Seth Godin on Social Entrepreneurship

The video below is a short video of Seth Godin speaking to college students. He focuses on social entrepreneurship and the ability of young people to make a difference in the world. It is a great video. Check it out:



Source: http://ow.ly/hvxT

Danny

Is Free the New Price of Information?

The theory is that information products over time will trend lower and eventually be free. Is this a valid theory?

Researcher and author Malcolm Gladwell looks into this:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell

Danny

India's Growth

Hi everyone,

Here are a couple of interesting articles about the growth taking place in India, particularly in the retail sector. Two very different articles. The first discusses Wal-Mart's expansion into India. Wal-Mart does business in a unique way, closer to Costco here. This has helped people feel safer about protecting smaller businesses.

Article from Washington Post here.

Source: Carpe Diem

The second article looks at how America retail chains are facing knockoff imitation companies as they aim to expand to India.

Article form the New York Times here.

Enjoy!
Danny

Why Not to Use Wikipedia on College Papers

Source:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-05-08/

Be Careful What You Promise

One of my favorite philosophies of business is to under-promise and over-deliver. That way your customers are always delighted. It's easy to get away from this and start promising more than you can deliver on. Sometimes this happens unexpectedly. A great case recently was when KFC offered a special through Oprah. The response overwhelmed them and they couldn't meet the demand. In the end, the promotional campaign may have hurt them more than it helped.

Article:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/05/08/oprah.kfc.coupon/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Danny

Why Things are Broken

Sometimes things are broken and you don't even realize it. They seem to be working, just because that's how they've always been done; that is, until you look at them from a logical perspective. Seth Godin opens our eyes to some of these broken things in life.

This is a great video. Funny and informative. Enjoy:

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Source:
http://gelconference.com/videos/2006/seth_godin/

Danny

Canadians in Debt

Canadians have, in general, not fallen into as significant of a debt trap as our American neighbors. That's changing as over the past 10 years, the average debt level for Canadians has increased significantly.

Check out the article here:
http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/06/03/indebted-canadians/

Danny

How Real is the Hawthorne Effect?

In most Management classes (and somewhat in our Human Resources class) we talk about something known as "The Hawthorne Effect". Basically, this theory is based on studies conducted in the 1920s. The study originally set out to compare productivity changes based on changes in factory lighting. They found that productivity improved, not because of any lighting impact, but because people knew they were being observed. So attention caused increased productivity....

Or did it?

The economist looks at how further analysis of the data accumulated in the 1920s, may be bringing a different understanding today:

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13788427&fsrc=rss

Danny

Fast-food Restaurants in China

Check out this interesting video from CNN. It discuss the growth of fast-food in China. I love the fact that one of the people interviewed likes to eat fast-food because it's healthy... They are getting improved sanitation in the food preparation, in exchange for increased obesity.




Danny
Source Video: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/06/05/chang.ctw.china.fast.food.cnn

Touch Screens on Your Computer

One of the technological trends in computing technology is the use of touch screen monitors for computers. It's an interesting trend because it physically changes the way we use computers.

Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/technology/03touch.html

Danny