A Risky Investment April 18, 2007
Posted by Charley S in Idiocy.5 comments
When most people think of investing, one of the most important factors is risk. A basic rule is that the more risk you take, the higher the potential is that you will have a high return. So, for normal people who don’t want risk they put their money in a mutual fund or a money market account; if people want risk they may invest directly into stocks. The investors in this article have a very different conception of risk. They are looking to start a 5 star hotel in the middle of the green zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Here, there is a lot more risk than we are usually used to. There is the danger that the country will collapse, no one will actually visit the hotel, suicide bombers, truck bombers, and random bullets flying into peoples rooms. The people in charge state that security will be the most important part of the hotel, and who can argue. They also state that there is currently a market for this product (which will cost $1500 a night) who as of right now live in standards comparable to a highway motel in the U.S. I’m not entirely sure what I think about this business idea, but I know that I probably would not invest all my life savings into it right now. These investors are placing their trust in the Iraqi government to be stable for a long time, which I am not too keen on.
How far does the internet go? April 17, 2007
Posted by Abby in Internet, Technology, innovation.5 comments
It’s amazing what you can find on the internet. It’s only been 1 day since the Virginia Tech tragedy, and already there are all kinds of things that have been published about the student. His assignments for a Creative Writing class, and scripts have all been made public online. There is an audience for it too, everyone seems to be hungry to find out what his motivations were.
If we simply looked back, perhaps 5 years, none of this would be available. Online documents/readings/files of another student. The curiosity of the public, and how much they want to know is slowly affecting the design and abilities of the internet.
On a separate note, in my ‘Topics in Gender Studies’ class, we were discussing porn. Our professor mentioned that it is the porn industry and it’s technicians that are the driving force creating new technologies for the web. This is an example of how a market drives what technologies need to be created, and how technicians might be inspired and given new ideas.
Update (4/18)
Here is a little section from a reading that I have for this English class, relating to the internet and developing technologies:
“The Internet and all sex trade, tourism, trafficking and pornography are experiencing unprecedented growth. Donna Hughes claims that “the Internet as a communications medium would exist without the sex industry, but the Internet industry would not be growing and expanding at its present rate without the sex industry” (2000:36). In 1998, it was estimated that 69 percent of the total Internet content sales were related to adult content (Hughes 2000). Jonathon Coopersmith reminds us that what is driving the transformation of the sex industry technology has been “the great capitalist engines of innovation and the quest for profits” (28). Internet pornography has become the highest growth, highest profit market ever known (Hughes; Coopersmith). “
- ‘E-Brides: The Mail-Order Bride Industry and the Internet’ by Julie Pehar
Internet Advertising April 17, 2007
Posted by Stacey Swift in advertising.4 comments
As I was searching through websites looking for news to make a post, I was overwhelmed with the number of pop up adds, so I decided to do a post on that instead. As I typed in Businessweek.com I was brought to a page on the Hilton, I was trying to get out of it and clicked in the center of the page, and it brought me to a page on Hilton vacations. Do you experience the same problems when you are trying to search the web. How about the pop up adds that say, “Congratulations you have won $10,000, click here for your prize!” Do you ever fall for these? Google’s recent acquisition of Double Click must mean Internet advertising really does work.
Have you ever been persuaded to purchase something from Internet advertising? I personally avoid them at all cost. Also, if you were a company how much would you be willing to pay to advertise online?
Leaders April 17, 2007
Posted by wilson7 in Workplaces.3 comments
In my Management 312 class we were talking about leadership and leaders today and I just wanted to get some feedback on the type of people you hope to work for in the future. What traits or characteristic would you like your boss to have? Would you like him/her to be the charming, jeans-wearing CEO whose dramatic unveiling of the Apple iPhone in January drove the stock up 8 percent by day’s end? Or is he/she been chronicled in several books, the classic jerk boss, notorious for belittling subordinates and business partners? Most people would say they would want the charming easy-going boss who knows how to talk to people but some individuals just do not respond to this type of boss. A number of employees need someone always looking over their shoulder making sure they are doing the right thing. What kind of employee are you?
A perfect boss doesn’t take care of those who work for him. He is much more effective than that. The perfect boss treats those who work for him as if they were his most important suppliers. Which, of course, they are. Their supply of services is his biggest personal dependency.
http://codingslave.blogspot.com/2005/10/q-what-is-perfect-boss.html
CEOs and top managers should be authentic, considerate, sensitive, and modest, as well as creative, smart, and strategically brilliant. It would be wonderful if workplaces were filled with leaders who behaved as polite, mature adults. Despite their track records of success, Apple, Oracle, and
Hollywood studios have lost a lot of talent to nasty behavior. But utopia is impossible, which is why management consultants and authors should stop talking so much about how to find an ideal leader and instead focus on placing people into jobs that play to their strengths – and where their flaws won’t be fatal.
Being Rich is Not An Easy Goal April 17, 2007
Posted by Elaine in Consumers, Finances, Public Interest.7 comments
I have heard once that the majority of adolescents had said that their ultimate goal is to become rich in life. So many people have the same goal, yet only a certain percentage are ever able to achieve this. I came across an interesting article that features a young couple, both earning a combined six-digit income. They want the typical American lifestyle, get married, buy a house, and put money away for their kids’ education. These hard-working Americans however, only have a few hundred dollars in their savings account and approximately $40,000 in debt.
This is the normal trend for people these days. With the ability to “buy now, pay later,” credit accumulates tremendously. Everyone wants the American life with their own house early on in their lives, and hence, they spend and buy things on credit.
CNN money gives us advice on how to prevent this crisis. Start saving early. It seems like common sense, but it is actually much harder than it sounds. Most people spend their money on things, and leave their “leftovers” in their savings account. This is apparently the wrong way to go about it. We should put a set percentage in our savings account, and then pay off other things. If we invest $10,000 at age 30, it will grow to $100,000 by retirement. If we waited to invest this $10,000 at age 40, it will only grow to about half of that.
This article makes me think that it is never too early to start saving. It sounds like a foolproof plan, but do we have the discipline as American consumers to do so?
How Much Control Do You Have Over Employees? April 17, 2007
Posted by Elaine in Business-Society Issues, Employees.2 comments
I came across an article that featured an employer wondering what she can do about her workers that smoked cigarettes. Insurance companies charge a higher rate for employees that smoke. Employees obviously do not smoke at their workplace, but some do when they are off the clock. Is it fair for the employee to require that her workers do not smoke at all? It would save the company a tremendous amount of money in the insurance department.
Unfortunately for the employer, there are laws stating you cannot discriminate an applicant for their activities outside of the work place. This includes risky behavior such as bungee jumping, sky diving, etc. I remember watching the movie “Along Came Polly.” The guy’s job was to calculate how much insurance/risk each person was worth. His client would partake in extreme activities such as parachuting, hand-gliding, and free falls. He would constantly be stressed out and warned his client that he was too expensive to insure. Are there laws stating that you cannot limit the activities an individual can do just because of insurance purposes?
Helping out the employer, there are laws that allow them to pass the higher costs of insurance over to the smoker. Instead of being discriminated against and now allowed to have the job, these workers just have to pay the additional insurance money. Is this a fair practice?
No More Meetings April 17, 2007
Posted by wilson7 in Technology, telecommunications.4 comments
When we graduate from Bucknell we are all going to have to be present in meetings with our colleagues to discuss new products, marketing plans, ect. How many of you think that you are going to enjoy these long office meetings? What if you did not have to go to these conferences but still be able to get the necessary information? You could listen to the conference whenever was convenient for you, would you like this? I think that everyone’s answer would be yes. The world still isn’t perfect, but a few conference-call companies are definitely moving it in the right direction: New podcasting services allow the meeting-intolerant to subscribe to in-house meeting feeds. LiveOffice, a traditional conference-call provider, racked up more than 100,000 subscriber downloads in 2006 after launching its podcast service in late August. In fact, usage grew about 30 percent each month, the company says.
“People want to do business on their own time,” explains LiveOffice CEO Alexander Rusich.
“There is an absolute need for [podcasting],” agrees Elliot Gold, president of TeleSpan, a teleconferencing-industry consulting firm.
LiveOffice isn’t alone in the podcast game. Free Conferencing is among the rival call providers that have gotten into the act, and startups like TalkShoe, which originally focused on bloggers, have begun signing up businesses that want to record and distribute their meetings; TalkShoe plans to add a video version next year. What do you think about this new technology? Would you spend some of your hard earned dollars so you would not have to sit in conference meetings?
From Beauty to Business April 17, 2007
Posted by Kira in First Mover, Liability of Newness, advertising.1 comment so far
My first choice for a summer internship is at Conde Nast. Therefore, I was especially interested to learn more about the debut of its new publication, Portfolio. The headline in today’s New York Times entitled “In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine” caught my eye. The article happens to be about Conde Nast’s new business magazine called Portfolio. The magazine is an “unmistakable stablemate of Conde Nast’s Vogue and Vanity Fair.” According to the publisher David Carey, Conde Nast wants to “capture the glamour” in their new business magazine. The company first announced that they would put out a business magazine, its biggest single investment in a start-up, in September of 2005 when many other magazines such as BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Fortune were having trouble. Traditional business magazines have had trouble communicating the excitement in the realm of business to its readers. The chairman of Conde Nast states in the article that he doesn’t think that Portfolio is “going to trample on Forbes or Fortune. I think we’re going to help the whole field. We’re going to bring excitement to it, and we’re going to bring luxury and fashion advertisers into it.”
The article also mentions that Kurt Eichenwald, the author of my Theorize This book, has been hired to write for the magazine. Also, the magazine’s website managing editor said it expects that its bloggers will post three and five times a day- just another example of where to find more people blogging about business!
With the positive response from business articles in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, I think a new start-up business magazine is a great idea for Conde Nast. At a time when other business magazines are having trouble, Portfolio may be wise to enter into the market since competition may be less than usual. Adding excitement and fashion into a business magazine may prove to be a great first-mover advantage for the company. With many other successful magazines that Conde Nast publishes, the company already has an established structure and relationship with suppliers and customers that will be to their advantage with their new magazine.
However, there are always associated liabilities of newness with first-mover advantages. People may not like the idea of reading a business magazine that is combined with fashion and luxury. I think with Conde Nast’s reputation as a company that is a publishing powerhouse they will sign up many subscribers- both existing and new. If the new magazine does fall victim to the liabilities of newness, Conde Nast has so many other magazine lines that it should not really impact the company that much. This reminds me of a generalist strategy- if the business magazine does not succeed, then Conde Nast still has all of their beauty, fashion, and fitness magazines to rely on.
I personally get bored of reading plain cut and dry business magazines and I am excited to see the first issue of Portfolio. What is your reaction to this non-traditional business magazine? Would you read it, why or why not? Do you think this will be more of a first-mover advantage or liability of newness for Conde Nast?
Home Depot Ups the Ante on Green Labeling April 17, 2007
Posted by Jordi in Retail, environment, sustainable development.2 comments
Does the success of deep environment-human change hinge on winning the hearts (do they have nay?) and minds of the Fortune 500? Here is another example of corporations finding two kinds of green.
Home Depot to Display an Environmental Label – New York Times
The initiative — which is expected to include 6,000 products by 2009, representing 12 percent of the chain’s sales — would become the largest green labeling program in American retailing and could persuade competitors to speed up their own plans.
I am curious to see what this does to pricing and also cost structure for Home Depot.
SEC open to introduce arbitration April 16, 2007
Posted by Brian Mulligan in Finances.1 comment so far
Companies paid out just shy of 5 million dollars in shareholder’s lawsuits in 2000 and in 2006, US companies shelled out over 17 million dollars in lawsuits ranging from securities fraud and accounting irregularities. The sudden jump in money paid to shareholders and clients involved in disputes between the company and them has sparked the SEC to take action and consider opening the door to arbitration.
Arbitration is defined by Yahoo.com as:
The process by which the parties to a dispute submit their differences to the judgment of an impartial person or group appointed by mutual consent or statutory provision.
This move will allow companies to settle their disputes with the shareholder’s outside of the court room or in non-jury settings. This will mitigate the cost of court fees for the company and the shareholders, but consumer’s are unhappy about the power that this change will give the companies. They feel that the SEC is siding with the companies and taking the power to sue away from the shareholder, but this may have been a long time coming.
In the past, some companies, mainly brokerage firms, have made client side agreement in their contracts that allow for arbitration. The chairman of the SEC is shooting the limit excess securities litigation that has skyrocketed in this country. As mentioned before, the consumer feels that this empowers the company because in a arbitration talk, the company can withhold information and are conducted in private.
The SEC has planned to satisfy the consumer as well. They are considering a radical change to shareholder’s involvement in the actual company. The SEC staff is studying whether corporations should be permitted to amend their bylaws to allow for arbitration, a change that in some cases might require shareholder approval. Also, the SEC is considering whether companies should allow shareholders to vote in ballot on the board of directors, etc.
The SEC’s move has sparked controversy in the financial world. As quoted from an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “SEC Explores Opening Door to Arbitration,”
If the move toward arbitration gathers steam, some consumer groups may worry that by curbing shareholder litigation, the nation will lose a powerful deterrent to corporate wrongdoing. Individual shareholders might also have to incur the expense of hiring a lawyer, rather than simply signing on as a member of a class.
The SEC would then have the challenge of deciding how to protect the shareholder in the arbitration process. This change was very interesting to see how the SEC is trying to change how clients, shareholders and companies interact. Do you think that SEC should continue pursuing this? Any recommendations for other changes that can be made by the SEC to help lower settlement costs for the company?
