Management Blog

Home-based small business booms

Australian workers are leaving the skyrises and heading home to work, resulting in a 9 percent jump in the number of home-based small businesses.

The AMP.NATSEM report, 'There's no business like small business', reveals almost two thirds of Australia's 1.27 million small business owners now operate either entirely or largely from home.

In addition, it reports that of all the private sector businesses in Australia, 96 percent are small businesses with fewer than 20 employees and around two in every five private sector workers are employed in a small business.

Brisbane airports to double in size

Brisbane's international and domestic airports will each be almost doubled in size to accommodate growing numbers of travellers. Brisbane International Airport will spend up to $350 million next year and the number of gates will increase from 13 to about 30.

The international terminal handled a record 350,300 passengers in July, blitzing the previous record of 332,400 last December.

Brisbane Airport Corporation's Jim Carden said July's figures represented a 12 percent growth in passenger numbers compared with the same month last year.

"We have 21 services a week to Singapore, the Emirates (Airline) is strong and the trans-Tasman (New Zealand) market is insatiable," he said.

Alliances and networks alter business

Global networks are altering markets and the nature of companies.

American management thinker C. K. Prahalad, talks of "co-evolving" in a world in which the firm is a node within a network, and markets are as much about systems of co-creation as competition. Swedish management writer Jonas Ridderstralle writes of "organisational tribes".

American management academic Thomas B. Lawrence says companies must manage a portfolio of connections: "In addition to traditional types of connections, such as those facilitated by social relationships, companies now have a new option, 'virtually embedded ties', which are initiated and maintained through electronic technologies."

American academic Thomas Davenport speculates that as processes become more standardised around the world, competitive differentiation will come more from governance than cost efficiencies in the supply chains.

These thinkers are all looking for a way to describe how the emerging global networks are disaggregating and fragmenting markets and the competitive terrain. Increasingly, the management imperative is to manage networks well, which in turn requires governance, however informal.

Reported in BRW, 18 August 2005.

Books be gone

The undergraduate library at the University of Texas has undergone a radical transformation. Many libraries have redesigned  their spaces to include more group work areas and comfy chairs, and have embraced a wide range of technology to access digital information, but UT has gone a step further and removed all the library's books.

The undergraduate library's 90,000 volumes have been transferred to other collections within the university library system. Students will predominantly access their resources electronically, and utilise the library's collaborative spaces for the more social aspects of learning.

Judy Ashcroft, director of the Instructional Innovation and Assessment division at UT, said, "libraries are about information, and books were simply a way that information was packaged. But more information is being packaged online, and we have a duty to provide access to [it]."

Many university libraries are making similar changes in order to serve the learning needs of their market, remaining an integral part of students' academic careers.

Corporate chameleon keeps shedding his skins

Lush's founder and CEO would not know a laurel if he saw one and would be unlikely to rest on them if he did. What makes Mark Constantine unusual among successful innovators is his fearless discarding of past successes and his wholehearted pursuit of new products. 

Every year, Constantine sheds one third of Lush’s entire cosmetic product line and replaces them with ever more novel variations. He expresses his point of view succinctly; "As businesses mature, they get more dull," he says, and that would seem to sum up the central philosophy of this remarkable changemeister. 

He will not be dull, and this approach seems to work. Lush began with one store in 1995. Today there are 320 in 35 countries doing US$100m in annual sales. Their plan is to triple in size by 2008.

It seems unlikely that Constantine will ever be one of those who become so devoted to their successes that they come to fear the disruption of the new. How refreshing is that?

Via Fast Company

NT boom drives good business for bank

BankSA says it has recorded 50 percent growth in lending to businesses based in the Northern Territory during the past two years.

"More than $6 billion is being invested in infrastructure developments in Darwin, creating a groundswell of opportunity for financial services and other South Australian businesses," says the bank's general manager of commercial lending, Colin Taylor.

"Northern Territory industries are feeding off the heightened activity and are seeking record levels of financing to fund their expansion plans."

Independent forecaster Access Economics last month predicted the Territory would lead Australia in economic growth over the next five years, predicting an average annual growth rate of 4.8 percent, compared to a national average of 3.3 percent per year.

In a state of flow

An American psychologist describes a state of "flow" as a condition of heightened focus, productivity, and happiness that all people intuitively understand and hunger for.

In that state, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found, people engaged so completely in what they were doing that they lost track of time. Hours passed in minutes and all sense of self receded. At the same time, they were pushing beyond their limits and developing new abilities.

The best moments usually occurred when a person's body or mind was stretched to capacity. Flow has several necessary preconditions, including having clear goals and a reasonable expectation of completing the task at hand. People must also have the ability to concentrate, receive regular feedback on their progress, and possess the skills needed for that type of work.

Collaboration the key to success

Network guru Dr Dean Economou believes the key to helping Australian ICT companies succeed on the global stage is collaboration through remote access technology.

He cites Melbourne's new synchrotron, a circular particle accelerator, as an example of the scope and potential for electronic collaboration.

"Using advanced collaborative technology we can create virtual clusters, and people all over the planet could access the synchrotron's research potential. Businesses need to use the best players in the world at all stages of the innovation cycle. Collaborative technology can help us integrate Australia into the global marketplace."

Male Territory

There are more men than women in the Northern Territory, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

There were 111 men for every 100 women, higher than the national ratio of 99 men for every 100 women at 30 June 2003.

The Darwin & Environs region had the highest proportion of men, with 113 men for every 100 women. The Central Region had the lowest, with 107 men for every 100 women.

Luck has nothing to do with it

Ireland has begun a campaign to double the number of PhD graduates in science and engineering by 2010, and it has set up funds to lure global companies, and talented people, to go there to do research.

The country earlier created a tax incentive for "knowledge-based" industries to be located there, creating, demand for educated people. Then, it provided the supply by creating free education.

Ireland has discovered that industry will go where important research goes. Last year it received more foreign direct investment from the United States than did China.

Reported in BRW, 4 August 2005.