Business Lingo (Updated 25 Aug 06)

• Alpha Pup -- A market research term referring to the "coolest kid in the neighborhood." As in: "If the alpha pups go for it, we'll sell millions of them."
• Bleeding Edge -- Beyond cutting edge. So new, its creators aren't entirely sure where it's headed.
• Business Ecosystems -- When companies in the same markets work cooperatively and competitively to introduce innovations, support new products and serve customers.
• Chips and Salsa -- Refers to computers. Chips = hardware; Salsa= software.
• Co-Evolution -- A theory that a company can create new business, markets and industries by working with direct competitors, customers and suppliers.
• Cookie Jar Accounting -- An accounting practice where a company uses reserves from good years against losses that might be incurred in bad years.
• Defenestrate -- A 17th century word, now back in fashion, that means to throw someone or something out the window. As in: "Let's defenestrate this marketing strategy."
• Dial It Back -- To tone down. As in: "Your sales pitch is too aggressive. Dial it back."
• 800-Pound Gorilla -- A company that dominates an industry short of having a complete monopoly.
• End-to-End -- Used largely by technology vendors to imply that whatever they build for one part of your organization will work with whatever they build for another.
• Future-Proof -- To create a product that won't be made obsolete by the next wave of technological advancements.
• Ideation -- Brainstorm session.
• Living Document -- A document intended to be continually revised and updated.
• Market Cannibalization -- When a company's new product negatively affects sales of its existing, related products, i.e., it eats its own market.
• Optics -- How things appear.
• Pain Points -- A favorite of consultants used to describe places where an organization is hurting due to poor operating structure, technology or inefficiencies.
• Pockets of Resistance -- Another borrowed military term that describes a person or group that attempts to stall, block or kill a project.
• Reaching Critical Mass -- Having enough customers or market share to become profitable.
• Repurposing -- Taking content from one medium (books, magazine, etc.) and repackaging it to be used in another medium.
• Reverbiagize -- To reword a proposal with the hope of getting it accepted by people who didn't like it the first time around. As in: "It's the same concept, we've just reverbiagized it."
• Tszuj -- (Pronounced "zhoozh") To tweak, finesse or improve.
• Value Stream -- Six Sigma term that encompasses every step in the process of producing and delivering a product or service (whether it adds value or not).
• Value Migration -- Used in industries where there is little market growth, the term refers to the movement of growth and profit opportunities from one company to another.
• White Space Opportunity -- New high-potential growth possibilities that are related to but don't quite match the capabilities and skills of the organization.
• Batmobiling - putting up emotional shields. taken from the retracting armor that covers the batmobile in the movie, "she started talking marriage and he started batmobiling."
• Beepilepsy - afflicts those with vibrating pagers and cell phones; characterized by sudden spasms, goofy facial expressions and loss of speech
• Betamaxed - when a technology is overtaken in the market by inferior but better marketed competition, as in "Microsoft Windows betamaxed Apple "
• Blowing your buffer - losing your train of thought
• Bronco ride - Response time on www site. "If you don't make it in 8 seconds, you're out of there"
• Cobweb - a WWW site that never changes
• Elvis year - the peak year of popularity as in "1993 was Barney's elvis year"
• Generica -the phenomenon whereby all cities look exactly the same. fast food joints, strip malls, sub-divisions as in "we were so lost in generica that I couldn't remember what city it was"
• High dome or Propeller Head - egghead, scientist, PhD
• Irritainment - annoying but you can't stop watching; the O.J. trial
• Meatspace, Carbon community, Facetime, F2F, RL  - the physical world (as opposed to the virtual)
• Percussive maintenance -  whacking a device to get it working
• Prairie dogging - in companies where everyone has a cubicle something happens and everyone pops up to look
• Salmon day - swimming upstream all day to get screwed in the end
• Siliwood, Hollywired - the coming convergence of movies, interactive TV and computers (EG: MSNBC)
• Square headed girlfriend (boyfriend) - computer
• Treeware - manuals and documentation
• Umfriend - squeeze, sexual relationship; "this is Dale, my...um...friend"
• WWW - "world wide wait"
• Yuppie food coupons - twenty dollar bills from an ATM