross over–in 2004.  More interestingly is that by adding a logarithmic trend line we see the monochrome sales flattening out to 25% of total sales.  Why is that?  If color is so much more appealing, why shouldn’t color eclipse monochrome completely?

"The answer has nothing to do with color.  While everyone would like a color [cell phone] screen, today color has two things going against it: much higher cost and much shorter battery life.  So as long as higher cost and shorter battery life are part of the screen selection equation, some people–25% of them according to this analysis--will continue to choose the monochrome screen.  I just bought a new cell phone–a monochrome version because to me that was a choice between 2-1/2 days of standby time, and 10 days of standby time.

"However, as soon as television comes to the cell phone market–it's already available in Japan--the monochrome displays will be completely inadequate.  They won’t be fast enough to show video and they can’t show gray scale.  Then color displays will squeeze out the last holdovers, even the likes of me."

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