From the forum - Business Readings

http://www.think-grow.biz/Forum.html#/20100629/business-52535/

(JUNE)


- Knowledge@Wharton: How group dynamics may be killing innovation
o Authority, groupthink, compliance, peer pressure and other factors reduce innovation and divergent thinking: self censorship, and buildups (tendency to suggest new ideas that are similar to what has already been proposed).


- Knowledge@Wharton: Can Twitter promote itself into Profitability
o Twitter is starting a new system to try and move into profitability, and starbucks is one of the early companies trying it.
o “Twitter has had plenty of success at gaining public exposure. According to an Edison Research/Arbitron study conducted in February, 87% of Americans 12 and older know what Twitter is -- about the same number as those who were aware of Facebook. But while 41% of that group actively used Facebook, only 7% were actually sending updates to Twitter.”
o Marketing professor Christophe Van den Bulte is more blunt: "I am not an attention-seeking narcissist," he wrote in an email. "I am not interested in being kept up to date about the actions or opinions of attention-seeking narcissists, and I am not interested in being swamped by waves of too-short-to-be-thoughtful messages."


- Interview with Cisco’s CEO on the future of leardership (NEWSWEEK)


- Jim Pulcrano (IMD): An inside look at silicon valey – why is it still a cradle of innovation and entrepreneurship
o It’s this concentration of creativity, innovation and optimism that makes Silicon Valley one of the best places in the world to learn about what it means to be an entrepreneur
o 15 or even 50 years later? My guess is that, underneath everything, very little will have changed. It will still be the home to entrepreneurs and technologists from around the world; it will still be a place where curiosity and possibility shape people’s thinking.


- Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge: Improving brand recognition in TV Ads
o Studies and assesses different strategies that can be used to improve the brand benefits of TV advertising, considering the low attention and retention rates that are normally associated with these types of ads


- The Economist: Economics Focus: “You’ve been framed – Consumers are suckers for ‘special’ deals that are costlier than they appear.
o A new study* for the Office of Fair Trading, Britain’s main competition-policy watchdog, seems to confirm that the way prices are presented, or “framed”, can tempt consumers into error.
o They tested responses to five different price frames:
 “drip pricing”, where only part of the price is revealed at first and extra charges are levied as the sale progresses (think of buying an airline ticket online);
 “sales”, where the price is contrasted with a higher price (was $2, now $1);
 “complex pricing”, such as three-for-two offers, where the unit price has to be worked out;
 “baiting”, where a cheap deal is advertised but restricted to a few lucky shoppers; and
 “time-limited offers” that are available for a short period.


- The Economist: The future of the tablet computer:
o They are unlikely to edge out established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks.
o ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.


- The Economist: Internet Domains: Host with most and least popular domains
o The extensions with the biggest number of domains are:
 ‘.net’ ~265 Million
 ‘.com’ ~ 147 Million
 ‘.jp’ ~54 Million
o The biggest generic top-level domains are .edu, used by education institutions across the world, and .mil, which is used only by the American military. At the other end of the scale, only 47 hosts with the Afghanistan suffix .af were recorded, fewer than the Holy See's 67. Iraq and North Korea are even less popular, ranking joint 251st and 261st out of a possible 268 domains. And two went unused: .sj and .pm


- The Economist: Work in the digital age: A clouded future
o Online services that match freelancers with piecework are growing in hard times
o millions of workers are embracing freelancing as an alternative to full-time employment or because they cannot find salaried jobs. According to IDC, a market-research firm, there were around 12m full-time, home-based reelancers and independent contractors in America alone at the end of last year and there will be 14m by 2015. Experts reckon this number will keep rising for several reasons, including a sluggish jobs market and workers’ growing desire for the flexibility to be able to look after parents or children.
o Technology is also driving the trend. Over the past few years a host of fast-growing firms such as Elance, oDesk and LiveOps have begun to take advantage of “the cloud”—tech-speak for the combination of ubiquitous fast internet connections and cheap, plentiful web-based computing power—to deliver sophisticated software that makes it easier to monitor and manage remote workers. Maynard Webb, the boss of LiveOps, which runs virtual call centres with an army of over 20,000 home workers in America, says the company’s revenue exceeded $125m in 2009. He is confidently expecting a sixth year of double-digit growth this year.


- The economist: China’s Electric bicycle boom: The Chinese authorities weigh the pros and cons of motorised bicycles
o local output grew from a few thousand bikes a year less than a decade ago to more than 22m last year, along with millions of kits to turn ordinary bicycles into electric ones. Annual sales have reached about $11 billion.

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