Let me ask you this: Am I less of a person because I write code for a living? How about this: Am I less of a person because I work in Flash? I haven’t really (well, sortof) weighted in on the Flash vs. HTML5 debate yet, mostly because the main posters pro and con are [...]

Two years ago, my colleague Isaac went to SXSW, and came back with a presentation on Mobile Development. In it he said that one of the greatest challenges is getting a mobile application “on deck”. “On Deck” is the term used for an application that’s available on a provider’s mobile platform, that place you goto online when you browse applications, ringtones and such, and to get something on there used to take an Act of God. Why? Because all billing had to be handled through the provider, all sales had to be done though your phone bill, and payments to third party companies had to be set up through their system (and usually required a hefty premium). In short- more trouble than it’s worth. Fact is, this is largely still the case. Yes, with greater adoption of mobile web browsers these things are becoming a lot easier, yet getting an application onto a phone remains problematic, especially if the consumer isn’t aware that you have it. The best option these days seems to be building a Mobile website, which is a far cry from a good user experience.

A few years ago I took what must have been one of the most entertaining courses of my graduate career: Business Game Theory. It was run using the Harvard Case method, but with no supporting textbook and no explanatory lectures before a case was assigned- we simply received a problem and were expected to solve it by the next lecture. The problems themselves were simple: we were given a situation and asked a fairly straightforward question. Should Company B enter a particular market, how will a competition play out, can you predict the next step in a competition given certain parameters, things like that. Most of us got the first problems blatantly wrong- the tacit requirement to do our own research didn’t sink in until after the first discussion- yet after that reality check it became one of the most engaging classes ever: The problems were challenging but not beyond rational analysis, and though I spent hours at a time bending my brain around decision making in a risky environment and other situations, I can still name the topics and methodologies for every case.

As a result I was practically giddy when I recognized a real world example of Judo Economics, a situation where a player uses the strength of their opponent against them. Consider a simple case: There exist two markets for a single product and two companies that can produce said product. The first market is large, however serving it comes with a high cost and therefore a low margin. The second market is small, but serving it is cheap and therefore comes with a high margin. The first of the companies must serve both markets, has deep pockets, while the second is considering market entry, but can only serve one of the two. Each company can only set one price against both markets. The question posed is: What will happen?