Management Blog

Australian finalist in innovation awards

Melbourne-based company Plantic's alternative to plastic packaging was a finalist in the fourth Saatchi & Saatchi World-Changing Ideas Award.

The plastic replacement, used to produce trays suitable for dry foods, electronics and blister packaging, is made from renewable resources and dissolves in water.

The winner of the top award was a UK concept, Concrete Canvas, designed to be used in disaster relief. The product is a bag of dry cement that, when hydrated, becomes a durable, temporary structure.

The Saatchi & Saatchi award comes with a US$100,000 prize.

IT moves up Australia's corporate governance ladder

Directors should be more aware of the role of ICT under a new Australian standard for corporate governance, according to a recent MIS roundtable.

Australian Standard 8015, a voluntary standard released in January 2005, forms part of a family of standards concerning IT from day-to-day use of technology to the corporate governance of IT projects.

The first principle for directors and the most senior people in the organisation is to establish clearly understood responsibilities for ICT so they are fully aware of all of the decisions made.

A CIO at the roundtable said this was in order "to ensure information and communication technology conforms to formal rules, directors should regularly evaluate the extent to which ICT satisfies internal obligations, legislation, policies, standards and professional guidelines."

Rules to live and work by

Business 2.0 has compiled a list of philosophies and advice that today's business leaders swear by. Quotes are explored and contextualised by the interviewees in order to explain its significance to their outlook.

Some "golden rules" included are:

Richard Branson - "When people screw up, given them a second chance."
Jim Collins - "Don't be interesting - be interested."
Gary Hamel - "Never bow to precedent."

Happy Australia Day!

www.australiaday.gov.au

Motivational humour

For a mid-week pick me up, Despair Inc.'s Demotivator poster parodies might be just the thing.

With a humorous spin on the ubiquitous office motivational pictures and sayings, the site has added a range of new 'inspirational' items and posters for 2006.

Exports underpin Australian economy forecast

Australian exports will underpin an annual average real GDP growth of 3.3% in 2006-07, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The EIU forecasts annual inflation to average 3% in 2006, the top of the target range of 2-3% set by the Reserve Bank, before easing to 2.6% in 2007.

Mitigating sudden economic changes

How should business executives prepare their companies for unexpected turns in the economy? John McCallum, in an article in the Ivey Business Journal, gives the following examples to mitigate such changes:

• Track business trends, as significant problems seldom arrive out of the blue.
• Satisfying customers should always be the primary concern, but this becomes even more critical as the economy slips.
• Those businesses that most thrive when economic conditions tank are those with the best control of their costs.

Darwinian corporate comparisons

A new book introduces useful insights into the often-used Darwinian comparison between natural selection and the struggle among businesses for competitive advantage.

Strategy and business transformation specialist Geoffrey A. Moore, in Dealing With Darwin, has adopted a theme of innovation, which he sees as being as necessary to the survival of businesses as a plant or animal adapting to changes in habitat.

He says a company must innovate with new products or services even as it continues to produce what is still delivering substantive profits. The latter, Moore says, is called context. Innovation carried out to achieve competitive advantage is called core.

Workday interruptions occurring every 11 minutes

According to Time magazine research, workers in the US are interrupted every 11 minutes on average, either through email, phone calls, or conversations with colleagues.

These interruptions were calculated at an average 2.1 hours per work day, not to mention the 25 minutes or so it takes to refocus on the task at hand after being interrupted.

The cost of this loss in productivity is estimated to be US$588bn per year. 

Getting online from birth

Have you secured your personal domain name yet? For the next generation having a personal domain and website is the next big thing - parents are snapping up website addresses in their offspring's name before birth.

In a recent New York Times article a proud father described his reasoning for setting up a website and email address in his son's name when he was still in utero.

"It's like owning a piece of real estate online for him... By the time he's a teenager and he's really into the Internet, who knows what's going to be left in terms of domains?"

Domains in people's names are selling rapidly, so staking a claim now isn't such a bad idea.