American Corporate Buzzwords By Decades

WHAT'S THE BUZZ? AMERICAN CORPORATE BUZZWORDS BY DECADE THE 80S Corporate culture thrived in the 80s. Big business was idealized in movies, yuppies were everywhere and people had money. You had records which you wish you had kept because now they are colléctor vinyl. BUZZWORDE PARADIGM SHIFT: DOG AND PONY SHOW: PENCIL SOLUTION: SYNERGY: YOU IN: Rethinking an approach. A vague thing that you need for a problem you have and a company can sell it to you. Cooperation between groups. Tentative appointments. A multimedia presentation. "I'm about to give my dog and pony show...for my dog and pony show. It features real dogs and ponies!" "Switching from regular to decaf was a pretty big paradigm shift." "Figuring out where to go to lunch required a lot of synergy amongst the C-suite." "The only part of my solution presentation that's done is the price I'm going to charge for it." "You're an intern? Yeah, I'm gonna have to pencil you in. And then erase you." The World Wide Web was born in 1992, changing our understanding of commu- nication, information and global con- sciousness. The economy boomed and an entire generation of technologists became the new sexy. My Computer ls BUZINORDS Network THE, Neighborhood Inbox Recycle Bin The Internet E Document Waad Ele Ed Yw rot Fora e Ele Edt w hust Fomal e Tmez New Rown 10 7ueDOE Tne: New Ranan Bandwidth: Clicks-And-Mortar: Buzzword Compliant: Fa Heb pres F1 For Hep pre F1 Far Help. prets FI Human intelligence and attention span. Companies that have both online and offline operations. A product that supports certain features because of current buzzwords... "Sorry, I don't have enough bandwidth to properly fill out this expense report. Just give me some petty cash." "Since dot-coms are kicking our asses, we're going to be a clicks-and-mortar operation regardless of their effectiveness. "You'll love our Synergistic Paradigm Shift Solution. It's really buzzword compliant... I hate myself." now!" E Ed Vew Ireet Fana Hep Twes New Ronan Co-opetition: For Help pee F1 Herding Cats: Strategic alliances with other businesses. Trying to control chaos. "The marketing team and the sales team seem to be in "Getting the project managers to agree on a cake flavor for Tyler's birthday was herding cats." co-opetition to give Finance a heart attack." IPod the 2000s The economic certainty of past decades was gone. Big Business became multinationals. Money became virtual as did offices and ...reality? CDs were replaced by MP3S and social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook sprung up for the first time. BUZZWORDS Drink From The Fire Hose: Eating Your Own Dogfood: Circle Back: Taking in overwhelming Use your own product. End conversation on a topic amounts of information. and return to it later. "The nice part about having an incompetent, lazy boss is that you never have to drink I from the fire hose." It took a lot of work to get the Crystal Clear Pepsi guys to eat their own dogfood." You're an idiot. Let's circle back to the dumb I thing you're saying | when I care about i stupid things." Send Send Send Out of Pocket: Low Hanging Fruit: Out of reach, not available. The easiest option. I'm out of pocket for the rest of the afternoon, unless you're a bottle of scotch." I'm going after the low hanging fruit - I'm trying| to get fired with unemployment benefits. Send Send Buzzwords OF THE 2010s Best of Breed: Best in the industry. JANET ORR: "Our HR department's drinking problem is really best of breed" 04/06/10 5PM Bleeding Edge: Newer than cutting edge. AMANDA HUGGINKISS: "Wow, your overpowering indifference towards this meeting is really bleeding edge" 05/24/11 12PM Bio Break: Bathroom Break. WAYNE DEAR: "I shouldn't have partied so hard with HR last night. I'm about to bio break all over this conference table" 11/02/11 3PM Missio Critical: Something necessary. Without this, the project or business will fail. OTTO PILOT: "Yeah, we can't cut that from the budget. Bagel Fridays is really mission critical" 04/29/12 4AM Disintermediate: Cut out the middle-man. WALTER MELON: "I started going to the gym. I really need to disintermediate these love handles" 06/05/12 1PM THE FUTURE BUZZWORDS Cheaper wi-fi and micro-screens mean that all consumer packaged goods are now connected to the internet and ask you to update your status about them constantly. Neo-hipsters begin collecting antique CDs since they think they "sound better" than MP3S. Flash is still not supported on iOS devices. QR Ode: InstaGrammy: A QR code that sings in a desperate attempt to get someone to actually scan it. An award given for selling your company for way too much money. "Did you hear that new QR Ode from Ke€ha?" "I won an InstaGrammy for hawking my cat sunglasses business!" Greeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe: Sand Tr-App: A start-up's poorly thought through first app that bankrupts the company. Selecting a sustainability initiative at random. "After taking some heat on Twitter, I greeny, meeny, miny, moed and now we buy carbon offsets." "Ugh, that location-based dog washing finder project I worked on was a total Sand Tr-App." Fore-Eyes: Someone you have to shout at to prevent them from walking into things because they're wearing Google Glasses. "This fore-eyes almost got hit by a hovercar because he was checking his Facebook status." Helping our clients remove jargon and speak in plain English since 2001. ---C ---O