May 2006

Why CEOs Are Not Plug-and-Play

Company-specific skills may be valuable in a new job under the right conditions, say Harvard Business School's Boris Groysberg, Andrew N. McLean, and Nitin Nohria.

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The Hard Part Follows After Wal-Mart Says Yes

Two entrepreneurs hit the Holy Grail of manufacturing when they persuaded Wal-Mart to carry their novel pen. Now they must make the retailer happy in just 30 days.

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Corporate Conscience Survey Says Workers Should Come First

Far more American consumers consider the way companies treat their employees a good indicator of their social conscience than their philanthropy, according to a survey by the National Consumers League and Fleishman-Hillard, the public relations company. (Subscription required!)

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impatience drives out human service

Obviously, the big challenge for all business is to deliver customer service as efficiently as possible because people don't like to be kept waiting.

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Fancy features don't sell phones in U.S.

Advanced features aren't moving mobile phones off shelves in the U.S. even though more users are adopting them, according to a recent survey by research company J.D. Power and Associates. Price and design are the biggest reasons consumers give for buying particular handsets...

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Book Report: Tales from the Top: Ten Crucial Questions from the World's #1 Executive Coach

Guided introspection for leaders.

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The seductive nature of power

As the sad succession of recent corporate and political scandals have highlighted, those in positions of power are not immune from the seductive dangers of addiction. So what makes a good apple go bad - and what can those who have power do to ensure they it doesn't happen to them?

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Are CEOs A Tech Gap in Themselves? You Bet.

The more I listen and learn, the more I'm convinced that members of the corporate elite of America are technologically backward and a threat to their own companies. Outside the tech/net space itself, CEOs, by and large, do not go...

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Advertising on Flickr

This is a photo on Flickr. This is a photo on Flickr with the notes layer turned on. This is a notes layer with a link to Amazon. This is a link to Amazon with a referral ID. Brilliant on so many levels but equally dangerous.

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Ten Years of Women to Watch

28 MAY 2006 from AdAge.com | Read the full story»

Each year for the past 10, Ad Age has published a special report on the women in advertising, marketing and media whose accomplishments and potential have made them standouts. (Free subscription required!)

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Customer Love: 10 Steps to building a kickass Customer Service Department

18 MAY 2006 from the brandbuilder blog | Read the full story»

When customers call you with a problem, don't fight or argue. Smile, listen to them, and fix it.

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Blogs now have a world of influence

16 MAY 2006 from USAToday | Read the full story»

In fact, a study done for Jupiter Research says that blogs have a "disproportionately large influence" on society. The reason? It's not how many people read a blog, it's who reads it.

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Cutting Sony, a Corporate Octopus, Back to a Rational Size

Sony has expanded into so many businesses in Japan and abroad that it has blurred its original identity as an engineering innovator. (Subscription required!)

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Yahoo's del.icio.us Tag Trip

Joshua Schachter tells internetnews.com what he's working on after six months of Yahoo ownership.

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Owning a business may not be as tough as you think

If you're fed up with ceaseless demands for results from "the man" without any respect in return, why not join the growing ranks of those who have turned their backs on thankless work within impersonal corporate entities and started their own businesses?

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Earn Cellphone Minutes by Watching Ads

With the cost of mobile phone calls already dropping sharply, Virgin Mobile USA plans to announce a way that people can talk for no money at all. (Subscription required!)

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Barefoot Is Better

Bunker Roy says entrepreneurship, not massive aid programs, will solve mass poverty.

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What's in the Name? Researchers Suggest It's Money

A company name that is easy to pronounce may be a significant factor in short-term increases in stock price, new research suggests. (Subscription required!)

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The Top Sixteen Lies of CEOs

At the suggestion of, and with the help of, Glenn Kelman, here are more lies. These are the lies of CEOs running a companies that are beyond the startup phase.

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Questions for Helen Thomas: Corps Issues

The longtime White House correspondent talks about secretive presidents, Scott McClellan versus Tony Snow and why there's no such thing as a rude question. (Subscription required!)

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The Museum of Modern Betas has been updated

The Museum of Modern Betas has been updated. So far only 2.3% of the sites tracked have made it out of beta. There’s even a list of betas that aren’t out yet but are already ranked on del.icio.us. And of course you need to check out the top 100 betas ranked by overall bookmarks at del.icio.us.

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GM Names North America Head

GM named Troy Clarke president of its North American operations, a position currently held by Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. (Subscription required!)

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Frequent Flier: At 6-foot-11 With Bad Ankles, He Wants an Aisle Seat

I'm on the road about 200 days a year, trying to contend with airline seats and hotel rooms that were not built with professional basketball players in mind. [by Bill Walton] (Subscription required!)

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New Social Networks Mean Business

How TagWorld and other next-generation social networks could feed your business--and maybe even change the world.

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Technology Speeds Paying of Health Bills

A report from a trade group indicates that 75 percent of current claims are now electronic, compared with 44 percent four years ago. (Subscription required!)

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Update: Google knocks Microsoft off Dell PCs

When consumers boot up their new Dell Inc. desktops and notebooks next week, they will find a Google Inc. homepage and search tools, not the familiar Microsoft Corp. versions, the world's largest PC vendor confirmed Thursday.

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Advertising: Yahoo Makes Deal on Ads With eBay

The deal will expand Yahoo's share of Internet advertising, a market where it lost leadership to Google, and give eBay some new ways to make money from its large audience. (Subscription required!)

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Lay, Skilling found guilty

Former Enron chiefs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in a...

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Jurors Weigh In on Enron Trial Testimony

After finding former Enron executives guilty on several counts in their conspiracy and fraud trial, the jury of eight women and four men met with reporters to explain their thinking. NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports on which testimony the jury believed -- and which testimony it didn't. (Audio)

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News Analysis: Verdict on an Era: Arrogance and Recklessness at Enron

The Enron trial painted a broad and disturbing portrait of a corporate culture poisoned by hubris. (Subscription required!)

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Whistleblower, Enron Employees Hear Verdict

For the thousands of Enron workers left unemployed and stripped of their pensions, the guilty verdicts of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling do little to improve their situation. NPR's Melissa Block talks with Sherron Watkins, a former Enron vice president who blew the whistle on the shady accounting at the company. She testified that she had warned Lay about Enron's financial problems. Watkins said her job was threatened as a consequence. (Audio)

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The Jeff Skilling Interview That Never Ran

"I'm the chief sheepherder." That's how Jeff Skilling described his role as Enron's CEO to me back in 2001. This was several months before the Enron empire began to crumble. I was working on a piece about the role of...

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Will Enron verdicts change corporate America?

Enron founder Kenneth Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling have been convicted on multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading. Host Kai Ryssdal talks with Houston Chronicle reporter Mary Flood about what the verdicts mean for the corporate world. (Audio)

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Segolene Royal

The French ideal of beauty is no longer the actress, Catherine Deneuve (who admits to wearing makeup while gardening), but might be the politician, Segolene Royal (who wears almost no makeup and could be the country’s next president)...

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Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply

This is the time of year when thousands of college grads enter the workplace, many bringing with them an innocence about workplace rules and corporate culture. (Subscription required!)

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CEO Pay

After reading the article in the New York Times yesterday on the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation given over the past few years to the CEO of Home Depot, I ran across this...

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Business Bake-Off Winner

If there was ever a doubt that entrepreneurship was wildly unpredictable...

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Deconstructing Wal-Mart's Wonder Truck

The retailer vows to build an eco-friendly fleet. Is it for real?

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Microsoft pitches pay-as-you-go PCs

21 MAY 2006 from CNET News.com | Read the full story»

Want to write a Word document? Pay a few pennies. Want to download some digital photos? Pay a few more.

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The Rise of Crowdsourcing

Forget outsourcing. The new source of cheap labor is everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do R&D.

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Economic Scene: Hello, Young Workers: One Way to Reach the Top Is to Start There

The recent evidence shows quite clearly that in today's economy starting at the bottom is a recipe for being underpaid for a long time to come. (Subscription required!)

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How Intuit fails toward success

Software company lntuit rewards failure. Literally.

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Online Retail Predicted to Top $200 Billion

It was only three years ago that online sales reached the $100-billion mark. Now, according to ninth annual "State of Retailing Online" study from Shop.org, conducted by Forrester Research, online sales (including travel) will be up 20% in 2006, reaching $211.4 billion.

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How to shoot a bullet through your startup

Are you thinking about starting a company in the web space? Step one, don’t listen to Business 2.0 and their How to build a Bulletproof Startup nonsense!

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You can be Art Brut 102

British band Art Brut has adopted the corporate franchise model, only with a twist. It's giving away its name and music for free. Jane Lindholm reports. (Subscription required!)

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Are US Workers "Vacation Deprived"?

"What are you doing for your vacation?""Err.what vacation?"

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Phone for boomers & their parents

While most cell phones tout an abundance of bells and whistles, two companies are focusing on the substantial market for simpler phones.

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Being "available"

Annette Clancy joins Lisa Haneberg in bemoaning the practice of taking mobile phone calls in the middle of conversations with real people.

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Itineraries: Breaking a Travel Stereotype

As the ranks of business travelers grow more diverse, companies are catering more to women, as well as minorities and gay travelers. (Subscription required!)

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New era will test doctors' skill at pleasing consumers

12 MAY 2006 from BizJournals/Triangle Business Journal | Read the full story»

If consumer-driven plans live up to their potential, employers and insurers will pay less for health care.

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Why so stupid?

18 MAY 2006 from Management Issues | Read the full story»

Mankind has failed to learn how to think. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle came up with our current thought software 2,400 years ago.

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A Latte With Your Loan?

17 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The staid bank branch is getting a makeover. As competition for deposits intensifies, a number of banks are trying to capture customers' attention by revamping their buildings to look more like coffeehouses and retail boutiques, and less like the stodgy brick-and-mortar operations of old. (Subscription required!)

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Blog search engine to track postings about AP stories

The Associated Press announced two agreements Tuesday, one that will tie its news stories to the rapidly growing world of blogs...

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Are You Cut Out To Be a Consultant?

Now's a good time to jump into self-employment as an independent consultant.

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Company Asks U.S. to Provide Radio Space for Free Internet

A Silicon Valley company wants to build a high-speed wireless Internet network that would cover most of the country and be supported by advertising. (Subscription required!)

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My Book, By Me

How to subvert an industry for under $30.

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How Women Blog

The where/how women blog question is similar to where/how women shop. It can be influenced by a lot of different things. If a successful female entrepreneur is going through a particularly hard period of parenting, for example, those types of blogs will get her attention for a while. If she's struggling with a sales issue, she'll more likely be participating in that blog realm until she's found or derived the answer she needs.

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Essay: Promotional Intelligence

In a market dominated by the big chain stores, if a novel doesn't sell well in its first two weeks, its chances of gaining longer-term momentum are slim. (Subscription required!)

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College No Guarantee of Top-Dollar Pay

David Wessel, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, talks with Steve Inskeep about why having a college degree doesn't guarantee the pay graduates would like to see. (Audio)

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Is it worth your time to write a business book? - Kate

A group of researchers from RainToday.com explored the question: Is it worth the blood, sweat and tears required to write a business book?

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brand churn and burn

Is the rapidly increasing pace of information forcing us to cycle through brands and media faster? It's hard to say exactly, but there are a couple of research studies suggesting this might be the case.

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If It's All in a Name How Do You Find One?

It's not enough that a name be catchy, marketable and resonate with customers. It must also be available.

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Apple, Nike exercise iPods to track workouts

Apple and Nike have unveiled an iPod gizmo to put more rhythm in your run: the Nike+iPod Sports Kit...

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'JPod,' by Douglas Coupland: Insert: headline/jpod-coupland.rvw

Douglas Coupland's latest tour through a techno-literate but socially alienated universe. (Subscription required!)

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Choosing Life Over Career

Commentator Dana Goldman is a recent college graduate who decided to give up her job and make ends meet with part-time work. She made the switch because of peace and free time it gives her. (Audio)

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The New Economics of Renting a Car

17 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Rising gas prices are leading to some funky economics at the rental-car counter: Prices are dropping on SUVs and big luxury cars, and increasing for the cramped, compact models that are now in greater demand. (Subscription required!)

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More insurers reimburse doctors for online care

15 MAY 2006 from The Orlando Sentinel | Read the full story»

A growing number of health insurers are starting to pay doctors for the time they spend dealing with patients' medical problems via the Internet.

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Basic Instincts

A top-ten list of what makes brands cool — both naughty and nice. By Grant MacDonald, founding partner, North Castle.

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Executives Not Quite Hot to Blog

Blogosphere, smogosphere.

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References, resumes and interviews useless at predicting success

The vast majority of tools used to recruit workers fail completely to predict whether someone will be successful in a job, according to a study by British HR professionals.

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Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation

Sirota, Mischkind, and Meltzer suggest some ways individual managers can motivate employees...

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Building a Platform for Growth

Sometimes building growth in mature industries means more than simple product extensions or acquisitions. The answer? Develop "growth platforms" that extend your business into new domains. An excerpt from Harvard Business Review.

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Your wireless future

Your wireless future — Phones that get you into concerts, tell co-workers not to call now - or even display which friends are at a show. The next phase of the mobile revolution is about to begin. — (Business 2.0 Magazine)

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Invitation for 'silver surfers'

Older people across the UK are being given the chance to try out the internet as part of Silver Surfer Week.

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What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

The Book Review asked writers, critics and editors. Their answers may surprise you. (Subscription required!)

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See You Offline

Scott Heiferman saw the Internet as a way to get people off the Internet—and into his groups.

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After the Honeymoon

Much of my blog, and other information for entrepreneurs, focuses on creating new products, raising money, and building a successful startup. The advice stops there, and everyone lives happily ever after. Guess again.

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The Happiness Factor

The relationship between marketing and the all-American "pursuit of Happiness" is a potent one — and that can be both good and bad for brands and consumers alike...

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Nike Joga3 Football Vending Machine

We've been jogging past this machine for the last week now, reminding ourselves to bring a camera to take a snap of this vending machine offered by Nike...

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Seagate to Cut 6,000 Jobs

Seagate Technology, the maker of computer hard drives, said the job cuts would come as part of its just completed acquisition of the Maxtor Corporation. (Subscription required!)

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Open-Source Initiative Targets Bird Flu

16 MAY 2006 from eWeek.com | Read the full story»

In what's being hailed as an open-source initiative against a pandemic, some 20 global health organizations, universities and technology giant IBM are teaming up to figure out how computer technology can help respond to infectious disease outbreaks.

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The Web's Worst New Idea

18 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

If ever there was a solution in search of a problem, "Net neutrality" is it. Sometime recently, someone got up on the wrong side of bed and decided that the freedom that has been the hallmark of the Internet now threatens to destroy it. (Subscription required!)

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Baby boomers look to a working retirement

More and more Americans are working in their retirement or are planning a new retirement career - a phenomenon that it seems most employers have yet to pick up on.

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Armchair M.B.A.: Imitating to Compete, Not to Flatter

The chief executive of an outsourcing company says it can compete against giants like I.B.M. partly by borrowing American-style management techniques. (Subscription required!)

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Do Women Just Want to Have Fun?

Videogames have typically been seen as a teenage-boy thing, but in fact the largest U.S. platform for gaming—the mobile phone—is owned by roughly 100 million women.

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"Why It's Better Not Being CEO" by Scott McNealy

6. "I shave even less often."

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Pols Hire Web-Savvy Staffers

Veteran politicians are reaching out to voters with podcasts, blogs and web videos, and they're hiring young whizkids to help them do it.

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Putting all workers in the computer

Lawmakers are considering a national employment database that would allow employers to verify whether workers are in the country legally. BusinessWeek's Aaron Bernstein talks with host Cheryl Glaser about the plan. (Audio)

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Timeshifting & Placeshifting Hiring Interviews

Hirevue sends a Webcam and a standard set of questions to each candidate to record the interview. The candidate is allowed 30 seconds to read the question and 2 minutes to answer it.

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John Parkinson on How to Manage Corporate Innovation

Can you have too much innovation? Yes, when the company isn't prepared to handle all those good ideas.

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Drilling Down: A Do-It-Herself Trend at the Big-Box Stores

In 2003, a purchaser of a kitchen cabinet was far more likely to be a man, but in 2005, such a buyer was almost as likely to be a woman. (Subscription required!)

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Habitat for Humanity's Plans to Modernize

Habitat for Humanity's new CEO is aiming to modernize the nonprofit.

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Plato, Kant, Homer

Funny, yes. But the Simpsons answers life's big questions.

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Does Your Small Business Need a Blog?

15 MAY 2006 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

It seems as if everyone has one, and experts say they're a great marketing tool. But is the time commitment worth it?

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The ABC's of Beginning Your Blog

18 MAY 2006 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Once you determine blogging makes sense for your small business, here's how to get started.

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Taking Back the Weekend: Companies Help Employees Cut Back on Overwork

18 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

At a time when most employers are piling on more work, a small but growing number of companies, including Alcan, Cummins, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Texas Instruments and International Business Machines, are actually taking steps to reduce workloads. While corporate efforts to streamline work aren't new, the latest moves are different in two ways. They are driven by employee dissatisfaction, not budget-cutting. And they have two purposes -- not only increasing productivity, but improving work-life balance. (Subscription required!)

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VC Nation: A Few Signs of Froth Do Not a Bubble Make

Sure there are parallels between today and the late 1990's. And there are plenty of significant differences as well. (Subscription required!)

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Give Your Boss an Earful

Comedian and tech evangelist Heather Gold harnesses the transparency of open-source software and online communities to keep businesses honest with themselves -- and their employees. Webmonkey interview by Bryan Zilar.

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CEO roundtable: Top tech players sound off about evolving industry

The communications industry is getting flipped on its head and turned inside out. To talk about these changes, USA TODAY assembled...

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But is it CB Radio?

If you're over 40, you need to ask yourself the question, "did you have a CB radio?"

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New Services May Bring The End of Cold Calling

Entrepreneurs are discovering that software tools and online services such as LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Spoke and others can help generate sales leads without the usual legwork and the often-inefficient cold calling.

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Feeds 2.0: Are you hungry for personalized RSS?

What sounds cool to me is how feeds can be sliced and diced for presentation by feed by feed basis, or by all content in reverse chronological order, or - if turned on - by personalization.

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'Crazy' Jack Ma Set to Dominate The World

Or at the very least make his China-based Alibaba a global e-commerce force.

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Wireless boost for British cities

A dozen UK cities are getting wireless internet zones as part of a project by telecoms giant BT.

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HOWTO play the spoons

When my wife was a small child, she'd sometimes pick up the spoons to sit in with her great uncle's bluegrass band in Kentucky. Every so often, I can still get her to give me a roll or two. Now I'm going to try to learn by following the directions on this site.
Link

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Picture Yourself Here: Help Women See Themselves With Your Brand

Women are looking for common ground. Their relational brains need a starting point from which to launch a possible long term connection with your brand. So, the question becomes: are you laying the groundwork for this to happen?

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Eyeballing the new 24/7 Apple store in NY

It's just an empty glass box now, but this site will become the world's most powerful nerd magnet tomorrow. Expect to see geeks flying through the air towards it, whoosh! over Manhattan, like steel dust drawn to a neodymium disc.

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Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue

Since it opened its first two stores five years ago today, the Apple chain has become a retailing phenomenon. (Subscription required!)

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How Apple's Store Strategy Beat the Odds

17 MAY 2006 from The Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

When Apple Computer Inc. opened its first Apple retail store in 2001 in a shopping mall in McLean, Va., critics saw the initiative as an expensive, dubious gamble. But as Apple prepares to take the wraps off its latest, most ambitious store yet -- on New York's Fifth Avenue, opposite the Plaza Hotel and Bergdorf Goodman -- there are few doubters left about Chief Executive Steve Jobs's retail strategy. (Subscription required!)

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No break for small business

The SEC announced yesterday it will not exempt small businesses from strict Sarbanes-Oxley accounting standards meant to prevent Enron-style fraud. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports. (Audio)

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Tip of the Spear: Leadership Lessons from the U.S.-led Armed Forces in the Middle East

The Pentagon recently invited a group of 43 civilians, including Michael Useem, director of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management, to witness the management and leadership of its Central Command, which is responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Nailing the Interview

Will Hemlinger, hiring and retention expert and president of Your Hire Authority, shares his tips on how to make the most out of your interviewing experience.

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Economic Scene: A Contrarian Look at Whether U.S. Chief Executives Are Overpaid

A new paper suggests that the higher salaries for chief executives can largely be explained by increases in the value of the stock market. (Subscription required!)

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Flexibility

The one thing that's certain about your marketing plan, your products, hey, even your life is that it won't turn out the way you planned.

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Dealing with comment threads at blogs

Comments at blogs are tricky. Dunstan at 1976design.com points out that blog comments move "in a linear hoppity-skip way that makes a consistent flow of discussion almost impossible to maintain." So he came up with a system that lets people mark which comment they’re replying to so poeple can follow disparate threads of conversation.

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Mobile schools

Mobile School is a Belgian foundation that provides portable schools for street children. Instead of taking homeless children and placing them in an institutional setting, which often doesn't work, the Mobile School reaches out to children in their own environment.

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the best thing since sliced bread

The Pop Art Toaster brands your toast with whimsical and somewhat corny images. But imagine the possibilities. Here are some ideas that might make you gag: Imagine buying a hot dog at the ball game and it reads Coca Cola.

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Profit is not a dirty word

The concept and pursuit of profit is coming under increasing threat in the West from hostile special interest groups and governments, one of Britain's leading industrialists has warned.

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A New Tool for Resurrecting an Old Theory of the Firm

It's one of the oldest, most fundamental ideas in management theory: that executives should understand how the many distinct functional components of a firm -- production, distribution, product mix, human resources -- interrelate to achieve the proper fit. In recent years, however, this notion of comprehending the "part-whole" relationship of the firm fell out of favor as thinkers turned to other concepts -- such as relying on core competencies to attain competitive advantage.

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Can RSS Be Monetized?

The trick is finding a problem that it solves (and consumers know they need solved).

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