Management Blog

MySpace providing marketing opportunities

A growing number of companies are taking marketing advantage of the social-networking site MySpace by becoming members of their customers' networks of "friends", says The Economist. Businesses are establishing their own pages on MySpace, to which users can link.

Some unlikely partnerships are being formed: consumer goods giant Unilever partnered with MySpace user Christine Dolce to promote Axe, a deodorant. Dolce has around 900,000 "friends" who link to her MySpace page and Axe is arguably the most successful brand to emerge from the social networking site.

According to the article MySpace receives a staggering 54 million visits per month, making it the most visted site in America.

Link roundup - 28 July 2006

A selection of interesting links and articles collected over the previous week...

The Eggcorn Database: A site devoted to eggcorns, or common or unusual spelling mishaps and word misuse that have appeared in the English language.

Writing, Clear and Simple: A blog dedicated to improving one's writing style. An accompanying Squidoo lens is also available.

Google Holiday Logos: If you enjoy Google's special occasion logos, meet the artist behind them, Dennis Hwang. All the logos are also available in Google's archive.

The Long Tail: Chris Anderson's acclaimed book, The Long Tail, has been released but the book's journey can still be tracked through the author's blog.

The Kingdomality Personal Preference Profile: An oldie but a goodie - what's your management style? Find out who you would have been in the Medieval Kingdom.

Aussies earning more but working longer hours

Australians are working longer hours, a new report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

The annual snapshot of social trends shows that wages are increasing but so are the working hours of full-time employees. Men did an average 43.2 hours a week (up two hours on 1985) while women were working 39.3 hours a week (up 1.7 hours).

"The trend towards longer hours among full-time workers, together with increases in women's employment, has led to increases in the working hours of many families," the report said.

"Long hours are more common in the occupations characterised by high levels of self-employment, such as full-time managers and administrators."

Digital convergence coming of age

Harvard Business School professor of international business administration David Yoffie says technology is about to get exciting again. This follows a three-year effort to update an HBS elective course on strategy development in technology-intensive companies.

"As I developed new materials, I realised that digital convergence was really happening," Yoffie says.

"Long predicted but never realised, convergence is the idea that as the worlds of entertainment, computing, and communication go digital, they can be combined to create exciting new products, services, and business opportunities."

He says convergence examples, suddenly, are plentiful.

Green growth attracts entrepreneurs

The green sector is increasingly attracting the attention of entrepreneurs, reports BusinessWeek.

In the past six years, investment in clean energy technology has grown from 1% of total US venture capital to 4.2%, or $917 million out of $22 billion, according to the Clean Edge report.

All of the largest venture capital firms have invested, joining a group of long-established specialist firms that had been around since the early 1990s. Erik Straser, a general partner who manages the clean tech area for his company, says that despite the flurry of solar-related activity, there's huge potential because the supply cannot keep pace with demand.

He says there's still a lot of money to be made in "solar integration", which includes the delivery, installation, and storage of energy produced by these systems.

Planned retirements to hit education system

Retirements by school principals and other teachers may lead to shortages in the Australian education system, according to The Age.

A survey of 386 schools nationally indicates more than one third of principals and more than half of deputy principals are planning retirement within the next five years. Victoria made up one-third of the figures.

The situation was dire, according to Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair because few candidates were applying for vacant positions. The difficult nature of the job was putting off applicants.

Blair said teacher retirements in Victoria would peak this year, with 1600 eligible to leave.

Tearing up the playbook

Corporate edicts of the past are starting to feel out of date, according to a recent article in Fortune.

US business leaders have less control - and less job security - than ever before, just when markets have become volatile and unpredictable, there is the pressure from hedge funds and private-equity investors relentless, and the competition from China and India intensifies.

There's a dramatic rethink taking place about fundamental assumptions of the past. Is an emphasis on market share and quarterly earnings per share really the best measure of a CEO's success?

The article's author, Betsy Morris, outlines the New vs Old Rules in corporate America:

New Rules	Old Rules
Agile is best; being big can bite you.	Big dogs own the street.
Find a niche, create something new.	Be No. 1 or No. 2 in your market.
The customer is king.	Shareholders rule.
Look out, not in.	Be lean and mean.
Hire passionate people.	Rank your players; go with the A's.
Hire a courageous CEO.	Hire a charismatic CEO.
Admire my soul.	Admire my might.

Half of advertising spend wasted

Advertising messages that reach the wrong audience - or none at all - waste $US112 billion a year in America and $220 billion worldwide. This is according to Greg Stuart, the author of a soon to be released book on the advertising industry and the head of the US Interactive Advertising Bureau. These misdirected ads represent just over half of total spending.

The new advertising models based on internet technologies amount to innovation instead of advertising "bombs", says Rishad Tobaccowala, the chief innovation officer of Publicis. Advertisers now "make lots of spearheads and then get people to impale themselves."

The idea is based on consumers taking the initiative by voluntarily interacting with what they find online.

Using the skills of amateur creators

There's a new term for customers who contribute to a organisation's R&D and product design in their spare time: crowdsourcing.

These unpaid or low-paid amateurs design products, create content, even tackle corporate research problems, according to a recent BusinessWeek article.

It cites the example of the design process at Threadless, a Chicago-based t-shirt maker, which consists entirely of an online contest where each week it receives hundreds of submissions from amateur and professional artists.

The designs are posted on a website where visitors can give each shirt a score. After enough customers have pre-ordered the design to ensure it won't be a money-loser, the four to six highest-rated designs each week are put into production.

CEOs under fire by shareholders

Errant CEOs are increasingly the focus of disgruntled shareholders and governance reformers.

Citing the fifth annual CEO study by the Booz Allen Hamilton management consulting firm, the quarterly business journal strategy + business reports that four times as many of the world's top CEOs were forced out last year as in 1995.

CEOs were particularly vulnerable last year in North America. The researchers said 35% of all departing CEOs were moved out and that this trend is expected to continue.