الأحد، 10 نوفمبر 2013

Who's Hiring The Most This Holiday Season

For America’s 11.3 million job seekers, the holidays offer a potential respite. Companies like Kohl’s JCPenney and Toys R Us currently have thousands of positions open for seasonal employees.



According to a survey of 2,100 hiring managers and human resource pro’s, 39% of retailers plan to hire holiday help this year, up from 36% last year. In addition, employers in information technology (18%), leisure and hospitality (16%) and financial services (16%) plan to hire seasonal staff.


Holiday wages aren’t great, but at least more than half of employers, 51%, plan to pay $10 or more per hour. The news is especially good for students: Some 45% of employers say they tend to hire college students over other types of workers, even including experienced worker who are not retired (34%).


Though many employers have already hired a share of their holiday workers, we asked Indeed, the Google-like search engine for jobs, to pull together listings from company websites and online job boards and compile a list of companies with the most listings for jobs right now at companies with 2,500 or more employees.


Because some employers have already filled holiday positions and others haven’t yet determined how many workers they will ultimately hire for the holidays, the numbers are not exact. Also, retail employers like Sears and The Gap often list a single job, like cashier or sales associate, when they mean to hire multiple employees for those positions, so there may be even more openings than the big numbers here suggest. Many of the listings don’t distinguish seasonal positions from permanent full-time jobs. But this is fresh data, and gives a rough idea of where the jobs are this holiday season.


Big box retailers take nine out of the ten slots on the list. Even while consumers continue to browse in stores and then buy online, enough people are picking up their sweaters, toasters and flat-screen TVs in person that recently-struggling chains like Best Buy have managed to survive and even thrive, at least for the moment. The last time I was in The Gap, there was a long line for the register. The Gap lists more than 10,000 jobs at the moment. Best Buy lists 6,300.


The one company in the top ten that’s not a retailer is Crossmark, the sales and marketing services company based in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The top-listed jobs, like “In-store Demo Event Specialist,” and “Merchandiser Retail Representative,” are related to retailing, which makes sense as the holiday buying season gets more intense.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/11/05/whos-hiring-the-most-this-holiday-season-3/

السبت، 9 نوفمبر 2013

Did Instagram Sell To Facebook Too Early?

Answer by Marc Bodnick, Leader of Quora business & community teams, Co-Founder of Elevation Partners, on Quora,



Marc Bodnick, Co-Founder, Elevation Partners



With Twitter’s public market cap of $20+ billion and Facebook's at $100+ billion, it now seems pretty clear that:



  • Instagram sold way too early and should have turned down acquisition offers and stayed independent.

  • Had Instagram stayed independent, it would have had a very good shot at a Twitter or even FB-sized outcome.

  • History may remember the FB/Instagram deal as the only time when a great, market-leading consumer internet company decided to sell when it didn’t have to.

  • Facebook’s aggressive strategy to acquire Instagram was a masterstroke — arguably the most brilliant acquisition ever in Consumer Internet. Previously, Google's acquisition of YouTube would have held this title, but Instagram is arguably more important.


More thoughts:


Instagram has an extraordinarily strategic and valuable competitive position.


Instagram is valuable because:



  • It dominates stranger-to-stranger social photos. By “stranger-to-stranger,” I mean products that connect people who don’t know each other. Tumblr is another product that people use for stranger-to-stranger photosharing.

  • Given the strength of Instagram’s competitive position, had it stayed independent, it would have had a very strong opportunity to challenge Facebook in the friend-to-friend photos.


Here’s a simplified diagram of the social communications category:



So in those four quadrants, you’ve got $150B in market cap. It’s really not hard to imagine that Instagram’s ultimate opportunity was $25-50+B.


In summary:



  • Near-term, Instagram is now the Twitter for photos.

  • Longer-term, Instagram could have been the one credible threat to Facebook in friend-to-friend social communications.


Given its insane growth & mega-revenue prospects, Instagram’s investor valuation today could have been $10+B.


Instagram had 30 million users before the Facebook acquisition. Today, it has more than 150 million users.


And check out the revenue forecasts that one equity analyst recently projected for Instagram:



These numbers are probably inflated and on steroids (because that’s what sell-side analysts do), but you get the idea. This could have been Instagram’s income statement future, and it’s breathtaking.


Rather than sell, Instagram’s team could have had their cake and eaten it too.


Yes, yes — hindsight is 50/50. And a billion dollars is an enormous sum. But the interesting thing is that Instagram didn’t have to make a binary “hold vs. sell” decision. Instagram could have had it all:



  1. Near-term liquidity for the founders plus

  2. Staying independent and the opportunity to go for it.


By 2012, it was pretty standard in the venture and growth equity markets for founders of successful companies to sell some of their shares in growth investment rounds, so that they could get some liquidity and comfort and lock-in some gains on what they’ve built. I think there’s a pretty good chance that Instagram’s early investors and board members would have been totally fine with the Instagram founder team selling a significant portion of their stake in return for their continued commitment to keep building value in the company.


They could have gotten some of this liquidity in 2012 (i.e., at the ~$500mm valuation that Sequoia invested in), or waited. Had they waited (and yes this is hindsight), the company’s value would have skyrocketed, and they could have sold ~1/3 of their stake (or less) in return for as much cash.


Sell vs. stay independent: historical analogues


Over the past 10-20 years, most consumer Internet market leaders have considered acquisition offers. Here’s how I’d look at it:


Great decisions to not sell. Over the past 20 years, there were certain moments when staying independent was a great decision by the founder. The list includes: (1) Facebook not selling to Yahoo in 2006, (2) Twitter not selling to Facebook in 2008, and (3) [rumor has it] Yelp not selling to Google in 2010.


Great decisions to sell. On the other hand, there were other situations where selling the company was an awesome decision. This list includes: (1) Bebo selling to Time Warner and (2) Broadcast.com selling to Yahoo.


Tough decisions to sell. Then, there were some decisions that feel tragic — because the companies are so awesome — but you can really understand the decision. Two companies in particular come to mind:



  • YouTube. I’ve heard people say that if YouTube had held on just one more year, they could have achieved a purchase price north of $5B. But YouTube apparently felt significant pressure to sell in 2006 in part because it was facing significant legal problems that represented a giant overhang on the company and represented a potentially massive and catastrophic risk. After the acquisition, Google apparently invested a huge amount of financial resources (hundreds of millions of dollars or more) settling YouTube’s legal battles with the record labels, movie studios, etc.

  • Zappos. It would have been awesome if Zappos had stayed independent, and July 2009 was clearly a low-point in tech valuations versus the subsequent four years. However, Zappos was facing at least two huge hurdles when it sold: (1) the giant financial burdens of inventory that I presume were getting worse as the company grew and (2) the potential competitive threat from Amazon.


In each of these two cases, the company was very capital intensive and would probably have had to raise hundreds of millions of dollars of growth / private equity money to stay independent. In YouTube’s case, I bet that felt nearly impossible, given their lack of revenues and massive legal challenges. I’m less sure about Zappos, but I bet 2009 private equity investors would have been pretty nervous about the prospects of funding the company’s balance sheet and income statement in the face of the two threats I describe.


Instagram however, wasn’t Zappos or YouTube. Instagram wasn’t a capital-intensive business and had plenty of access to the private capital markets. In fact, the company had closed on a $50 million fundraising right before the Facebook sale.


Thanks to Jackson Mohsenin for his help thinking about the ideas in this answer and for editing help.


This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Initial Public Offerings:







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/11/08/did-instagram-sell-to-facebook-too-early/

It's Not The Website, Stupid: New Research Says RomneyCare Worked, ObamaCare Will


WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: People march in fa...

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 26: People march in favor of the Affordable Care Act. (Image: Getty Images North America via @daylife)




While critics of the Affordable Care Act use the problems of a newly launched website to discredit the law and the idea of expanded access to healthcare, new evidence keeps emerging of the benefits that expanding access to health coverage and investing in prevention and public health can bring to the people who need it most.


Two studies released at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association this week helped make the case.


The first showed that the Massachusetts law now known as “Romneycare” that served as a model for the Affordable Care Act—aka Obamacare—greatly reduced the number of people without health insurance in the state and improved the health of residents. Because of its similarity to federal health reform, the findings offer a preview of what the entire country may experience in the coming years.


The findings, compiled by John Auerbach, former Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health, showed that the number of uninsured fell from 7 percent to 2 percent, with the rate of uninsured dropping from 8 percent to 4 percent among African-Americans and from 10 percent to 7 percent among Latinos.


In addition, flu vaccinations, cancer screenings, chronic disease prevention and other health improvement efforts increased and tobacco use declined.


“The Affordable Care Act is being implemented around the country and there is a lot of interest in what it will mean for the health of the nation’s residents,” Auerbach said. “We have learned that there is reason to believe that it will improve access to care and improve health outcomes for all of the racial and ethnic populations who are eligible for its benefits.”


Long-standing gaps in rates of disease and death between white residents and non-white residents didn’t close during the study period. Auerbach suggested these gaps may narrow over time as more people gain insurance and keep it for longer periods of time. But the study also suggests that insurance alone won’t eliminate health disparities. Doing that will require concerted efforts to transform communities to make them healthier places to live.


The second study, led by Glen Mays of the University of Kentucky, showed that when public health funding in a community rises, rates of infant mortality and deaths from preventable disease fall. The findings were based on an analysis of data from 3,000 local public health agencies in the U.S. over a 17-year period.


For every 10 percent increase in spending on public health and prevention, the researchers found a 4.3 percent drop in infant mortality and declines of 0.5 percent to 3.9 percent in deaths from diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and influenza. Communities that invested in prevention also experienced significant reductions in the growth of healthcare costs.


When public health and prevention dollars were invested in low-income communities, the health gains were 20 to 44 percent larger than when the investments were made in wealthier communities, the research found. Reductions in death rates and healthcare costs were especially pronounced in communities that spread their public health dollars across a broad mix of preventive services.


The results show that “new resources, such as funding from the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention Fund, can have a larger impact if targeted to lower-resource, higher-need communities and if spread across a range of prevention strategies,” said Mays, director of the University’s National Coordinating Center for Public Health Services and Systems Research.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2013/11/08/its-not-the-website-stupid-new-research-says-romneycare-worked-obamacare-will/

The World's Largest Debtor Governments, 2013

The most dominant countries in history are the most indebted nations today, according to the latest data released by the International Monetary Fund.


The world’s most indebted country is ancient power Greece, with general government net debt that is 173% of its GDP. Other historic superpowers in the top 20 include Italy, Egypt, Portugal, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States.



Greece is in the most trouble, not only because it has a far higher debt-to-GDP ratio than any other country but also because its GDP is still shrinking. The Greek economy is expected contract for the sixth straight year, this time by 4.2%.


“If your income is going down every year, then how are you going to repay?” said Matthew Lynn, author of Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis. “Basically you aren’t, until you can turn it around.”


The IMF predicts Greece’s GDP will stop shrinking in 2014 and will grow at a rate of about 3% annually the following four years. Austerity measures have slashed massive Greek deficits, but the country has a long way to go to make a dent in its debt.


Some of Greece’s neighbors are mired in economic crises of their own. Italy, Portugal and Spain are also expected to have shrinking GDPs in 2013, but like Greece, are expected to begin slowly rebounding in 2014.


Japan is second on the list behind Greece, with debt that is 140% of its GDP. Japan, which has the world’s third-largest economy behind only the United States and China, is expected to grow less than 2% annually through 2018.


Five other countries — Lebanon, Portugal, Grenada, Italy and Ireland — also have national debts that surpass their GDPs.


“Sooner or later, they’ll probably have to default,” Lynn said. “The general rule is that once it gets above 100% of GDP, that’s a problem. It’s probably not repayable, unless you have really fast growth.”


The United States ranks 10th on the list, with debt that is 87% of its GDP. But it has the most debt of any country in absolute terms, an estimated $14.6 trillion in general government net debt, double the debt of second-place Japan. U.S. debt has grown $10 trillion in the last decade.


Emerging nations tend to have less debt than traditional powers. Brazil, for example, is the seventh-largest economy in the world but has debt that is 34% of its GDP. The IMF does not list debt-to-GDP ratios for every country, including emerging powers like China, India and Russia. But IMF data does show that China is the world’s third-best saver, saving 51% of its GDP.


“The debt, and the developed world’s willingness to borrow to fuel growth, is an indicator of the wildcat, Promethean energy that has driven our quest for economic growth,” said China expert Orville Schell. “China is forging a completely new system and playbook for which there is no operating instructions.”






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2013/11/08/worlds-largest-debtor-governments-2013/

Target Will Buy Your First-Generation iPad For $200

If you happen to still have an original, first-generation iPad laying about, it’s time to cash it in. Target will buy it back from you for $200.


For some perspective–that’s a lot.


The street value of an original, first-generation iPad on a site like eBay or Craigslist is probably about $100 at best. The popular tech buyback site Gazelle.com will only give you $80 for the 16GB Wi-Fi first-generation iPad if it’s flawless. The odds that your three year old iPad qualifies as “flawless” are pretty slim, so you’d be more likely to get $70 from Gazelle.com.



I still had a first-generation iPad. I had since moved on to the iPad 2, and then to the iPad 3, but we had kept the original iPad in the kitchen. It sat in the counter in a nice wooden frame displaying a constant slideshow of family photos, and always available for looking up recipes, or playing music while working in the kitchen.


It was still functional in the technical sense, but the Target deal was simply too good to pass up. With the holidays on the immediate horizon, that $200 will definitely come in handy.


To clarify, Target will buy back other iPad models as well. The amount that Target will offer for your device will vary depending on the model, the storage capacity, whether it has 3G or 4G/LTE connectivity or is just Wi-Fi, and its general condition. I don’t know how much Target is offering for a third-generation iPad with 4G/LTE connectivity, so that may not be as compelling of a deal as selling the first-generation iPad.


You can spend the money on anything in Target–including a new iPad Air or iPad Mini if you’d like to upgrade. If you were hoping to make a switch to a new device like Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX, you’re sort of out of luck. Target doesn’t sell Amazon’s devices, or some of the other popular tablets like the Google Nexus 7, so you can’t use your Target store credit to buy those devices.


If you want to apply that money to something that Target doesn’t sell, though, you can still turn it to your advantage by playing a sort of financial shell game. Use the Target store credit to buy stuff from Target that you normally would have purchased elsewhere, and that money is then freed up for you to purchase the device you want from somewhere other than Target.


If you still love your original iPad and have no interest in upgrading, more power to you. The bottom line, though, is that you won’t see a better offer. Ever. Take advantage of this deal from Target to maximize the value of your dated tablet technology. Act fast, though, the Target buy back deal only goes through tomorrow–Saturday, November 9.


Click here for more details and information about the iPad buy back program.


Also on Forbes:







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2013/11/08/target-will-buy-your-first-generation-ipad-for-200/

Why Are Solar Panels So Inefficient?

Answer by Steve Byrnes, Postdoc in Physics, Harvard University, on Quora,


The second law of thermodynamics forbids a 100%-efficient solar cell. More specifically, Carnot’s theorem applies to photovoltaics and any other solar energy system, where the hot side of the “heat engine” is the temperature of the sun and the cold side is the ambient temperature on earth. (This is slightly oversimplified.) The result is, for a system with sunlight concentration (lenses and mirrors and motors to follow the sun as it moves in the sky), the maximum efficiency is ~85%, and for a system that does not track the sun, the maximum efficiency is ~55%. (For details see my calculations here .)


On an overcast day, tracking the sun doesn’t work, so ~55% is the theoretical maximum.


On the market today, the highest efficiency that money can buy is … drumroll … ~35% for unconcentrated photovoltaics (PV) (e.g. Spectrolab), ~35% for concentrated PV (e.g. Amonix), and ~35% for solar thermal (e.g. Ripasso).


By the way, in unconcentrated PV, there is currently a huge gap between the highest efficiency that money can buy (~35% from Spectrolab, for ~$100,000 per square meter) and the highest efficiency that is not insanely expensive (~20% silicon modules from SunPower). I expect that gap to shrink dramatically in the next 10-20 years thanks to Alta Devices, which already has a pilot line creating affordable ~25%-efficient solar modules, and is moving towards 30% or even beyond. These cells will be light and flexible too! This is very exciting. But I’m getting off-topic. The question is not primarily about what’s affordable, but what’s possible. How to explain the gap between ~35% and the theoretical maximum?


For unconcentrated PV, the best cells (currently ~35%) have been creeping towards the theoretical maximum (~55%) for decades (see chart ), and I expect they will continue to do so. I don’t mean that they will literally asymptotically approach closer and closer to 55%; eventually there will be a tradeoff where higher nominal efficiency (under standard test conditions) comes at the expense of lower real-world efficiency (which involves working robustly under a variety of light and temperature conditions). So there is a ceiling for unconcentrated PV efficiency, and it’s somewhere between ~35% and ~55%, but I don’t know where.


For concentrated PV: In theory, PV cells should get more and more efficient as light concentration increases. In other words, if you double the light intensity, it should *more* than double the electricity generation. That’s why the theoretical limit for concentrated systems (~85%) is higher than unconcentrated (~55%). However, there is a cost to concentration too: (1) The lenses / mirrors are not perfect; (2) The solar cell will get hotter, which lowers its efficiency; (3) You can only get power out of the light coming directly from the sun, not the diffuse blue light from the rest of the sky, which accounts for at least 15% of the light, sometimes more. Thanks to those problems, the best concentrated PV system that money can buy is more-or-less equally efficient as the best unconcentrated system that money can buy. Will that always be true? Well, the nominal theoretical limit is ~85%, but the only way to get that high is to concentrate sunlight to the maximum possible concentration of 50,000X. At a more realistic concentration like 1000X, the theoretical limit is ~75%. Next, we account for the 15% or more diffuse light, and we’re down to ~65%. After accounting for imperfect lenses/mirrors and cell heating, we are probably down to a limit of 55-60%. So, I don’t think we should expect a huge divergence between the best available concentrated PV versus unconcentrated PV. The efficiency will be basically determined by the PV cell, and the concentrator will have only a small effect on the system-level efficiency.


The final main category is solar thermal, which uses lenses and mirrors and solar-tracking to heat something really hot, and then use that to run a heat engine. The highest-efficiency solar thermal systems available today are based on stirling engines and are ~35% efficient. A Stirling engine can already run near the Carnot limit, so presumably the primary way to increase efficiency of a solar thermal system is to heat the thing to a higher temperature. To get that theoretical ~85% efficiency, you need to concentrate the sunlight by a factor of 50,000, and heat the thing to 2000C. This temperature is insanely high: I think that no one knows how to make a long-lasting high-efficiency heat engine that can work at such a high temperature. If you heat to “only” 1000C, the maximum efficiency drops to ~75%; if you heat to 600C — which is realistic in a solar stirling engine system — then the maximum efficiency is ~65% (or ~55% including the wasted 15% diffuse light, as discussed above). That 55% figure is still way above the ~35% that has been achieved to date, so there seems to be plenty of room for improvement if the solar thermal industry continues to grow. But the 85% figure will never happen, and even 70% is extremely unlikely.


(For completeness, I should mention that there are solar power systems that don’t fit in any of the above categories, like thermophotonics and thermophotovoltaics. These are very early-stage ideas, and I don’t know enough about them to comment.)


This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Solar Energy:







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/11/04/why-are-solar-panels-so-inefficient/

الجمعة، 8 نوفمبر 2013

Customer Relationships Now Drive Brand Perceptions


The Human Brand logo via knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu



Brands are people first. Customers are people too, so customers tend to take their relationship with a brand personally. Thus it’s not a surprise that people love their favorite smartphone brand, cringe when you mention their cable company, or even hate the mention of a particular bank.


Startups, as well as every existing business, need to realize that this brand perception is becoming more and more driven by their relationships with customers, as well as feedback from other customer brand relationships, made visible on social media and Internet websites like Yelp and Foursquare. Proving the new model today are sites like Patagonia and Zappos.


According to Chris Malone and Susan T. Fiske, in their new book “The Human Brand,” humans are very perceptive, from early survival evolution, and make quick judgments about other people’s intents toward them (warmth), and the capability of carrying out intents (competence). Thus your brand (people) need to project both warmth and competence, for loyalty today.


But how do you know if your brand is projecting warmth and competence to your customers? Here are some key signals, outlined by Malone and Fiske, which I believe every startup founder and business leader should evaluate in their own business to see if their brand is positive:



  1. The loyalty test. For loyal customers, a business has to first demonstrate genuine warmth, concern, and commitment. Selling to loyal customers is 3 to 10 times cheaper than acquiring new customers. Go beyond loyalty expectations, and you can turn loyal customers into passionate advocates who actively recommend your company to others.

  2. The principle of worthy intentions. This principle is a relationship building strategy that involves attracting and keeping customers by consistently putting their best interests ahead of those of your company or brand. Competence alone won’t ensure loyalty. Only the emotional connections of worthy intentions has the power to change minds.

  3. The price of progress. Faceless commerce these days leads to a focus on discounts. Discounts are viewed as less-than-worthy intentions, and do not buy loyal customers. Every website must offer more than one-way commerce and discounts. It must also offer interactive relationships, and warmth and competence, through worthy intentions.

  4. Take us to your leader. Customers today have a primal desire to judge brands by the people behind the brand, most notably the CEO. Customers look for transformational rather than transactional leaders, who inspire employees to exert the extra effort on customers’ behalf. Leaders need to come out from behind their curtain.

  5. Show your true colors. Mistakes and crises are a golden loyalty opportunity. We are apt to forgive when we feel empathy for an offending partner. Customers watch and judge whether people or profits come first. A brand spokesperson can show worthy intentions, or can deflect blame and take a narrower more self-serving view.


Today’s business market exists in the renaissance of relationships. Perception is reality, and businesses can no longer hide behind their brand. Transactions move faster and mistakes happen faster, with customers able to watch for warmth and competence, or no worthy intentions. Here are key imperatives, sanctioned by Malone, Fisk, and myself, to keep you on the right track:



  • Become more self-aware. On-going self-awareness is a crucial competency of every brand and every business leader. Don’t be afraid to ask customers the direct questions – do you see us as warm and trustworthy, as well as competent and capable? Then listen with an open mind and genuine interest, and be willing and able to change.



  • Embrace significant change. Change is now the norm, so no change over a period of time is actually moving backward. Companies and brands must shift from a mentality of control, defensiveness, and unresponsiveness to one that is more open to understanding how they are perceived, and to adopt change as a good thing, rather than a problem.



  • Fundamentally shift priorities. Lasting change requires a sincere examination and adjustment of the goals and priorities that have led companies astray in the first place. Sustained success in the future will require companies to dramatically shift their emphasis from short-term shareholder value to shared value for multiple stakeholders.


Overall, your customers now have near-instantaneous power to hold companies and brands accountable for their words and actions. That power will continue to grow in the years ahead. Is your brand ready to flourish in that environment, or highly at-risk for any slight misstep?






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/11/08/customer-relationships-now-drive-brand-perceptions/

Everything You've Heard About Crack And Meth Is Wrong


A pile of crack cocaine ‘rocks’

A pile of crack cocaine ‘rocks’ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




By Jacob Sullum


Growing familiarity with marijuana has been accompanied by growing support for legalization because people discovered through personal experience that the government was lying to them about the drug’s hazards. But it is easier to demonize less popular drugs such as crack cocaine and methamphetamine, which in the public mind are still linked, as marijuana once was, with addiction, madness, and violence. Any attempt to question the use of force in dealing with these drugs therefore must begin by separating reality from horror stories.


That is where Carl Hart comes in. Hart, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Columbia who grew up in one of Miami’s rougher neighborhoods, has done bold, path-breaking research that challenges widely accepted beliefs about crack and meth. In his inspiring and fascinating new memoir High Price , he describes both how he overcame his early disadvantages to secure a tenured position at an Ivy League university and how he came to question everything he thought he knew about drugs as he learned to think critically about the issue.


Before he became a scientist, Hart believed that people who use crack generally get hooked on it and thereby lose control of their behavior. But when he looked at the data on patterns of drug use as an academic, he could plainly see that only a small minority of people who try crack become heavy users. “Even at the peak [of] widespread use,” he writes, “only 10–20 percent of crack cocaine users became addicted.” According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, just 3 percent of Americans who have tried this reputedly irresistible and inescapable drug have smoked it in the last month.


Contrary to what anti-drug ads claim, Hart observes, addiction “is not an equal-opportunity disorder.” He notes that even rats, whose voracious consumption of cocaine in certain contrived conditions supposedly shows how powerfully addictive that drug is, tend to use it in moderation when they have other options, such as food, sex, or an interesting environment to explore.


Crack “gained the popularity that it did in the hood…because there weren’t that many other affordable sources of pleasure and purpose,” Hart writes. “And that was why, despite years of media-hyped predictions that crack’s expansion across classes was imminent, it never ‘ravaged’ the suburbs.”


Furthermore, Hart’s own research with heavy crack smokers found that, in contrast with the stereotypical addict who cannot help but immediately consume whatever crack is available, they frequently rejected the drug in favor of small cash payments or vouchers. He got similar results with meth snorters, even though he deliberately recruited frequent consumers who had no interest in stopping. These findings underline a crucial truth that Hart emphasizes: “The effects of drugs on human behavior and physiology are determined by a complex interaction between the individual drug user and her or his environment.”


Hart debunks various other misconceptions about crack and meth. He notes that the vast majority of violence attributed to crack grew out of black-market disputes, as opposed to the drug’s pharmacological effects. His studies found that cocaine and methamphetamine do increase heart rate and blood pressure, but the effect of typical doses is not dangerous in otherwise healthy people. He argues that research linking meth to brain damage confuses correlation with causation and fails to show that meth users’ cognitive capabilities are outside the normal range. And in case you were wondering, “There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that methamphetamine causes one to become physically unattractive.”


Hart is well aware of the hostility he is apt to provoke by challenging the myths underlying the war on drugs. He describes a 2005 meeting with journalists, arranged by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he tried to put the dangers of methamphetamine in perspective, noting that the drug is a government-approved treatment for narcolepsy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He cited his own research finding that methamphetamine has “the same effects” as a more familiar ADHD drug, Adderall, which has a “nearly identical” chemical structure. He added that pilots and soldiers commonly use amphetamines to stay alert.


Yet for some reason amphetamine use in these contexts is not considered alarming, physically dangerous, dentally destructive, or apt to produce outbursts of irrational, murderous violence. Hart’s calm and accurate presentation contrasted sharply with the tales of chemical slavery, degradation, and monstrous mayhem told by the other “experts” invited to the meeting: a cop, a prosecutor, and a self-identified meth addict. “My fellow panelists were horrified,” he says.


Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com ), a senior editor at Reason magazine and a nationally syndicated columnist, is the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (Tarcher/Penguin). Follow him on Twitter: @jacobsullum .






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2013/11/04/everything-youve-heard-about-crack-and-meth-is-wrong/

Why Our Company Has Eliminated Meetings


We are curtailing all company meetings in Q4



Yes, you heard us correctly. It isn’t forever. But for the final quarter of the year, 2013, our company of 100 employees has eliminated all corporate meetings. We haven’t eliminated meetings entirely, of course: our product development team will meet once a week to roadmap tasks to accomplish each week. But there no other department meetings allowed as groups turn their focus to accomplishing their functional work towards the company’s overall year-end sales and revenue goals.


This is a radical decision.


Here’s why we’re doing it: We sell inventory software (our primary product is Fishbowl Inventory, which integrates with QuickBooks or as a standalone asset management package), which means our sales are cyclical. More than 70 percent of our sales close during the final two days of each month, and approximately 40 percent of our yearly revenue will occur within the final three months of the year. (Accounting people are interesting that way. While many businesses suffer from holiday doldrums from Thanksgiving on, we have the opposite challenge to meet—the jugular work that determines a great share of our annual revenue has only begun.)


At 100 employees that include 71 employee owners we have learned to operate as a highly integrated team. Every one of us receives a portion of our pay as commission. When one of us wins, we all win, and in a down season we weather the impact together.


But no meetings?


Even before this current decision, our meetings have been different than most. We agree with the philosophy of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, that words are more important than numbers; that a PowerPoint is easy to prepare, but a memo to explain a concept thoroughly requires real understanding. In Amazon’s case (and ours as well) we will often open a meeting with “reading time” a quiet time to read and ponder the points we will cover. No PowerPoint presentations allowed.


Our Q4 experiment will take the concept, for a time, further still. During this period, teams will forge and focus together on their individual goals and to come together with others fluidly and as needed to receive and to offer the help that they need.


This means that all will need to be constantly “preparing” for their non-meetings by being alert and ready for the moments and windows that open up to share, to teach, and to learn. Those who are ready to thrive will recognize the wide open window for each member to grow their own talent, skills and abilities to become greater leaders and contributors, by their own choice, and not through the mechanisms of a meeting designed to motivate and “drive” desire to perform from above.


With my paired leadership partner Mary Scott, our President, we are placing our ultimate trust in all members of our company to break new records in the coming three months, both as individual performers and in teams. Our company is one of the fortunate to have appeared on the national growth awards lists for the past six consecutive years (even during the employee buyback period in 2010 that brought us to our knees, in every sense).


Yes, the day will come at the turn of the year when we hold our company meetings again. We will laugh together, play together, and motivate each other. And we will take the time together to contemplate and to quietly read.


But for now, we need to focus on the currency of our business, which is the opportunity and the need to generate and close our seasonal sales.


Will the plan be successful? Time will tell. We fully intend to generate the growth that will allow us to grace the pages of the Inc. 500/5000 for many more years to come. (And we intend to be around as a company forever, and to build a legacy that will still be in existence for your children and grandchildren.) Our exit strategy, as we tell people, is “death”.


In the meantime, we have eliminated all meetings for the current quarter. Would you like to join us? Please feel free. Perhaps we can meet with you to compare notes on our journey at the first of the year.


David K. Williams is CEO of Fishbowl. Mary Scott is Fishbowl President. David Williams’ book The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning, from Wiley Publishing, is one of Amazon’s Top 10 Recommended books for July 2013, and is available from Amazon.com. #7NNs







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2013/11/08/why-our-company-has-eliminated-meetings/

Why Bootstrapping Is Overrated

The following guest post is by Jiyan Wei, cofounder of BuildZoom, a platform that connects homeowners with remodeling contractors, a Y-Combinator-backed startup.



BuildZoom cofounders Jiyan Wei and Dave Petersen



“But why would we want to raise capital?”


My cofounder’s question caught the Y Combinator partner off-guard. He was a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple successful exits and VC cash was a self-evident truth.


He composed himself and shot back, “You don’t…if you want a lifestyle business; if you want to hire ten talented programmers and build a real company, you need cash.”


Looking over at Dave, I could tell he wasn’t convinced. He had previously bootstrapped two companies to profitability by staying lean, focusing on revenue and scrapping.


I was a little more inclined to listen. It had been a year since I quit my full-time job, developing products at a publicly traded tech company, to focus exclusively on BuildZoom.


The honeymoon period was incredible. Without the external influence of the c-suite, I found myself doing things I loved: building new features, engaging with users and rolling code to production on a daily basis.


After a couple quarters, certain realities began to set in.


Bootstrapping can result in a fear-driven approach to product development – We gained traction and revenue earlier than we anticipated and began to staff up. Our cash situation compelled us to seek offshore programmers, who cost a fraction of what their domestic counterparts would have cost. We figured that with our oversight, we could keep things moving forward at a steady pace.


This worked for the first couple quarters but as the codebase became more complex, the volume of bugs began to compound and before too long, Dave and I found ourselves spending more and more time, QA testing or refactoring poorly designed code. The painfulness of QA testing and bug fixing other people’s code had a very tangible effect on us: we found ourselves scaling back new features and pushing more complex problems (with greater potential value) further down on the backlog. Speculative experiments, which are so vital during the early stages of a start-up, were also replaced with less speculative optimizations.


Bootstrapping can cause you to think short-term – User traction was increasing at a faster rate than revenue and to bring in more development ammo, we decided to put some effort into marketing and sales. We hired one sales person, on a commission basis, and after three months of promising output, we added two more.


I suddenly found myself spending increasing time on call-tracking, lead distribution and sales messaging. I also found myself spending more time on features that would drive sales conversions and caring less about scaling the platform or creating non-revenue generating user satisfaction. While this approach might work in other types of businesses, it wasn’t what we wanted for BuildZoom; we wanted to build a market-disrupting product that people loved.


Bootstrapping can be psychological taxing – As each month passed and my savings dwindled, the performance of the sales team became increasingly important to me. If we had a bad month, I would spend several sleepless nights, worrying about my financial situation as well as the financial situations of the team. During these times, the quality of my life and work, suffered. If not for the relationship I had with my co-founder and the underlying, irrational conviction I had that BuildZoom would work, I’m pretty sure it would have folded.


This isn’t a cautionary tale: we did more good things than bad things and our hard work provided us with entry to Y Combinator and ultimately, resulted in an early-stage round at favorable terms. We now have a talented and passionate team, clear direction and growing traction. I can honestly say the mistakes we made while bootstrapping have helped us become stronger, more focused entrepreneurs now that we have capital.


I truly believe that for a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, regardless of their coding prowess, bootstrapping is an important and sometimes vital experience. Bootstrapping served an incredibly valuable role for us: it allowed us to make mistakes when the stakes were lower; taught us the value of finding talented, self-motivated employees; helped us understand the importance of long-term thinking; toughened us emotionally; and perhaps most importantly, reminded us to always be creating value for the end user.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2013/11/08/why-bootstrapping-is-overrated/

Atlas Shrugged Is A Book About Pride In One's Work, And The Success That Results


Cover of "Atlas Shrugged"

Cover of Atlas Shrugged




By Steve Simpson


Do fishermen enjoy Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea? Do generals like Tolstoy’s War and Peace? I have no idea, but I’m reasonably sure no one looks to these novels for advice on how to catch fish or wage war. The purpose of a novel is not to provide concrete advice on particular tasks, but to present a vision of man and his place in the universe.


In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand presents a vision of man that is unlike anything ever written. Rand’s ideal man is the visionary, the genius, the producer. Her foremost representatives of this ideal are businessmen, whom she portrays, at their best, as heroes, not villains; creators, not parasites.


Rand’s vision has inspired successful people from all walks of life for generations. They love the book, not because it tells them how to make better yoga clothing or run a better taxi service, but because it offers profound insights about the principles that lead to success (or failure) in any field, and it shows those principles playing out in the lives of the novel’s characters.


The book has been criticized often in the five decades since it was published. Most frustrating for those of us who love it are critiques that misunderstand its essential points and end up attacking straw men. Rand, they often say, believed that only the strong should survive or that a man’s worth is measured by the size of his wallet. Writing in the Business Insider, Max Nisen does all this but adds a new twist. In “‘Atlas Shrugged’ is Full of Terrible Business Advice,” Nisen criticizes the book for not being a better version of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.


Of course, Atlas Shrugged isn’t a business how-to manual. But it is full of powerful advice if you’re willing to consider what Rand actually says. Here are some of the real lessons in the novel that make it a favorite of so many productive, successful people.


Take pride in your success.


Like so many critics of Atlas Shrugged, Nisen claims Rand conveyed that successful people are inherently superior to everyone else. But anyone who has read the novel knows it is filled with noble characters who achieve only modest financial success. Eddie Willers, friend and ally to railway magnate Dagny Taggart; Gwen Ives, industrialist Hank Rearden’s superlative secretary; Cherryl Brooks, the store clerk who tragically marries a villain thinking he is a hero; Jeff Allen, the proud tramp who stows away on a Taggart train and is hired by Dagny; even a young bureaucrat who is assigned to monitor Rearden Steel and ends up becoming Rearden’s ally. The heroes in the novel don’t look down on these characters. They treat them as friends and allies. Clearly, Rand recognizes that moral character stems from the choices people make, not their wealth or status.


So Rand doesn’t condemn anyone for failing to become rich and successful. But she does condemn those who despise others because they are rich and successful. The “hallmark of the second-rater,” she has one of her characters say, “is resentment of another man’s achievement.” She spends much of the novel showing just how resentment of achievement—which she called hatred of the good for being the good—is destroying society.


Was she right? Well, President Obama thinks that “you didn’t build that.” We hear every day that we should despise and tax the “1%” because they are wealthy. Evidence of the resentment of success is all around us. Ayn Rand saw that in 1957, when Atlas Shrugged was published. And she knew that this attitude could prevail only if the successful allowed it to, by feeling guilty for their achievements. Rand’s response was clear: take pride in any success you’ve earned and never apologize for it.


Pursue your own happiness and achieve it.


Another common criticism of Atlas Shrugged, which Nisen repeats, is that its characters are motivated by money alone. This is an odd claim about a novel that is filled with characters who love their work and continually strive to achieve more and more, often at great short-term cost. Hank Rearden spends ten years developing a new alloy. Dagny leaves a secure position at Taggart Transcontinental and works around the clock to develop a new railroad, the John Galt line. Is money important to these characters? Yes, of course, but making money is not their primary motive. Money, as Rand recognizes, is not an end in itself, but only a means. The end—the purpose of all that hard work—is achieving happiness. And Rand believes that is possible. As her protagonist, John Galt, says, “The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”


Money is the product of virtue.


Speaking of money, critics also often misunderstand Ayn Rand’s view of it. In the novel, she gives that explanation to copper magnate Francisco d’Anconia, who answers the claim that money is the root of all evil. Nisen picks out one paragraph where d’Anconia says gold is an objective form of money because, unlike paper, it cannot be manipulated by government. Nisen cites a couple of articles that supposedly show the gold standard is bad, not good. They even have graphs. And he recommends that readers watch a video of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke saying the same thing.



Certainly, if you are interested in all the debates about the gold standard, you can watch the government’s chief money manipulator respond to the view that he shouldn’t manipulate the money supply. After that, you might read the hundreds of books and articles on monetary policy from the last eight decades or so. Ayn Rand doesn’t try to address all of that in Atlas Shrugged. There are no graphs in the novel.


Instead, Rand focuses on fundamental questions about money, just as she focuses on fundamental questions on every issue. She asks: what is money and what role does it play in our lives? She argues that it isn’t the root of all evil, but the product of all the hard work and thought that sustains us. Money, as Rand says, “is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.” If you value your mind, your work, and your life, Rand holds, then you will value money. And if government can control and devalue our money, then government can control and devalue our lives.


When have you ever heard an economist say that?


Trade is a virtue, but sacrifice is not.


Nisen says that the businessmen in Atlas Shrugged have contempt for their customers because in one scene, Hank Rearden says he would rather destroy his metal than sell it to anyone who demands that he produce it for them as his duty. But Rand’s point is that there is a big difference between trade, which is a virtue, and sacrifice, which is a vice. In fact, the heroes in the novel treat their real customers—those who want to trade with them, rather than take from them—with great respect. Rearden, for example, spends much of the novel figuring out how to produce enough of his metal to satisfy customers who are becoming more and more desperate for it as the economy collapses. But one of the primary points of the novel is that no one should work for their own destruction. Today, we see calls for businessmen to sacrifice more and more every day. Is that good business advice?


Government is a necessary good.


Finally, Rand does not treat government as a “pure antagonist” as Nisen and other critics claim, but as an essential institution that protects the rights on which individuals and businesses depend every day. Of course, Rand does illustrate the evil of a government that becomes a violator rather than a protector of rights. If you think she is wrong, look around. Is our ever-expanding government really the solution to what ails us today, or the problem?


The bottom line is that Atlas Shrugged isn’t an economics text or a business how-to manual, it’s a brilliant novel of ideas that challenges conventional thinking on every major issue in life—not just money, but work, family, politics, and even sex. It does contain great advice, just not the sort of advice that critics like Nisen prefer.


But if you want to see that, my advice is to go read it yourself.


Steve Simpson is the Director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/11/08/atlas-shrugged-is-a-book-about-pride-in-ones-work-and-the-success-that-results/

Why Twitter's IPO Was Really A Failure


(L-R) Twitter CEO Richard 'Dick' Costolo, and ...

(L-R) Twitter CEO Richard 'Dick' Costolo, and Twitter co-founders, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Christopher Isaac 'Biz' Stone, applaud at the opening bell on the trading floor of the NYSE on November 7, 2013 (AFP/Getty Images)




On its first trading day as a public company, Twitter’s stock ended up failing most investors who purchased the stock during the day and held it to the close. Moreover, Twitter is a long shot as a successful long term buy and hold.


On Wednesday evening, November 6, Twitter set its offer price at $26 a share for the fortunate few subscribing investors. The next morning, Twitter’s stock opened at $45.10, peaked at $50.09 a share, and closed at $44.90, slightly below the opening price. No investor who bought the stock yesterday and held it to the end of the day came out ahead.


For my money, the best source of historical information about IPOs is Jay Ritter’s website. There are at least three valuable lessons to be gleaned from a visit to this site, and all three have psychological aspects.


First, stocks typically close above the offer price on the first day of trading. The technical term for this phenomenon is initial underpricing. These first day price pops were unusually high during the dot com bubble, when the typical pop was 65% of the offer price, well above the 7-15% range at other times. Twitter’s pop was 73%, reminiscent of the dot com mania days when investor psychology allowed companies yet to show a profit to trade at high prices on unrealistic hopes.


Second, investors who buy the stock on its first trading day, and hold the stock for six months before selling, typically do better than investors who bought a similar stock at the same time, and also sold after six months. The two stocks are similar in the sense of having about the same market cap and price-to-book ratio. However, investors who hold longer than six months would typically have done better buying a similar stock that was already publicly traded, and not issuing new equity. The technical term for this phenomenon is long term underperformance, when unrealistic hopes give way to reality.


Third, original shareholders leave money on the table when they set too low an offer price, because they give up more of the company to new investors than is necessary in so far as raising new funds. A big first day price pop might increase their wealth, but not as much as it might have.


Of course, becoming first time billionaires, at least on paper, might make this last point seem almost trivial. But those paper gains can be a psychological illusion. There are plenty of examples where stocks of overhyped companies went into orbit and came plunging down to earth, leaving their investors with distant memories of having been billionaires. For anyone with historical memory, VA Linux is the record holder for a first day IPO pricing pop at 700% in December 1999. And almost all of that evaporated when VA Linux fizzed out.


If you want another example, think about Palm, which went public in March 2000 at an offer price of $38, opened at $165, and closed at $95. This has the same pattern as Twitter’s IPO, and like Twitter, Palm was not profitable at the time it went public. Palm too fizzled in the long run, and was eventually bought by H-P.


Was Twitter’s IPO a success and Facebook’s IPO a failure? It depends on who you ask. Facebook’s original shareholders appeared interested in avoiding initial underpricing, and did so successfully. Those expecting a first day price pop driven by hype found themselves disappointed very quickly.


That first day price pops are not synonymous with long term success is a psychological illusion. And the hype producing first day pops is easily generated for companies everyone knows.


And now let me think about how to deliver the message in a 140 character tweet.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2013/11/08/why-twitters-ipo-was-really-a-failure/

Why Didn't Tumblr Turn Out More Like Twitter?


David Karp



Twitter was founded in March 2006. Tumblr was created in February 2007. Twitter has 230 million monthly active users, 53 million of them in the U.S. Tumblr is thought to be within an order of magnitude of that — between 30 million and 50 million actives, plus more than 300 million unique visitors. The two even share some DNA: Tumblr founder David Karp says Twitter borrowed the concept of the retweet from an action on his platform, the reblog.


Yet Twitter went public Thursday, raising $1.8 billion and achieving a market valuation of $31 billion by the end of the day, while Tumblr sold itself to Yahoo for $1.1 billion in May amid reports that it was running short of money.


As the saying goes: Results may vary. But why?


“I think every company’s different, every founder’s different,” says Bijan Sabet, whose venture firm, Spark Capital, was an early investor in both social startups. “They’re two different situations. It’s a funny day when we look at $1.1 billion as small.”


Granted. But all else being equal, every founder would agree that $31 billion is cooler than $1.1 billion. And when I profiled David Karp for FORBES last year, he made it clear that an eventual IPO was at least on his mind, if not his preferred scenario. In a market where less-established startups like Snapchat and Pinterest are fetching valuations of several times Tumblr’s sales price, it’s worth asking why two outwardly similar companies that long appeared to be on similar trajectories ended up with such different outcomes.


I posed that question to a handful of smart people: Sabet of Spark Capital; venture capitalist David Pakman, a partner at Venrock Associates; Nihal Mehta, general partner at ENIAC Ventures and executive chairman of LocalResponse; Chris Tolles, co-founder and CEO of Topix; and Gartner analyst Brian Blau. Here’s what they see as the key differentiators:


Leadership . This might be the big one, since everything a company does and is flows from its leadership. Tumblr spent the last year of its life as an independent company ostensibly on the hunt for its its own “Sheryl Sandberg” — a strong business executive who could complement Karp the way Sandberg does Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. That it never found that person probably speaks to a lack of desire or interest on Karp’s part.


Twitter certainly had its own leadership issues, but the appointment of Dick Costolo as CEO in 2010 put a period on them. “ In order to build a company that is of value to brands, you actually have to want to do it from the top down,” says Pakman. “You can’t do it reluctantly. In Dick, you’ve got a guy who’s really excited to build an unbelievably interesting advertising medium.”


Karp’s lack of interest in the mechanics of revenue was a big factor in winding up at Yahoo, Sabet agrees. “David’s true love is product and thinking about the user,” he says. “Now he gets to do that full time.”


Brand. It may not have the market penetration of Facebook, but every wired American knows Twitter’s little blue bird symbol. Do you know Tumblr’s logo? Probably not. “It hasn’t been able to break out to the mass market the way Twitter says,” says Mehta. “You can’t imagine your parents ever having a Tumblr account. That’s a big difference.”


It’s one that stems from who sets the tone on the network. Twitter undertook a concerted campaign to get actors, comedians, athletes and politicians using its service, notes Gartner’s Blau. “Tumblr did the same thing, but the people that self-selected Tumblr was the artist and designer crowd,” he says. “Those are not influencers. In fact, those are people who really want to be off by themselves.”


Content. In several ways, the nature of content that thrived on Tumblr made it a difficult business proposition. Some unknown proportion is pornography; estimates range as high as 30%. A good deal more of it is copyrighted material, republished without consent. “I think Twitter is an important thought platform for the world, whereas Tumblr just isn’t — it’s a reblog site for ‘memes,’” says Tolles.


Don’t underestimate the importance of format, either. In the 140-character tweet, Twitter invented the equivalent of a new quantum particle — something that seemed like it should have existed all along. “They found a communications mechanism that really resonates with people,” says Blau.


Mobility. Twitter was born as an SMS application. The migration of the internet from desktops to smartphones was never anything but a good thing for its growth. Meanwhile, “Tumblr was very desktop and had to port to mobile,” notes Mehta. That posed various challenges. It’s hard to blog from a phone, and the big, gorgeous images that populate so many Tumblrs don’t look like much on a 3-inch screen.


Data: While Tumblr had a lot of users, on a per-user basis they weren’t nearly as valuable to marketers as the people on Twitter or Facebook, says Pakman. The nature of follow/friend relationships on those sites generates the kind of data advertisers crave — about interests, affinities, personal relationships. “In the case of Tumblr, it’s not really clear what the data tells you,” he says. “It’s not clear why people follow other people. It seems to be because you like their creative expression. I’m not sure that’s very valuable data.”


Geography. Karp has always said Tumblr’s New York City location was a crucial element of its success. Tolles disagrees. “It’s hard to make a platform work outside Silicon Valley. I just think there’s a set of resources that NYC doesn’t have that gets brought to bear — executive talent, technical talent and a desire to work together with other people in the industry.”



Also on Forbes:







from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/11/08/why-didnt-tumblr-turn-out-more-like-twitter/

OracleVoice: Will Your Customers Vouch for You?

by Jill Rowley, Social Selling Evangelism & Enablement, Oracle


Modern sales professionals aren’t actually sellers. They are businesspeople who provide insight to help influence what people buy.


This is because the buying process has changed with the evolution of the Internet and the buyer is well informed long before he or she meets a salesperson. Today’s buyers start their buying decisions by searching for online reviews, watching product demonstrations, reading customer testimonials, and asking people in their social networks for their opinion.


Buyers doing their own “pre-sales” diminishes the traditional role of the salesperson, who used to be the gateway to information about a company’s products. This is no longer the case. Buyers have unlimited access to real-time information about a company and its products, competitors, customers, industry experts, and influencers.


In this environment, one of the new roles a sales person can play is to cultivate and promote customer and expert advocacy within the sales process. You may be able to look a customer in the eye and tell them you can deliver, but having a customer peer or external opinion vouch for you can make a much more compelling sell. And it’s right that cultivating customer advocacy should live within the sales organization: according to research from the Corporate Executive Board, 53 percent of a customer’s advocacy to your company is a result of their sales experience.


Here are five strategies that sales professionals in any company can use to incorporate customer advocacy into the sales process.


Leverage the power of your people. Your customers, employees, and partners are people buyers trust. Have them be the voice of your brand and your company. Encourage advocacy from customers so they can contribute their positive experience with your company, brand, and products in their social networks. Share the unedited voices and personalities of your employees. Asking your partners to get involved in the conversation as well can be mutually beneficial.


Cultivate future advocates. Sales people own their relationships with customers, partners, third-party thought leaders, and analysts—and these relationships have never been more important. Again, these are the people your buyers trust. So when a sales person initiates a relationship with a potential buyer, they need to replace the term “prospect” with the term “future advocate.” And sales needs to keep this new relationship in mind at every stage in the buyer’s buying process — working to ensure that once the sale closes, the new customer will be a willing proxy for the sales team.


Be aware and responsive. The socially-enabled seller needs to be aware and responsive to customer needs and opinion—both in the sales engagement and in public forums—to build new advocates as part of the sales process. Sales leaders need to listen to direct feedback from their accounts to identify potential pain points and trends before they emerge. This will help the sales team anticipate the needs of the customer and build the kind of goodwill that is the foundation of future advocacy.


Sales people also need to monitor what buyers are saying in social networks to get unfiltered insight into their customers’ experience with the sales organization. And if the feedback is negative—in either direct or indirect interactions—the sales team must respond to the customer’s concern or risk losing the customer as a future advocate (and client).


Use content marketing. Content is a major pillar in a successful social selling framework and can play a role in creating future advocates. Read what your buyers read, and share that content across your social networks to let buyers know they are a part of your conversations. Also, not every interaction with your advocate network needs to be live or face-to-face. Understand the role marketing plays in the buying process and harness your advocates’ opinions and insights in the form of compelling content. Providing this material to future advocates at the right stage of the buying process can be the difference between a failure and a win.


Embrace social. According to research from the Aberdeen Group Social Selling: Leveraging the Power of User-Generated Content to Optimize Sales Results, sales professionals who use social selling are 50 percent more likely to meet or exceed their sales quotas. Social selling is technology-enabled networking. Use social networks to find, listen, relate, connect, engage, and amplify your buyers and their sphere of influence. There are many resources available to enable you and your sales team to become social sellers. Use them to build your network of sales advocates. The first step is to educate your sales force on the value advocates can play in helping your team hit their quota.


For Further Information:


This article first appeared in the October 2013 issue of Oracle’s PROFIT magazine. To learn more about PROFIT, click here.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2013/11/08/will-your-customers-vouch-for-you/

The Internet Didn't Kill Blockbuster, The Company Did It To Itself


English: A Blockbuster location in Moncton



News this week that Blockbuster will shutter its remaining 300 retail stores was greeted with the typical pithy analyses about the Internet changing everything. They’re all wrong. Digital content distribution didn’t kill the video store. We did it to ourselves.


I say “we” because I worked at Blockbuster in the mid/late 90s, so I had not only a front-row seat, but a small speaking role in the unfolding drama.


The video rental business was hugely profitable from the get-go. It had grown organically, without benefit of startups and VCs chasing the vague promise of future riches. Video gave consumers the ability to time-shift programming, which was sorta like getting released from entertainment prison. This meant that manufacturers could charge lots for VCRs. But the studios chose to price the tapes ludicrously high, too — north of $75, if I remember correctly — which didn’t work so well. Rental stores popped up to intermediate that gap and, once a tape had been rented a few dozen times, it yielded 100% profit thereafter (porn titles broke even faster). The business model was beautiful.


The model was also simple, as the right titles in the right stores at the right times meant more rentals, so retailers could make even more money through improvements in distribution and inventory management. When Blockbuster bought up those independent stores, it was able to pool their supply and transaction data, which yielded some of those operational efficiencies (and let it profitably ignore porn). After getting acquired by Viacom in 1994, the company recruited a handful of senior Walmart execs to deliver more operational brilliance. We applied Big Data insights about customer needs before there was a term for it. In-store selections got better and better.


Only then the floor dropped out on Hollywood box office receipts, which had slowed by almost 2% in 1994, and barely recaptured three-fourths of that loss in 1995. It turns out that for all the talk of a great branded offering, the main mover of movie rentals was box office popularity, not in-store experiences. Visits were a necessity, not consistently a happy choice.


With traffic down, the company elected to focus on upping the value of each transaction “basket.” This meant filling the stores with lots of candy, throw-away toys, and other “impulse” purchase items, displayed at little kid height so parents would be forced to buy it. Then all the Walmart types were thrown out (along with yours truly) and replaced by former executives from 7-Eleven.


Blockbuster was reimagined as a convenience store.


The problem with this strategy is that it never acknowledged, let alone addressed the fundamental promise and peril of the business: If people didn’t come to find movies they wish they hadn’t missed in the theaters, no amount of add-on retailing could replace that once-glorious rental income. Blockbuster didn’t have a technology problem — digital distribution was minimal, albeit talked about incessantly — but rather a customer problem. It gave them no reason to visit stores in lieu of a latest, greatest hit.


The solution would have been to focus on consultative or advisory selling, and turn its store associates into de facto recommenders. It could have implemented true social networks to rate and catalog movies, and used its customer data to develop a predictive engine that members could use to locate new titles. Store associates could have been encouraged (and incentivized) to establish ongoing customer relationships, and found ways to promote all those library titles (that had already been paid off, so they were pure profit). It could have owned the position of movie experts and migrated that brand to any new distribution platform. Blockbuster could have written a business school case on its reinvention, and who knows what role it could have crafted for itself this decade, or beyond?


Of course, we know it crafted its own demise, running its stores…and treating its employees…like a convenience chain, only the product it retailed was no longer so convenient. Even forsaking those onerous late fees couldn’t make a difference. Blockbuster didn’t lose its customers to Netflix or digital; they’d already long ago stopped belonging to the company in anything other than name. Membership meant nothing, or nothing good.


So what are the lessons to be learned from Blockbuster’s demise? First, understand what business you’re in. Blockbuster thought it was in the entertainment distribution business, but it was really all about retail customer experience. Second, make sure you’re looking at the truly big Big Picture. When Hollywood box office receipts faltered, it didn’t change consumers’ need for something to do with the time they would have spent watching hit flicks (i.e. it was an opportunity, not a problem). Third, don’t let the technology Greek Chorus take credit for changing the world. Digital would have changed Blockbuster’s business, for sure, but it wasn’t its killer.


That credit belongs to Blockbuster itself.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/11/08/the-internet-didnt-kill-blockbuster-the-company-did-it-to-itself/

Italy Proposes An Entirely Illegal Google Tax

It really is about time that European politicians understood the laws and rules that they have all already signed up for. Then we’d have fewer proposals like this one for a Google Tax. A Google Tax that would simply be illegal inside the European Union.


The basic problem is that various politicians are getting very upset with companies like Google (and Apple, Facebook and the like) using just one country inside the EU to sell to all countries inside the EU. This deprives, so they say, those countries being sold into of their fair share of the tax revenue stemming from the profits on those sales. What they’re entirely failing to understand is that this is the very cornerstone, the most basic of basic attributes, of the European Union’s approach to business. The whole point is that it should be a single market, the Single Market in fact, and thus a business must be able to sell over those international borders.


Here’s the proposal:



The center-left Democratic Party, the senior partner in Italy’s ruling coalition, has proposed legislation to force Google, Facebook and other U.S.-based internet giants to pay local taxes on their Italian revenues. The measure, known as “Google tax”, would make the U.S. companies collect advertising revenue though Italy-based firms rather than vehicles in low-tax countries like Luxembourg or Ireland. The legislation’s sponsor, budget committee chairman Francesco Boccia expects the “Google tax” to raise about $1.35 billion a year. He joins French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin in calling for the internet multinationals to be taxed where they make money, not where they choose.



This tax will raise nothing, bupkiss, because it’s an entirely illegal approach to the basic point. The European Union has based itself on the very idea that there must be both the free movement of goods, services, people and capital and also the freedom of establishment. These are not bolt ons, these are fundamental to the whole project. As described here:



It is the bedrock of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the Treaty establishing a European Economic Community (EEC) Part 1, Art.3(c): “the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to freedom of movement for persons, services and capital;”. It is consolidated in all subsequent treaties including the Treaty of Lisbon, ‘Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): “Art. 26 (2) TFEU states that “the internal market shall comprise an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured…”



It’s difficult to know how annoyed we should get with these politicians. Are they really so ignorant that they don’t understand the system they themselves have built? Or do they and they’re just throwing around illegal ideas for immediate political gain?






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/05/italy-proposes-an-entirely-illegal-google-tax/

Think Hoarding Passwords Keeps You Safe From Firing? Think Again


Passwords

Passwords (Photo credit: paul.orear)




Most employees think they are indispensable to their employers, but in fact, most employees are easily replaced. A recent legal ruling involved an IT manager who sought job security by holding “the keys to the kingdom”–the passwords to the company’s computer network that only he possessed. His plan didn’t become a fast track to climbing the corporate ladder; instead, it led to his relocation into a jail cell.


Terry Childs was principal network engineer for Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) of the City and County of San Francisco. He apparently distrusted his co-workers and sought to make himself unfireable, so he arranged to become the only person with his network’s passwords. When he was suspended from his job, he refused to divulge the passwords so that his employer could reassume control over its network. The court summarizes his ill-fated steps to advance his interests rather than his employer’s:



he knowingly prevented the city from being able to use its own computer system for a period of time, deliberately configured that system so that no one else could access it, set it up so that anyone other than him attempting to enter it would erase the data stored in it, and made the network more vulnerable to external attack by the filing of an unauthorized copyright application



For taking these steps, Childs was convicted of violating California’s state computer crime law (California Penal Code Sec. 502(c)(5)), which criminalizes taking an action that “knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system, or computer network.” He was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $1.5 million in restitution, the bulk of which compensates the employer for its post-firing efforts to find and fix Childs’ backdoors. Last month, a California appeals court upheld the conviction and restitution order.


I imagine many IT employees and software engineers fantasize about how they will “stick it to the man” through backdoors or password-hoarding if they are ever fired from their jobs. Fantasies are fine, but actually implementing the plan could turn into a criminal nightmare.


Over the years, we’ve seen other examples of employees or business partners using their control over digital assets for additional leverage. For example, I’m reminded of a 2010 ruling where a businessman was deemed a cybersquatter for holding a domain name hostage from his partner, and a 2007 ruling where a web designer was convicted of conversion because he blocked his customer from accessing the customer’s website. These digital strongarming efforts rarely fare well in court, and as Childs’ case reinforces, they could be more life-changing than just making a bad business decision.


This ruling needs to be considered in combination with California’s recent law banning employers from asking employees for their passwords to any digital data. This case addresses the flip side of that law. Just as employers can’t demand passwords for accounts that aren’t the employers’, an employee can’t legitimately withhold passwords to vital company property from employers. Unfortunately, neither this ruling nor the new California law deal with the common situation where an employee’s passwords controls access to a resource (hardware, software, online accounts) that is being simultaneously used for both employer and personal purposes. The Childs ruling doesn’t purport to address that situation, though it would be quite troubling if the ruling suggests that a person could be criminally prosecuted for withholding passwords for such “mixed-use” resources.


Case citation : People v. Childs, 2013 WL 5779044 (Cal. App. Ct. Oct. 25, 2013)






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/11/04/think-hoarding-passwords-keeps-you-safe-from-firing-think-again/

الخميس، 7 نوفمبر 2013

5 Small Workspace Changes That Will Make You More Productive


productivity

(Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)




It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and your mind has gone blank. Your fingers hover over the keys as you struggle to capture your last thought. You can’t think of an immediate reason for your lag in productivity, but you suddenly feel distracted and restless.


Often when we feel tired or blocked, our focus is internal. We assume we simply aren’t getting enough sleep or we ate too much at lunch. While both of those things may be true, there may also be an external reason for our lack of focus. We may be experiencing the effects of a toxic work environment.


If you’re a worker, chances are there are only certain things you can control. For business owners, however, paying attention to the research on various workplace issues can make a big difference in the daily output of each worker, not to mention overall morale. Whether you’re boss or employee, here are a few major adjustments that can make a big difference.


The Right Temperature


When it comes to climate, employees are most productive when they’re comfortable. Unfortunately, “comfortable” means different things to different people. Some people are happy in an office that maintains a steady 68 degrees while others break out the space heater until their work area reaches 80 degrees or more.


But when it comes to science, those who prefer sub-tropic temps win. According to research reported in Men’s Health , workers are most productive in temperatures ranging between 71 and 77 degrees. After analyzing hundreds of workers, researchers found cooler temps were the top cause of afternoon productivity lags. This confirmed a 2004 study from Cornell University that found that temps of 68 degrees or lower in an office increased worker errors. As the temperature increased to between 68 and 77 degrees, typing errors dropped by 44 percent and typing output increased 150 percent.


Lighting and Glare


Fluorescents have long been the light bulb of choice in office décor. But telling your boss that’s a bad idea may not be sufficient. For scientific proof, there’s a 2012 study by Mirjam Muench that studied two separate groups of people—one who spent multiple work days in daylight and another who spent multiple days working in natural light. The study found more dramatic feelings of sleepiness at the end of the day in those who worked in artificial light. Scientists have theorized in recent years that artificial light has disrupted our body’s circadian rhythms, leading us to fall out of sync with the sun.


By increasing the natural light available to workers, employers may find those workers sleep better and show up for work more rested, leading to increased productivity. For workers who are forced to remain in artificial light throughout the majority of the workday, taking frequent breaks outdoors could provide a natural rejuvenator that increases alertness.


Noise Reduction


In today’s “collaborative” environment, noise can be a real problem. In fact, it might be one of the most scientifically-proven workplace drains today’s worker encounters. In a study published by Cornell University, researchers reported finding higher levels of epinephrine in workers who were exposed to low levels of noise, when compared to workers exposed to no noise. This indicated workers exposed to noise were under higher levels of stress. Studies have shown office noise can lead to negative moods, inability to concentrate on a task, and even health issues after prolonged exposure.


As a worker, noise-canceling headphones are a great way to silence the noise. But while workers may believe listening to music helps them focus, studies have also shown music can decrease productivity when a worker is conducting a task that requires focus. But when it’s a task a worker performs on a regular basis, music can actually increase concentration.


Business owners can help reduce noise-related stress by providing workers a quiet place to go when extreme focus is needed. Whether this is accomplished through an enclave located in the office or allowing employees to work from home, this can be a great alternative to trying to tune out worker gossip and ringing phones.


Worker Comfort and Safety


Ergonomics are a real issue in today’s typing-heavy work environment. But ergonomics are not just a safety issue. Studies have found when a worker is comfortable and safe, that worker is more productive. When employees sit up straight and type, they think more clearly and have a higher work output than an employee who sits slumped over his or her keyboard.


Color Therapy


Many experts feel that color has a definite impact on a person’s mood. The color of an office’s walls, floors, and furniture creates an overall office environment that influences how workers perform, experts feel. Frank Mahnke, author of Color, Environment, & Human Response says that when done correctly, workers will be able to get a different visual depending on which way they are facing during the course of the day. As you decorate your office, keep these color associations in mind.



  • Yellow: stimulating, bright, cozy.

  • Red: arousing, fiery, aggressive.

  • White: open, neutral, sterile.


Keeping this in mind, a worker may see why an office covered in red paint might experience more hostility than one that utilizes more subtle tones. However, many offices are decorated in neutral grays, which might be more versatile but has no positive impact on productivity. Pastel yellow might be a good choice for a conference room where workers regularly work hold brainstorming sessions, while a more calming and soothing color like light green might be a good idea for areas where meetings with clients are most likely to occur.


Incidentally, grey is a color associated with intellect and wisdom, which might be just the look you’re going for in your office. Since this is often decided by property owners long before a business takes occupation of a space, even business owners may not have control over the colors in an office. If painting isn’t possible, a few extra accent colors in paintings and decorations may make a big difference in overall employee mood.


Small changes can be made in individual work areas to improve worker productivity. By getting to know the psychology behind the way an office environment influences the five senses, business owners may be able to see a measurable increase in worker output, adding to their own bottom line each year.






from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2013/11/05/5-small-workspace-changes-that-will-make-you-more-productive/