Archive for the ‘business’ Category

Adaptation Fail

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In 1982, the management consultants Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published In Search of Excellence, a colossally popular business title. The book aimed to learn lessons from the world’s best companies, and Peters and Waterman produced a list of 43. But just a couple of years after In Search of Excellence had been published, BusinessWeek ran a cover story with the simple title: "Oops! Who’s Excellent Now?" Almost a third of the companies singled out for praise by Peters and Waterman were in financial trouble.

My aim isn’t to mock Peters and Waterman, but to point out that the rise and fall of business models is an unavoidable part of economic growth. In a complex world, things fail - a lot. According to the economist Paul Ormerod, 10 percent of U.S. firms go bankrupt every year. Ormerod - an iconoclastic figure who enjoys beating fellow economists at their own game, mathematics - has studied the statistical patterns that emerge from these bankruptcies. He thinks they suggest that failure and success in business are far more random than our culture of CEO-worship would have us believe.

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Posted: May 13th, 2011
at 9:24pm by mnp


Categories: business,weaponry,development,entrepreneurship,fail,innovation

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The Tech Community’s Diversity Problem

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Take gender diversity, for one thing. By most counts, the average open source project has 49 male participants for every female participant. Women at conferences - rare enough already! - are assumed to be significant others, designers or visitors from planet marketing, with disastrous consequences for all involved.

This is a problem, for lots of reasons. The worst is that it’s self-perpetuating - women will (wisely!) avoid hostile environments, and through some broken-window-like mechanism, environments without women will quickly become environments that are hostile to women. (The same holds for other visible minorities.)

In discussions about "how to fix this", community leaders often appear to be at a loss, unsure how to progress. Their early efforts are often met by criticism on both sides - techies have a strong libertarian streak that tilts at all sorts of windmills, and the women who do "blaze trails" aren’t always much better than the men. (In fields like physics, chemistry and finance - fields dominated by men for ages - which are, these days, however, beating our numbers by a wide margin - the first generation of women to brave the hostilities and pierce the glass ceiling are often later generations’ harshest critics. "What? You want to have a career and a family? I didn’t have that option. Why should you? You’ll need to learn to drink scotch and smoke cigars like I did, or you’re through.")

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Shopping Malls Make You Buy

Marc Fennell:

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Posted: May 13th, 2011
at 5:14pm by mnp


Categories: business,architecture

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5 Types of Internet Users

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.:michaeldhopkins.posterous.com->

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Posted: May 13th, 2011
at 10:12am by mnp


Categories: web,business,"ninja",development

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The Economics of Digital Journalism

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How journalism is changing, or will change, a primer.

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Posted: May 12th, 2011
at 4:26pm by mnp


Categories: business,et cetera,development

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University Startups

Gary Will argues that less than 10 percent of startups are commercialized at universities.

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Posted: May 5th, 2011
at 11:13am by mnp


Categories: business,development,education,entrepreneurship,innovation

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My Ninja, Please! 5.5.11 : Grade Gambling

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A new website allows students to gamble on the grades that they are going to get at college- something doesn’t sound right here!

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Posted: May 5th, 2011
at 8:16am by mnp


Categories: myninjaplease,web,business,education

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Hotelling the Office

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An office for each employee makes people happier, helps ergonomics and privacy.

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Posted: May 2nd, 2011
at 2:32pm by mnp


Categories: business,architecture,development,jobs

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Corporate Ecosystem Valuation at WRI

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Business and environmental leaders are participating in an event at the World Resources Institute to discuss the new Guide to Corporate Ecosystem Valuation (CEV) and how businesses can incorporate ecosystem valuation into their planning and financial analysis. The event is being hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Tuesday, May 3 from 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

.:wri.org->

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Posted: April 28th, 2011
at 5:34pm by mnp


Categories: green,business,development,events

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