The Insider: 'Built to Last' author gives Amazon pause

UNINTENDED TARGET: It wasn't acerbic TV host Bill Maher who zinged Amazon.com with the toughest -- if unwitting -- potshot during the company's 10th anniversary concert at Benaroya Hall on Saturday.

Not that Maher didn't try. He encouraged Amazon employees to start drilling Jeff Bezos' balding head whenever they played dodge ball, if only to silence that "annoying laugh" that is Bezos' trademark. People hooted and hollered, and clapped their approval.

But a brief moment of thoughtful silence fell over the crowd of thousands of Amazon employees when Jim Collins, the author of "Built to Last," was describing the central tenets of his business philosophy.

Dismissing the idea that one company should be everything it possibly can, Collins said that companies should only do things that they can be the best at, or not do them at all.

It was an odd choice among the many lessons offered by "Built to Last," which asserts that trial and error -- the name for trying something that you don't necessarily know will work, never mind will make you the best -- is crucial to a company's growth.

Amazon has epitomized the "Get Big Fast" mentality that it has emblazoned on company party T-shirts by being willing to stick its neck out to gain market share. It has risked the most important thing in retailing -- its own brand name -- by upping the number of third-party merchants doing business on its site until roughly a quarter of its sales last year were conducted by someone whose name is not Amazon.com.

In doing so, it has been able to grow into the world's largest Internet retailer, and it has armed itself for the ongoing battle with eBay for Internet dominance. But with five stores and a search feature (A9.com's Yellow Pages) languishing in the unfinished limbo of Beta amid 31 product categories, Amazon has hardly subscribed to Collins' ideology.

Its search engine, with its emphasis on localized experience through on-the-street photos of the businesses it categorizes, debuted just months before Google Local, also in Beta, blew it out of the water with satellite mapping.

In a land grab, not everyone has time to decide who'll farm the property best. It's just about who wants the harvest bad enough.

Time will tell, though, if Amazon should take heed of views like those of Collins, even if he was a guest at their party.

THE NAME GAME: Back in May, when Microsoft began letting other companies license patented technologies from its research unit, it offered one of them under the name "BioCert."

It had a familiar ring to James Childers, owner of Artemis Solutions Group, and for good reason. The small Whidbey Island company offers its own biometric products under precisely that name -- down to the capitalization of the letters "B" and "C."

As it happens, Artemis has a trademark on that term, applying broadly to hardware and software for biometric authentication. Last week, Artemis filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Microsoft. And two days later, almost like magic, Microsoft suddenly changed all references to the technology on the Microsoft IP Ventures Web site to "Microsoft Biometric ID."

The Redmond company declined to confirm the reason for the change but acknowledged that it was aware of the suit. "Microsoft is in discussions with representatives of Artemis Solutions Group and is optimistic that the matter can be amicably resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties," said Rachel Wayne, a spokeswoman for Microsoft.

Childers said he, too, hopes it can be amicably resolved. He said he was surprised that Microsoft chose the name in the first place, given his company's trademark registration, which could be easily found through a routine online search. Last week's name change, he said, doesn't by itself address the confusion he believes Microsoft's use of the name caused in the industry during the previous two months.

"I'm glad to have my name back," Childers said. "Now the issue is how we undo what they already have done."

THE COST OF LIVING HERE: Congratulations, Seattle. You've once again climbed to the top of a national survey, ranking as the most overpriced city in the United States.

That's right. Seattle is less affordable than New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- all of which made the top 10 in Forbes' annual study of overpriced places.

It is the second year in a row that the Emerald City, with its soaring housing costs, high gas prices and above-average unemployment, has received the dubious honor. One key factor was that incomes are not keeping up with skyrocketing housing prices.

Here's what Forbes had to say about Seattle:

"The city does poorly on all counts. ... (It) got hit hard by the tech bubble, and took a big employment dive."

Forbes ranked Seattle last of the 150 cities it studied in terms of income growth. It also put the city in the bottom bracket in three additional categories: cost of living (130th), job growth (117th) and housing affordability (119th).

But Forbes did provide a ray of hope, saying that the city could become more affordable if Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing do well.

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER BANK: If the number of new bank formations and market entrants is any indication, the regional economy must be doing well. The latest to eye this market is Memphis-based First Horizon National Corp., which wants to put retail branches in the Puget Sound market.

First Horizon is already here through its mortgage subsidiary. It has 13 offices from Lynnwood to Tumwater and is one of the larger home lenders in terms of market share, regional president Curt Altig says.

Now First Horizon wants to follow that with retail bank branches "to support our mortgage clientele," Altig says. The first step is to hire a regional executive in charge of retail operations, then begin scouting for locations.

Altig says First Horizon could have six to eight branches locally in the next 18 months.

P-I reporters Kristen Bolt, John Cook, Bill Virgin and Todd Bishop contributed to this edition of The Insider, the P-I business staff's weekly compendium of quips, quotes, observations, asides, tidbits, weird facts and gossip.

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