93 posts filed under this category, page 4 of 4.
Lauren Keller Johnson wrote an interesting article for the Harvard Management Update about how effective leaders delegate. Do you manage or lead? Does delegating make you more expendable? All good questions raised. I especially like the coverage of how to handle a management position for the star promoted and why knowing the strengths of your subordinates and letting them shine is a good thing….
eBay acquired a 25% interest in craigslist by purchasing a former craiglist employee's equity stake. There is a craigslist forum with reactions, and it looks like Craig has had to deal with some bad comments that are definitely undeserved….
Todd L. Pittinsky of Harvard University and Margaret J. Shih of University of Michigan wrote Knowledge Nomads: Organizational Commitment and Worker Mobility in Positive Perspective, featured in the February issue of American Behavioral Scientist. Mallory Stark of Harvard interviewed Pittinsky about knowledge nomads and approaches to turnover in the July 26 issue of HBS Working Knowledge. I like the conclusions from the studies. More managers need to understand motivation and commitment rather than hours and salary. Turnover is a symptom, not a problem. Change your mantra from "attract and retain the best employees" to "attract and re-recruit the best employees."…
Ellen Florian wrote an interesting article in Fortune magazine about the history of the automatic teller machine as well as the changes in human-machine interaction they pioneered. (via Slashdot)…
Charles Fishman writes about Whole Foods in the July 2004 issue of Fast Company. The management insights are very interesting. Every new hire has to win a two-thirds yes vote from their team before being permitted to join the staff permanently. (via Jason Kottke) Every four weeks, individual work teams (there are roughly 10 per store) are assessed for productivity, and profit sharing is awarded in every other paycheck….
The July 2004 issue of McKinsey Quarterly does a good job breaking down what makes sports successful and what hinders large scale success. Tekla V. Back, Philippe Blatter, and Jacques R. Bughin authored "Playing to win in the business of sports" and focused on tennis and golf as two case studies. Some interesting facts:The 2002 FIFA World Cup accounted for 8% of global television-rights revenues in 2002 (about the same as the NBA and NASCAR combined).In the United States the average golf or tennis TV viewer has an income of more than $100,000 a year.Professional tennis is fragmented. The International…
Paul Boutin compares RealNetworks' Starz downloading service to the BitTorrent and DivX solution in an article for Slate. "Starz offers fewer movies than BitTorrent, at lower quality, for a higher price."…
Steven Levy writes about Nick Denton and Gawker Media in Wired magazine. Writers are typically paid $1500 a month (contract, not full time) and build a reputation good enough for a traditional publisher. Levy estimates Gawker Media nets $80,000 per blog per year. "Denton's move to professionalize blogs bestowed instant credibility on an unknown single-writer Web site."…
Michael Schrage, codirector of the MIT Media Lab's eMarkets Initiative, examines project management weblogs within Fortune 500 corporations. (via Slashdot)…
Matt Richtel of the New York Times writes about Cisco, Microsoft, and I.B.M.'s test market for public work spaces. Mobile workers want a structured environment to work, but also the opportunity to meet others. Target the small business workers and the artists and you will have a nice place to work, meet, and consume. "[T]he essential factor in luring office workers was to give them the aura of freedom; there was no pretense that they are in an office, even though they might be working intensely for hours"…
Alex Tabarrok writes in the Marginal Revolution weblog about competitive differences between males and females. His writing is based on an article in the August 2003 issue (Vol. 118, Issue 3) of The Quarterly Journal of Economics written by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle and Aldo Rustichini. Very interesting implications for sports as well as business. [I]n the single-sex tournaments the women's performance improves considerably relative to both their performance in the piece rate system and to their performance in the mixed tournament. Women do like to compete just not against men!…
Laura Vanderkam of USA Today writes about the market for college interns in the United States and concludes "unpaid internships are rarely in employers' best interests." (via MetaFilter)…
USA Today reports that Cingular submitted an offer to the AT&T Wireless board of directors over the weekend. The board is currently in session to consider the deal. AT&T Wireless has a current market capitalization of $27.9 billion….
FedEx announced the purchase of Kinko's for $2.4 billion in cash. This move seemed inevitable if FedEx is to compete with UPS and its UPS Store footprint after the Mail Boxes Etc. purchase in 2001….
Business Week reports on the rise of India in the services sector. Venture capitalists say anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of the software, chip, and e-commerce startups they now back have Indian R&D teams from the get-go. "We can barely imagine investing in a company without at least asking what their plans are for India," says Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz. Nandan M. Nilekani, managing director of Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Ltd.: "Just like China drove down costs in manufacturing and Wal-Mart in retail, India will drive down costs in services."…
In a speech to the Harvard Business School, John Mack emphasized different management approaches on Wall Street. He admits that Wall Street is a money culture, a lone wolf atmosphere, and companies use money as excuses to not care about employees….
Wired reports on the FedEx Institute of Technology, a joint R&D effort by Federal Express and the University of Memphis….
What is your career anchor?…