Archive for the 'News' Category

How 4 Business Students Took on the Eyewear Industry

Published on February 1, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Mashable Video

When four friends met in business school and discovered they shared a common problem — an aversion to paying hundreds of dollars for eyeglasses — they realized there was a business opportunity in it. The group founded Warby Parker, an innovative startup that aims to revolutionize how people buy eyeglasses. Warby sells directly to the public, via their website, allowing them to bypass retailers and sell their frames and lenses for $95.

Check out our interview with Dave Gilboa, Warby Parker’s co-founder and co-CEO and learn how the company is disrupting the eyewear industry, similar to the way Netflix crashed the video rental market. Dave also talks about some of the company’s early growing pains, including having to put 20,000 customers on a waiting list and why Google shut down his company’s email servers.  View video…

How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

Published on January 22, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher in the New York Times:

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

…

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple’s manufacturing decisions exemplify the altered circumstances of high-technology commodity production in the contemporary world. The article describes the situation, but not the solution for regions and nations wishing to insure stable and remunerative work for their people. Note especially the conditions of daily life for product assembly workers sketched out in the article. The industrial revolution appears to be repeating itself yet again with similarities of both triumph and tragedy.

To read the article…

The business-school world in 2012

Published on January 4, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From J.L.H.D., The Economist…

Assuming you have largely recovered from holiday celebrating, you are now free to contemplate the coming of 2012 by mulling over this newspaper’s predictions. Granted, it does not make for the happiest of reading. “The world won’t end in 2012,” writes our editor. “But at times it will feel as if it is about to.” The fate of the euro is still in doubt; America, France, Russia, and China all face potential changes at the top; business confidence is down; and it may be best not to think too much about climate change, given the potential for collective inaction. As the song goes, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

Perhaps fortunately, change comes more slowly to academia, and so the business-school world as a whole should see less upheaval. Applications will probably remain down, as potential students see less hope of studying out the recession and worry more about the loans required to take an MBA. Executive-education budgets will also suffer, with only the occasional CEO able to indulge in a high-ticket course. Expect a few curriculum reworkings along the lines of Harvard’s, and, in the wake of the Occupy movement, the incorporation of income inequality and taxation into discussions of corporate social responsibility. On a lighter note, the 2012 Olympics in London will provide the excuse—er, background—for many a discussion of the business of sport. More…

The consumerization of IT- The next-generation CIO

Published on December 13, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

From PwC’s Center for Technology and Innovation:

Users’ demands that they be allowed to use technologies of their own choosing isn’t a fad that will fade. CIOs can’t squelch these demands—nor should they. The consumerization of IT is a symptom of a shift in workplace expectations that has been brewing for years and is now reaching an inflection point.

From the time of the Hollerith’s punched cards, information technology has been changing the way business is done. It has enabled larger-sized enterprises, more agile enterprises, and has also made possible stunning and catastrophic mistakes. The introduction of personal computers, as this report emphasizes, was a particularly disruptive event. Contemporary mobile computing in tandem with cloud services and social network systems promises to have at least as large an impact as the placement of a PC on every desk in the office.



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					Field of dreams: Harvard Business School reinvents its MBA course
				

						

			
						

				Published on December 10, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
(Credit: Reuters)


From The Economist…


Young mums shopping in the Copley Mall in downtown Boston last month found themselves being questioned about their use of soap by students from Harvard Business School. The students were not doing odd jobs to earn beer money. They were preparing to help a firm in Brazil launch an antibacterial cleanser.


Fieldwork—ie, going out and talking to people—is a big change for HBS. Its students used to sit in a classroom and discuss case studies written by professors. Now they may also work in a developing country and launch a start-up. “Learning by doing” will become the norm, if a radical overhaul of the MBA curriculum succeeds.


The 900 students arriving in Boston this summer for their two-year course were told they would be guinea pigs. The new practical addition to HBS’s curriculum is known as “FIELD” (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development). Not all the staff and students are overjoyed to be experimented on. But the man responsible, Nitin Nohria, who became dean of HBS in July 2010, says that “if it works, the FIELD method could become an equal partner to the case method.” More…

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	


	        
	

		

							

					MBA Diary: No research required
				

						

			
						

				Published on December 9, 2011 in News. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
(Alamy)


From Andrew Pollen, a first-year MBA student at ESADE in Barcelona, at The Economist…


A couple of weeks ago, my economics professor introduced a new case study for us to mull over. It was dense and packed with historical background. We were split into groups and most of the class had only just finished reading it when we reconvened to wrap up the session. The professor explained some fine points for the case and suggested which tactics we should employ. Then he said he was very disappointed in us.


“I wanted you to work on the case in groups,” he said, “and instead you read the case individually. If you had worked together, I think you would have noticed that the first 10 pages of the case were absolute nonsense that you do not need to answer the questions.”


It was a powerful pedagogic lesson in using teamwork to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. I think ESADE emphasises the teaching ability of its faculty because it has never been a top research institution; faculty come from industry or consulting rather than academia. They view teaching as their motivation rather than an unpleasant side effect to their appointment. On the first day of my statistics class, the professor thanked the students and said, “Your being here allows me to do something that I love.” I felt that sentiment a lot less often during my time at a top American business school. More…

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	


	        
	

		

							

					Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy
				

						

			
						

				Published on December 8, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
From Susanna Kiim at ABC News Business blog…


You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.


CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam.  That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.


Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.


When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the overall response “has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.” More…


Image: Haeel via Wikimedia Commons

		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	


	        
	

		

							

					The Empire Strikes Back: How Xerox and other big corporations are harnessing the force of disruptive innovation
				

						

			
						

				Published on December 2, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
From Scott D. Anthony and Clayton M. Christensen in Technology Review:


It has been a long time since anyone considered Xerox an innovation powerhouse. On the contrary, Xerox typically serves as a cautionary tale of opportunity lost: many obituaries of Steve Jobs described how a fateful visit by Jobs to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1979 inspired many of the breakthroughs that Apple built into its Macintosh computer. Back then, Xerox dominated the photocopier market and was understandably focused on improving and sustaining its high-margin products. The company’s Connecticut headquarters became the place where inventions in its Silicon Valley lab went to die. Inevitably, simpler and cheaper copiers from Canon and other rivals cut down Xerox in its core market. It is a classic story of the “innovator’s dilemma.” Xerox struggled to defend against threats at the low end of its business, failed to create growth in new markets, and found itself on the brink of irrelevance, if not extinction.


But now Xerox is turning things around. ….


Under [new CEO, Ursula] Burns, Xerox was now redefining its mission. “I kept asking people: What is it that we do?” she said in a recent speech at the Churchill Club. “The answer was always: ‘We’re a copier company, a printer company, a document company.’ ‘No, that’s not what we do,’ I said. ‘We help companies transform very complex and burdensome business processes.’”


Changing a frame of reference or the shape of an idea can bring about transformative change.


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					Soaring Borrowing Costs Push Italy to the Edge
				

						

			
						

				Published on November 21, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
Photo by Andrew Medichini from the AP


From msnbc.com with contributions from Reuters and the Associate Press


Italian borrowing costs reached a breaking point on Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s promise to resign failed to raise optimism about the country’s ability to deliver on long-promised economic reforms.


Italy’s president moved swiftly to reassure anxious markets, promising that Berlusconi would soon be vacating the premier’s office and unexpectedly lavishing praise on economist Mario Monti, who might lead the debt-plagued country’s next government.


The former European competition commissioner is widely considered to be a top contender to be the next Italian premier, now that Berlusconi has pledged to resign as soon as urgently demanded economic reforms are approved by Parliament.


President Giorgio Napolitano’s office announced he had named Monti, who now runs the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, as a senator-for-life. Senators-for-life include notable figures outside of politics and have voting privileges in the Senate. The honor could reinforce Monti’s widely viewed status as a respectable figure above party politics.


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					Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says Steve Jobs Advised on Company Focus, Management
				

						

			
						

				Published on November 13, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments 			
 
			
					


		

						
Photo by David Paul Morris from Bloomberg


By Brian Womack from Bloomberg


Facebook Inc. Chief Executive OfficerMark Zuckerberg said Apple Inc. (AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs advised him on how to sharpen his company’s focus and build the right management team for the world’s largest social network.


“I had a lot of questions for him,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Charlie Rose that’s due to air today. The topics included “how to build a team around you that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are.”


Jobs, in the period before he died on Oct. 5, viewed it as his responsibility to give advice to up-and-coming technology executives including Zuckerberg, according to a biography of Jobs published last month. Jobs said in interviews with the author, Walter Isaacson, that he admired the Facebook CEO for not “selling out.”


To Read More…