Impressive Video about the Consumption Society
Here is “The Story of Stuff”: an excellent video about the consumption society and about how we are destroying our planet. It criticizes specially the United States.
At least the end is kind of positive because it mentions some “green” trends taking place…
The Most Innovative Firms By Industry
Business Week published the list of the most innovative firms by industry. A useful source to use when you have to analyze business models by industry.
The Adaptation of Music Stores to the Times of Internet
An interesting article in Business Week talks about this adaptation, with the example of Other Music.
Inteview with Don Tapscott
A very interesting conversation with Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics.
Some of the topics covered:
The relationship between technology and business.
“The Perfect Storm”: The changes in technology (Internet), demographics, society, and economics.
The paradigm shifts.
Music should be a service, not a good.
The power of mass collaboration.
Opening the boundaries of the companies.
Google is a digital conglomerate with software, advertising, media, retail, financial services…
Adaptation to the environment. Example: IBM: “we are not gonna fight linux, we are gonna embrace it”.
The new way of building a jumbo jet (Boeing).
Leadership for change.
Peter Senge - The learning organization.
Government applications. Clinton and the conversation about the digital divide. The citizen engagement.
“We have always done it this way.”
Customization - The prosumers.
University - The same way of doing things - From a teacher focus to a student focus.
An interview with Kevin Roberts
An interview with Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, has been published by Knowledge at Wharton.
Kevin provides very interesting concepts. For example:
Brands were invented to charge premiums.
The power has switched from the big companies (such as P&G) to big retailers (such as Walmart) to the consumer.
There are three things that we think make a “lovemark”: mystery, sensuality and intimacy, words that are never used in an MBA program.
You cannot find insight and foresight in data analysis.
New Zeland is a great place to live.
We recommend reading (or listening) the whole story clicking here.
Great article about Freeconomics
A great article about businesses that are free has been published by Wired. One of the most remarkable concepts is that free is very different from charging one cent.
The story about Gillette is very interesting too.
Other authors that have talked about the free economy are the writers of Funky Business and Karaoke Capitalism.
The Middle Class is Growing
With the growth of China and India, the middle class is growing in the world. One of the consequences of this growth is the increasing price of food and other products. This great article explains this phenomenon with more details.
The Most Important Products of 2007
According to an article published in Business Week, many of the most important products of 2007 were cell phones, monitors and cars. The top player seems to be Apple, which had four of the most important products, including the iPhone, a new Mac, Apple TV and Apple Leopard.
The Declination of the CD
An interesting article published in The Economist talks about the transformation of the music industry. It says that “In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs.”
The article also talks about how the major firms are facing the situation.
“The Rise and the Fall of the Shopping Mall”
The Economist published a very interesting article about how Shopping Centers are disappearing in the US, or at least changing their public. It seems that the changes in the habits of the different social classes and races of the US, are having an influence on the development, the nature, and the declination of Shopping Malls.
Compensate Inefficacy With Inmorality
This seems to be the piece of advice given by an article published in the last North American edition of The Economist. It is surprising, coming from such a prestigious magazine.
Must we, then, also follow the recommendations of the book “The Prince
Do we live in a world in which the role model are the characters of Dilbert?
The Future Of Software
According to this article from Knowledge at Wharton, the future of software is much related to the Internet.
Particularly, this seems to be a great challenge for Microsoft, the king of off line software.
On the one hand, Google has its own Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, already online (Google Docs).
On the other hand, there are others threats for Microsoft. IBM for example, has launched its own “Office” open source software partnering with Google, as the New York Times informs (OpenOffice.org).
Should Microsoft go online with its software to survive?
