Business Buzzwords

I love/hate business. I love it for the innovation, the unapologetic focus on money, the ability to get shit done in ways that bureaucracy just can’t. I also hate it for the unapologetic focus on money, but that’s a two-sided coin that I won’t get into. What I really hate is the buzzwords.

Some people seem to think that buzzwords are a substitute for understanding the subject area, whatever it might be. The more cutting edge (yet another buzzword) the industry, the more buzzwords get tossed around. Here are a few that I loathe with a particular enthusiasm:

paradigm-shift
mindshare
data mining
bleeding-edge
user-centric
low-hanging fruit
drill down
mission critical
burn rate
core competency
turnkey
synergies
monetize
best practice

Many of these gems found at Buzzword Bingo, a great way to make the shitty conference sessions your workplace send you to go faster. If you would like to read an excellent article on buzzwords, I highly recommend this one.

Update: A topical song, “Blue Sky Thinking” by Gödz Pöödlz. So bad it’s good.

Also? Corporate Bullshit Generator. <3

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 4:23 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Business Buzzwords”

  • Russ Rogers (of GöDZ PööDLZ) Says:
    April 19th, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    Thanks for giving “Blue Sky Thinking” a little buzz. The song was written for an Internet Songwriting Contest called “Masters of Song Fu.” In the contest, challengers have just one week to write and record a song based on some specific task or suggestion. That week, the song had to have no rhymes.

    We tried to take the challenge one step farther and write the song entirely in corporate managerial double-speak. The funny thing is, there is an odd sort of poetry to the song, that is, if you take the helicopter view.

    You can find Godz Poodlz facebook fan page at http://facebook.com/godzpoodlz

  • Limegirl Says:
    April 19th, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Russ, I love the song. Thank you for giving a theme song to myself and fellow buzzword-haters. Whenever I feel like stabbing myself with a letter opener every time someone throws “net-net” into a sentence, I put on the song and my rage drains away.

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