Need to give your intellectual property program a jolt ? Guy Kawasaki offers 10 tips on how to get your IP program out of the morgue and onto the playing field. Or rather, his friend Bill Meade does, IP manager for HP's Laser Jet group during that firm's dramatic rise in patent creation. If you think your company needs a boost in this area, check it out.
Are you worried about your gray matter? Are those cells working up to par? The British Broadcasting Company, the 'Beeb' as it is sometimes called, has put together an interesting site on the Human Body and Mind. Stimulate your brain and get some inspiration by browsing around this science and nature website. Get to know yourself better, learn your personality type -- even your brain's 'sex'. The site will give you, well, plenty to think about.
The Financial Times of Germany reported last week that the solar industry in Germany is facing a wave of bankruptcies. Although Germany is the fastest growing market for solar energy in the world volume and profits are still low, while Asia continues to bring cheaper products to market. An article in the New York Times estimates that Chinese manufacturers have driven down the cost of solar panels by almost half over the past year, putting pressure on Europe and the United States who are currently the largest manufacturers of photovoltaic cells.
Should you ever repeat tweets in Twitter? Apparently it is frowned upon by twitiquette, but Guy Kawasaki did a test where he tried to build Twitter traffic with tweet repeats. He did get a few complaints and threats from folks to "unfollow" if he persisted, but read his blog to get the full story. Then you can decide whether you want to follow suit and excercise your "freedom of tweech". Boy, all this talk about Twitter is a real twongue twister ....
Coming to a town hall near you: angry citizens opposed to the Waxman-Markey bill. The bill creates a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. An article in the Irish Times claims that the American Petroleum Institute (API), representing the US oil industry, wrote to member companies asking them to "move aggressively" and stage up to 22 public meetings similar to recent protests against President Obama's healthcare plans. Success breeds success, and the success of the healthcare protests at town hall meetings has allegedly motivated the API to stage its own -- with an appropriate number of protesters -- against imminent climate change legislation.
Over the past few years ringtones for mobile devices have been big business. It is estimated that in 2007 sales for ringtones was about $714 million. In a sign of the times it seems that ringtone sales have slumped almost a quarter (24%) between 2007 and 2008. This is due in part to the fact that mobile phone owners are learning how to download ringtones other ways.
A start-up company in Colorado is hoping that making fuel from algae and reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases will result in "the next billion-dollar energy boom".
A Colorado State University professor, Bryan Willson recently introduced a strain of algae that loves carbon dioxide into a water tank next to a natural gas processing plant. The water is already green-tinged with life. The professor who is co-founder of the three year old company Solix Biofulels, has a major investor, The Southern Utes.
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GSB Professor Bob Sutton on his blog tilts the lance at retail behemoth Wal-Mart, which apparently is market-testing imitation Girl Scout cookies. The irony is that Wal-Mart collaborates in many communities with the girls, allowing them to sell cookies near the store entrance. Now we face the possibility that you will be able to buy traditional thin mint knock-offs inside the store, for less -- what Sutton with grim humor calls 'Thin-Minty Gate'. In an era of spectacular rapacity on Wall Street and general business bumbling elsewhere, can something nice be spared the profit motive just this once?
While the media has focused on Geithner and Bernanke’s role in the economic crisis Sheila Bair was rolling up her sleeves on the weekends and going to work with her team. The FDIC went into banks and credit unions with teams of accountants to assess the financial health of banks and to give recommendations and advice to strengthen them. Bair has also been firm in standing up the Geithner and being heard before the Senate Banking Committee. The New Yorker in an article published in July gives a good overview of Bair and why she was one of the recipients of the Profiles in Courage award this year. Even with all the work that Bair has done banks continue to fail, however hopefully the tide has turned and there will be fewer.
A growing number of analysts are blaming the current economic crisis on excessive executive pay. In an article in the Summer 2009 Perspectives on Work magazine titled "The Corporate Pay Gap: Do We Need A Maximum Wage", the author contends that the greater the potential reward, the greater the executive temptation to cut corners -- by wheeling, dealing, even cooking the books.
Executive pay reformers are split on how to deal with the issue. One group believes shareholders should have a bigger say on executive pay and perks. A second group believes that we cannot rely solely on shareholders because billions of taxpayer dollars flow into companies with exorbitant executive pay. According to the article, a generation ago CEO pay averaged 40 times worker take-home; by 2007 it had ballooned to 344 times. Management science guru Peter Drucker argued that executive compensation pay over 20-25 times that of the rank-and-file worker undermines enterprise effectiveness. Can we put the genie back in the bottle? Do we want to? Let's see which group wins, if any.
An article in the New York Times reports that the first time since the Depression, the private sector has almost added no jobs in the last 10 years. The article reports that there is hope that when the recession is over, the jobs will return but it's the authors contention theat the US job market has been substantially altered.
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On our New Books rack in Jackson Library we find How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (HG3761.C65 2009) by Jim Collins (Good to Great), which argues that amidst the dismal landscape of fallen firms there are lessons to be learned on how decline can be detected and reversed. Collins defines five stages of decline, and makes a case that decline is self-inflicted and can be turned around.
He in turn offers a foreword to UC Berkeley Professor and GSB Alum Morten Hansen's book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results (HD31.H317 2009). Hansen believes leaders can paradoxically sabotage themselves by promoting more collaboration in their companies, forgetting that the goal of collaboration is not collaboration itself but results. The book distills a decade of research into an approach that helps managers separate good collaboration opportunities from the bad. Writes GSB Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer (What Were They Thinking?) " ... Hansen illustrates both the pitfalls and potential of collaboration, and provides specific, actionable ideas to make effective collaboration the norm instead of the exception."
Richard A. Posner has come out with A Failure Of Capitalism: The Crisis Of '08 And The Descent Into Depression (HB3722.P67 2009), where he conducts a postmortem on the recent meltdown to identify heavy capital flows from abroad and lowering interest rates from the Fed, the deregulation of the financial sector, and the relation between executive comp, short-term profits and risky lending among the causes.
Finally, Chaotics: The Business Of Managing And Marketing In The Age Of Turbulence (HF5415.K6244 2009) warns us that turbulent times are no longer the exception but the norm. Authors Philip Kotler and John A. Caslione roll out examples of firms that are nevertheless highly resilient, and offer their 'Chaotics Management System' for minimizing vulnerability and exploiting opportunities. GSB Alum Tom Peters (In Search Of Excellence) writes "Leave it to Phil Kotler to give us lift-off power when we need it most".
Economist Dennis Gartman predicted the recession that began in December 2007 a full year before it was officially called by the Government, and he is ahead of the game again. In an article in the August 6th issue of Fortune he claims the recession is over. "We saw it happen two weeks ago -- it's over," he pronounced in a recent interview.
Gartman has been watching the economy for thirty-five years, and he looks at just a few indicators that have yet to fail him. The first is a downward spike in the weekly jobless claims over a period of a few months. The second is a ratio from the Conference Board -- the percentage of coincident economic indicators to lagging indicators. Based on these, he feels he can safely predict the recovery is underway. Do we really have clear skies ahead ?
While the rest of the world is limping along during this global recession Norway is doing quite well for itself. The contrary Norwegians have succeeded in growing their economy just around 3% last year and their government is running a budget surplus of about 11% according to an article in the NYT entitled Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson. How did they do it you ask? According to experts Norway saved while everyone spent, it also helps that the government takes in large revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. According to Spiegel Online Norway applied any fiscal surplus during good times to shore up public services such as pension funds and implemented ethical guidelines to guide sovereign fund investments.
As usual, Stanford Professor Bob Sutton has tapped into some interesting stuff. He cites a 1993 study which apparently showed that people (female students in this case) accurately echoed, after observing only a brief video clip of instructors, the feedback of other students who had sat in the instructors' classes an entire semester. The 'thin slices' of experience viewed by the test students were a mere 30 seconds long, with sound turned off. Scared yet? Sutton notes that even shorter clips were used, down to 6- and 15 seconds -- with basically the same results. Subsequent research corroborated the findings. Perhaps the folk wisdom of the ages is right: first impressions are not only lasting ... they're accurate.
Having a hard time finding that right job? Never fear, register with Doostang which "is an online community that seeks to match the brightest new grads with what it says are the crème de la crème of positions in finance, consulting and tech".
Doostang was created by Mareza Larizadeh. "Larizadeh never intended to launch a career start-up. He was completing his MBA at Stanford University in 2005 when he got the idea for Doostang, which is a modified version of 'reaching for talent' in Latin."
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