The Power of Fun

Spotted on the web:
“All cities with populations of 3,000 or more are required by law to publish and distribute (yawn) drinking water quality reports. Cities hate doing them, and residents throw them away, often without a glance. Bo-ring.
This year, we developed a mid-year calendar (who sends out a calendar in July???) that featured fun photos [...]

Hedge Funds: Alternative to VCs

Spotted at cnn.com:
“Growing companies could be tapping into a new source of capital in 2007: Hedge funds are getting into the private-equity business. And although some are investing in large venture capital or similar institutional funds, other managers are hitting the VC breakfast circuit in search of direct investments.”
“So far, hedge-fund managers behave less like [...]

Procrastination

Spotted on the web:
Why do people procrastinate? This is an effect psychologists attribute to “hyperbolic time discounting”: the immediate rewards are disproportionally more compelling than the greater delayed costs. In other words, Procrastination itself is the reward.

Inventory Management

Here are some slides from a talk on Inventory Management I did earlier this year.

Report: Patent Law Stifles Innovation

Among drug companies, at least, according to the report:
“A report by the General Accounting Office concludes that current patent law discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by allowing them to make excessive profits through minor changes to existing pharmaceuticals.” Read more…
Whether this can apply to other industries is yet to be seen.
(Spotted at Slashdot)

Consumer Technologies in Corporate Computing

“In the past, innovation was driven by the military or corporate markets. But now the consumer market, with its vast economies of scale and appetite for novelty, leads the way. Compared with the staid corporate-software industry, using these services is like “receiving technology from an advanced civilisation”, says Mr Sannier.”
“Since the software and the data [...]

Efficiency of Capital Markets

The theory is based on the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), formulated by Eugene Fama in 1970 which states that all pertinent information regarding the stock market or a specific stock is readily available to everyone. Advocates of this theory believe that investors cannot outperform the market and that stock prices change randomly and independently of [...]

Sound Strategy

Sound strategy is not a case of having every facet correctly in place. It concerns improving the level of consciousness a company brings to bear on its corporate decisions.
–Terry Hill

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is usually thought of as getting the right information to the right people at the right time, but a more complete definition of KM is “a means for an organization to continually retain, improve, and acquire knowledge over the years.” While the idea seems straightforward enough to implement, it is actually under attack [...]

Elegant Solutions

“An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense.” [pdf]
This is related to the saying “If a process is painful, you’re probably doing something wrong.”