Monthly Archives: January 2012

Social Media: The lowly petition has gone viral: Corporate titans beware

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 4: Marketing Management, Part 5 Managing Technology and Information.

Description:  Corporate America’s worst nightmare lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, loves browsing in flea markets and has a lop-eared brown and white pet rabbit named Crackers. Meet Molly Katchpole. The 22-year-old Washington, D.C. resident has recently tangled with a couple of billion-dollar corporations, and cowed them into submission without breaking a sweat. Source:  GlobeandMail.com… Read more »

2011’s worst in tech

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 3 Management: Empowering People to Achieve Business Objectives, Part 4: Marketing Management, Part 5 Managing Technology and Information, Part 6 Managing Financial Resources.

Description:  RIM joins Netflix and HP as the tech sector’s biggest losers in 2011. Source: CNNMoney.com – video report Date: 12/28/2011 Link:   http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2011/12/20/ts_tech_losers_2011.cnnmoney/ Questions for discussion: Why did these companies have such a bad year in 2011? Is there a common thread that explains why they performed so poorly? What lessons did you learn about… Read more »

Roll your own cigarettes in NY store

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 2 Starting and Growing Your Business, Part 4: Marketing Management.

Description:  Make your own cigarettes in a store in NY. Too good to be true for some? turns out yes. Cnns richard roth reports Source: CNNMoney.com – video report Date: 12/29/2011 Link:  http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/12/29/n_roll_your_own_cigarettes.cnnmoney/ Questions for discussion: What are the related ethical issues represented in this report? Who do you side with? Is the city government… Read more »

Skate to Where the Puck is Going in Startups

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 2 Starting and Growing Your Business, Part 3 Management: Empowering People to Achieve Business Objectives, Part 4: Marketing Management.

Description:  Wayne Gretzky famously said that a good hockey player plays where the puck is, while a great player skates plays where the puck is going to be. Yammer founderDavid Sacks says it’s the same with startups. The former PayPal COO says you don’t want to create the 20th version of something that already exists,… Read more »

Slicing Costs, and Still Serving

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 4: Marketing Management, Part 6 Managing Financial Resources.

Description:  You see them all across the country, in shopping malls and street corners, suburban towns and city centers: zombie restaurants. Many of the undead are part of familiar chains that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this year: Friendly’s, Chevys, Sbarro, Perkins. The zombie restaurants, barely bringing in enough cash to cover basic expenses,… Read more »

SOPA’s most frightening flaw is the future it predicts

Posted by & filed under Part 1 Business in a Global Environment, Part 4: Marketing Management, Part 5 Managing Technology and Information.

Description:  Bob Parsons likes to go to Zimbabwe and shoot elephants. The CEO of GoDaddy, a company that lets customers register Web site domain names, is apparently deeply concerned with the plight of Zimbabwean subsistence farmers, who he says are plagued by marauding elephant gangs that destroy crops and trample fields. Source:  GlobeandMail.com Date: 12/28/2011… Read more »