Here is part four of the WSHU “Better Biz” series, where Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres react to the challenges of specific businesses.
Here is part three of the WSHU “Better Biz” series, where Barry Nalebuff and I react to the challenges of specific businesses.
Here is part two of the WSHU “Better Biz” series, in which Barry Nalebuff and I react to the challenges of specific businesses. In this segment, we talk about the super-cool travel site Kayak.
WSHU, a public radio station in Connecticut, is running a six-part “Better Biz” series, where Barry Nalebuff and I react to the challenges of specific businesses.
The recent proposal by the Fed to regulate bankers’ compensation practices is understandable given the events of the past two years, but setting caps on salaries and bonuses misses the fundamental problem of compensation on Wall Street. Despite the public resentment surrounding finance-industry payouts, the fact is that no one objects to paying for performance. We just want to make sure we’re not getting fleeced or paying for pure dumb luck, and this is where the problem lies.
As people who hate meetings, we were particularly taken with one paragraph from this wonderful piece on the unlikely success of Craigslist.
This month’s Harvard magazine has a nice piece on the founder of the Smile Train, Brian Mullaney.
I love the way he runs his organization, and the way he tells it like it is.
For years, as its stores spread like kudzu across the country, Starbucks was accused of driving neighborhood coffee shops out of business. In most cases, it seems to have done exactly the opposite. In recent times, the Seattle-based company is in retreat, having closed hundreds of stores and laying off thousands of employees. But now it’s making a crafty move on its community competitors.
American and international health insurers hold $4.5 billion worth of stock in tobacco companies, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds. The study’s co-author says the stock holdings represent a conflict of interest: “If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don’t want to see it go down…. You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in.”
A reader named Eric Eilberg writes with the following bleg: My family has run Marlen Jewelers since 1914. Over the years a lot of things have changed, and the business has survived and prospered. We’re a freestanding building in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. We employ six full-time and one part-time sales associates. Dad is the third generation to run . . .
A seatmate on a flight I took described her interesting business to me. She organizes seminars where she speaks to groups of professionals in her field.
She rents a meeting room in a hotel (her fixed cost) and incurs the variable costs of her time and travel. I asked her about her business during the recession, since I assume that the demand for her seminars has decreased. Doesn’t she have a lot of empty seats? Isn’t she losing money?
Imagine for a moment that you are a stay-at-home mom with a workaholic husband, five kids between the ages of two and nine, a new dog, and almost no babysitting help. What would you do? How about start up a new business? That’s what Jennifer List, wife of my colleague and co-author John List, did. The result is Seven Smooches. . . .
Folio reports that Time Inc. is starting a new magazine-subscription service called Maghound that sounds a bit like Netflix’s movie model: Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships . . .
Go and read this profile of the artist/author/songwriter Sandra Boynton. Not only is it nicely written (by Phyllis Korkki — great last name, BTW, with 50 percent Ks) but it is also a fascinating business story about how Boynton juggles and, more importantly, measures such variables as time, enjoyment, money, creative thrill, etc. The article is full of surprises — . . .
The key to good health? Eat more garbage. Technology meets baby naming. (HT: BoingBoing) New report says global warming kills more Europeans than car accidents. (Earlier) Which ten businesses will be extinct within the next decade?