October 31, 2006, 7:12 PM CT
Business Innovation Is Not Dependent On Creative People
Determine what important assets you possess.
Given what you've got, assess what new, innovative businesses, processes or solutions you can engage in.
Decide how to implement the innovation by examining the issues, the resources required and the planning steps.
American companies continue to grapple with staying competitive in the global economy. Increasingly, companies and business gurus are citing innovation as the key to sustaining American business' strength. What's not clear is what it means for a company to be innovative. How can firms foster innovation? Can organizations cope with the changes necessary to produce advancements?.
"It's important for Western companies to compete on innovation since they can't successfully compete with the East on price," said Panos Kouvelis, professor of operations and manufacturing management at the Olin School of Business. "The best way to infuse innovation into your company is not by hiring creative people. That's not effective. Organizations need to manage innovation in a systematic way to get employees to think outside the box."
There are methods for inspiring non-traditional thinking, Kouvelis said. It starts with encouraging experimentation, which elicits learning. Experimentation means prototyping in product-service developments, and development systems and technologies that maximize learning.
New, Not Trendy Glenn MacDonald, professor of economics and strategy at Washington University's business school, concurred and added that the key to successful innovation is being able to go beyond the theory.........
Posted by: Tom Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 11:08 AM CT
Options Backdating By Bending The Rules
Managers can find way to increase their compensation.
Now that the U.S. Senate Finance Committee has returned from its summer holiday, members have put the recent spate of backdating stock options at the top of the agenda. Several professors from the business school at Washington University in St. Louis are ready to discuss the implications backdating has on corporations and shareholders.
It is believed that dozens, if not hundreds, of companies across the country may have improperly manipulated the dates of stock options grants to coincide with low points in the value of their companies' shares. Among the a number of firms that have been implicated in options backdating are Apple Computer Inc., Comverse Technology, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Affiliated Computer Systems and Monster Worldwide Inc.
The reason that companies grant options is entirely logical, said Richard Frankel, associate professor of accounting. It's a way to get managers on the same page with the shareholders.
"Managers don't intrinsically have the same interest in growing the company as shareholders do; they tend to be more conservative," Frankel said. "It's particularly costly for them if they make a decision that hurts the company, so they tend to be rather risk-averse.
"Options are intended to do two things: increase the connection between a manager's payout and the share price, and encourage managers to take risks," Frankel said.........
Posted by: Mac Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 10:33 AM CT
Restating Earnings Hurts The Company And Peers
When one company restates earnings, best to see what its peers are up to.
No company wants to issue an accounting restatement; it's a guaranteed way for the share price to drop 10 percent, on average. Investors, analysts and journalists alike view restatements as an indication of a problem within the company. As per a professor at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, when a company announces a restatement of revenues or expenses, there is value in looking at its industry peer firms.
Based on an evaluation of more than 22,500 public companies, accounting professor Nicole Thorne Jenkins and her co-authors observed that a company's restatement adversely affects not only its own stock price, but also that of similar firms.
"When a firm announces a restatement, there is a significantly negative market reaction," said Jenkins. "The information communicated by a restatement is transferred to similar firms. The market reacts to that information transfer similarly but to a lesser degree because there is some uncertainty that the same reporting problem exists in other companies."
Upon news of a company's accounting restatement, peer firms experience a cumulative average decrease of 1.82 percent in the 21 days following the initial restatement. The effect is even more pronounced for firms that have poor accounting quality or that have the same auditor as the restating firm.........
Posted by: Mac Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 9:54 AM CT
Jobless Recovery Will Be A Repeat Phenomenon
Recovering from a recession doesn't include the entire economy.
The "jobless recovery" that befuddled observers after the recession in the early 2000s was no fluke. It's actually a pattern that we can expect to continue thanks to technology's uneven impact across sectors of the economy, as per research from a business professor at Washington University in St. Louis. What's more, this new trend in business cycles is as important in making policy decisions as it is about the stability of the country's economy.
"Technology doesn't just land like a giant asteroid and change everything," said Glenn MacDonald, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy at the Olin School of Business. "It used to be that new technology was broadly impactful. But newer innovations have less of that character, directly impacting some sectors more than others. The Internet, for example has had an incredible direct effect on sectors such as finance and insurance, or retail, but a much more incidental effect on others."
New technology brings economic change With new technology comes the need for companies where the technology is important to retool and reorganize how their business is run. This typically involves reducing output and often cutting back on labor. This translates into that sector of the economy beginning to slow.........
Posted by: Mac Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 7:43 AM CT
Leading-Edge Technology Opportunities
European SMEs have demonstrated their capability to perform research and technology developments leading to outstanding innovations
ESA has issued an Announcement of Opportunities calling for proposals for innovative technology developments. This is part of the Agency's Leading-Edge Technology Programme targeted at SMEs.
Proposals should focus on the early-stage development and feasibility demonstration of new technologies which have a strong possibility of being infused into future ESA projects and space missions.
Proposals for important improvements of existing technologies or processes will also be considered, provided the improvements are clearly substantiated and the corresponding space application identified.
Only SMEs of ESA Member States and Canada are allowed to bid as main contractors. However, universities and research institutes may participate as partners of SMEs, providing their share of the project focuses on their field of expertise, and represents a limited part of the overall work to be performed under the contract.
As usual, the Leading-Edge Technology Programme for Small and Medium Enterprises (LET-SME) Announcement of Opportunities (AO) calls for innovative solutions and technologies in reply to specific needs identified by ESA's technical services. These industry-driven technologies will allow ESA to prepare for long-term technological capability and to define new space missions and applications.........
Posted by: Mac Permalink Source
September 5, 2006, 7:39 PM CT
Industry Impact of Chemical Controls
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has co-organized with U.S. industry a workshop to address the increasing pressure on manufacturers from emerging chemical controls and regulations from such countries as China and the European Union. The suite of issues stemming from regulatory actions in various markets, as well as global reporting and management efforts, has serious cost and market implications both for manufacturers of chemicals and for chemicals users and are potential barriers to innovation.
The workshop, "Innovation and Competitiveness: A Strategic Approach to Emerging Chemical Issues," will be held on Sept. 26-27 at the NIST laboratories in Gaithersburg, Md.
The costs of dealing with multiple chemical regulation and control requirements in different markets goes far beyond the chemical industry itself. Chemicals and chemical products contribute 16 percent of the value of material inputs in the automotive sector, 33 percent of the value of material inputs used to make semiconductors, and 30 percent of the value of medical supplies, for example. The European Union's "End-of-Life-Vehicles" (ELV) Directive affected thousands of U.S. automotive suppliers. A study conducted by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) observed that the average cost for inputting data into the International Material Data System (IMDS), a tool for complying with the ELV requirements, was $75 per simple raw material and up to $2,500 per complex assembly. In 2002, an Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) project team used these data and estimated that total costs to the entire U.S. supply chain for ELV compliance would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.........
Posted by: Sarah Permalink Source
August 14, 2006, 10:06 PM CT
A science or engineering bachelor's degree
Even people who go on to work in non-technical fields say their science or engineering bachelor's degree is useful in their jobs.
Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation
Earning a bachelor's degree in science or engineering (S&E) appears to serve the recipient well in the workforce, regardless of the job they do. In fact, as per a National Science Foundation (NSF) survey, people who have earned an S&E bachelor's degree generally report that science and engineering knowledge is important to their job.
That holds even if the graduate ends up doing non-technical work. As per the survey, among those workers whose only degree was an S&E bachelor's, 27 percent had S&E occupations. Sixty-three percent working in non-technical fields still said their jobs were correlation to their S&E degree.
Some 400,000 sales workers, for example, reported their job was correlation to their S&E bachelor's degree. And a majority of S&E bachelor's degree holders employed as artists, editors or writers reported their degree was at least somewhat correlation to their job.
Of those who went on to receive advanced degrees, the largest proportion, almost 29 percent, took those degrees in non-S&E fields, namely business, law or medicine.
"S&E knowledge remained important to the jobs of most S&E bachelor's holders with advanced degrees--being reported as necessary by a majority of both those with master's degrees in business and those with other non-S&E advanced degrees," the survey said.........
Posted by: Tom Permalink Source
May 22, 2006, 10:41 AM CT
Web, database programmer (UNIX)
- Posted: May 21, 2006 .
- Company name: Advanced Solutions Inc.
- Location: United States, NY, Brooklyn .
- Pay rate: up to $120K/year .
- Travel: 0% .
- Poster represents: an employer .
- Terms of employment: Hourly employee .
- Length of employment: 16 months .
- Hours: Full time .
- Onsite: yes .
- Description: (PLEASE NOTE: NO RELOCATION PAID, NO VISA SPONSORSHIP).
- Wanted:.
- Experienced Perl programmer.
- You must have either Oracle or MySQL or Postgresql experience. Informix is a plus.
- Thorough command of the English language mandatory with good technical writing skills creating documentation for users and programmers.
........
Posted by: Mac Permalink Source
April 16, 2006, 6:39 PM CT
Getting Promoted In Your Current Job
If you're interested in advancing in your career, the best argument for staying with one company for a while is potential promotion opportunities. If you have a good relationship with your boss, they probably know your strengths better than you could explain to someone in the course of an interview or in a 2-page resume. The trick is motivating your boss to see you as someone who should move up to the next level.
Use the resources you have
Whether or not you've been networking all along, you should definitely start to do it.
The "elevator pitch" isn't just for people looking for a job outside their current company - you should also have an elevator pitch developed about where you're looking to go in your career with your present employer. If you're not sure what an elevator pitch is, visit the articles section on our site and check out the one on "Developing a Job Search Elevator Pitch."
Also, use current projects as a way to "advertise" your strengths to others in the company. By doing a great job on projects and exceeding expectations, you'll be generating some positive publicity for yourself.
Get prepared
Find out who's picking the candidate for the promotion and what skills they're seeking for the job. Next, make sure you have the top four or five skills or the ability to produce them. Start checking out your marketing portfolio, resume, or anything else you can use. Organize your materials and make sure they clearly reflect the skills needed. Use examples to show the things you've already done in the company that have helped them succeed (or even exceed) their goals.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink
April 16, 2006, 2:17 PM CT
Who Is Responsible for Adware?
As adware continues to annoy computer users, efforts to crack down on ad-serving software have begun to focus on the advertisers behind some of the pop-ups.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, whose office has sued two major adware vendors, has threatened to come after advertisers. An affidavit filed last week with Mr. Spitzer's lawsuit against Internet marketer Direct Revenue named some large companies that continue to advertise through adware. (Direct Revenue, for its part, has said the case is "baseless" and focused on the company's past practices.) FTC Commissioner Jonathan Leibowitz recently proposed "shaming" companies that advertise through adware by publishing their names.
But what responsibility do advertisers have when it comes to adware? The Wall Street Journal Online asked Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Eric Goldman, a law professor at Marquette University, to discuss the ethical issues and legal risks. Their exchange, carried out over email, is below.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
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