Good article in crain's about the dilemma a number of small business owners are facing. Also includes some good stats on the number of businesses that will be for sale in the next 5-10 years.
Ride it out or get out?
By Samantha Stainburn
Dec. 08, 2008
Gary Heidt didn't see the recession coming when he decided in 2006 to sell Heidt's Hot Rod Shop Inc. so he could spend more time with his wife and four grandchildren at home in Palatine.
"Two of them live two miles away, and they were growing up without me," says the 56-year-old entrepreneur, who was working 12-hour days, six days a week at the company, a maker of parts for classic cars, that he started in his garage in 1986. "I'd come home at 10 o'clock at night, and they were already asleep."
Sales were strong for most of 2007, and three prospective buyers checked out the business, which had sales below $10 million. But in late 2007, one of the bidders — whose initial offer was so big Mr. Heidt almost dropped the phone upon hearing it — cut that offer by a third.
The bidder was concerned that end-of-year sales were down from a year earlier, Mr. Heidt says. Earlier recessions had slowed sales only slightly — muscle car enthusiasts tend to cut back on other luxuries first — but conditions had changed.
"I said to my wife, 'We should probably sell now because if we stall and wait to build it up even more, it might be five years before we get back to this point. If I have to wait five more years, I'll have a heart attack in the back of the shop one night.' "
Mr. Heidt was up against a dilemma facing many entrepreneurs, particularly baby boomers, who once imagined they'd be selling and hitting the golf course in the next few years.
Many entrepreneurs approaching retirement would rather sell now than slog through a recession. But chances are, if they sell now, they'll be settling for less than they would have gotten as recently as a year ago — and that's assuming they can even find a buyer in such a brutal market.
"It's a Catch-22," says Dennis Hansmann, a business broker with American Business Acquisitions Inc. in Chicago, who's been fielding inquiries from entrepreneurs who are out of gas.
"People are calling, wanting to put their business on the market but running up against their own losses," he says. "To get the highest value, a business owner may need to take time to increase their sales or get their profitability back in check, which could involve layoffs and cutting their inventory."
Mr. Heidt eventually reached out to entrepreneur Frank Happ, who had shown interest in the business a few months earlier. Mr. Happ and partner Marc Prince bought Heidt's Hot Rod Shop in February.
Their all-cash deal didn't match the high offer that fell through, but Mr. Heidt is thrilled nevertheless. "I can't afford to buy five houses, but it's enough that I don't have to work," he says. He's back in his own garage, rebuilding a 1932 Ford Roadster.
NOW OR LATER
Forty percent of family business owners, most of whom won't be passing their companies on to their children, expect to retire by 2017, according to the Family Firm Institute Inc., a Boston-based membership organization. And 42% of CEOs of fast-growing companies surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in 2005 expected to move on by 2010.
With the economy sputtering, buyers are offering less cash. But if business owners hold on, their last years on the job could be their most difficult, dominated by cutting staff, chasing delinquent customers and working with smaller lines of credit. What's an aging entrepreneur to do?
Chief among reasons to stay is that it's not a great time to sell, particularly for businesses in sectors that are deteriorating, like the automotive industry and luxury-goods manufacturing.
"You're going to be getting out at a price that will be lower to reflect the depressed conditions we're facing and the increased uncertainty about how that business will do," says Scott George, a managing director at mid-market investment bank P&M Corporate Finance LLC in Chicago. "Even in July and August, an owner of a business would have been able to get a better price."
Owners who choose to tough it out likely will have to work harder than they have since launching their businesses. But there are potential rewards, notes Thomas Livergood, CEO of Family Wealth Alliance LLC, a Wheaton-based consultancy. In fact, healthy companies with cash on hand can not only survive but grow in a time like this.
"Fortunes are made during recessions," Mr. Livergood says. "If you have the cash, this is a great opportunity to snap up companies that are forced to sell."
Investment banker David Kauppi says it may be wise to sell now, before boomer-age owners nearing retirement begin to sell en masse.
On the other hand, weak companies tend to get weaker during recessions. If it's likely that a bumpy journey through the recession will diminish the value of your company over the next few years, it may be better to sell now.
"If you're thinking about retiring, and you're healthy and your business is doing relatively well, it's a good time to sell because you don't know what's going to happen 12 months from now," says David Kauppi, president of Hinsdale-based investment bank MidMarket Capital Inc.
Exiting early also will help you avoid the glut that's coming as boomer entrepreneurs sell en masse. "There's going to be a robust deal flow over the next five to 10 years," Mr. Kauppi says. "If you've got a buyer who has 30 different companies he can buy, he's going to say, 'Compete for my dollars,' and that six times EBITDA goes down to four."
OVER AND OUT
For some business owners, the answer is in their gut, not their spreadsheets.
Among many of Ryan Linenger's older clients at Itasca private wealth management firm Balasa Dinverno Foltz LLC, "the bigger question is, 'Am I ready to take on this slowdown?' " he says. "It's not that they can't do it, because they've been through recessions before. But you have to gear up mentally. Maybe you don't want to do it again. Maybe your family is a bigger priority."
Mr. Linenger says his clients often are content to exit for less than top dollar — say, $8 million today rather than a possible $12 million in a few years — if the sale price covers what their financial planner has determined they'll need to fund the kind of retirement they want.
Another way to get peace of mind about selling now rather than waiting for a bigger payday down the road: "Find other ways to measure your success besides the check you walked away with," says Gail Golden, a management psychologist with RHR International Co., a Wood Dale-based management consultancy. "Think, 'I supported my family all these years,' or 'I provided excellent service to customers.' "
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
IBM uses math to measure the "assembly line"
Book Excerpt: The Numerati by Stephen Baker
By building mathematical models of its own employees, IBM aims to improve productivity and automate management
by Stephen Baker
BusinessWeek's 2006 Cover Story, "Math Will Rock Your World," announced a new age of numbers. With the rise of new networks, the story argued, all of us were channeling the details of our lives into vast databases. Every credit-card purchase, every cell-phone call, every click on the computer mouse fed these digital troves. Those with the tools and skills to make sense of them could begin to decipher our movements, desires, diseases, and shopping habits—and predict our behavior. This promised to transform business and society. In a book expanding upon this Cover Story, The Numerati, Senior Writer Stephen Baker introduces us to the mathematical wizards who are digging through our data to decode us as patients, shoppers, voters, potential terrorists—even lovers.
One of the most promising laboratories for the Numerati is the workplace, where every keystroke, click, and e-mail can be studied. In a chapter called "The Worker," Baker travels to IBM (IBM), where mathematicians are building predictive models of their own colleagues. An excerpt:
On a late spring morning I drive up into the forests of Westchester County, N.Y., to the headquarters of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. It sits like a fortress atop a hill, a long, curved wall of glass reflecting the cotton-ball clouds floating above. I have a date there with Samer Takriti, a Syrian-born mathematician. He heads up a team that's piecing together mathematical models of 50,000 of IBM's tech consultants. The idea is to pile up inventories of all of their skills and then to calculate, mathematically, how best to deploy them. I'm here to find out how Takriti and his colleagues go about turning IBM's workers into numbers. If this works, his team plans to apply these models to other companies and to automate much of what we now call management.
Takriti, a slim 40-year-old with wide, languid eyes, opens the door of his small office. He wears a rugby shirt tucked tightly into blue jeans. I tell him that being modeled doesn't sound like much fun. I picture an all-knowing boss anticipating my every move, perhaps sending me an e-mail with the simple message, "No!" before I even get up my nerve to ask for a raise. But Takriti focuses on the positive. Imagine that your boss finally recognizes your strengths, he says—maybe ones that are hidden even to you. Then he "puts you into situations where you will thrive."
COMMODITIZING WORKERS
Still, Takriti confesses that he's nervous. His assignment is to translate the complexity of highly intelligent knowledge workers into the same types of equations and algorithms that are used to fine-tune shipping or predict the life span and production of a mainframe computer. With time, he and his team hope to build detailed models for each worker, each one complete with a person's quirks, daily commute, and allies, perhaps even enemies. These models might one day include whether the workers eat beef or pork, how seriously they take the Sabbath, whether a bee sting or a peanut sauce could lay them low. No doubt, some of them thrive even in the filthy air in Beijing or Mexico City, while others wheeze. If so, the models would eventually include this detail, among countless others. The idea is to build richly textured models that behave in their symbolic realm just like their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Then planners can manipulate them, looking for the most efficient combinations.
Takriti's team is hardly starting from scratch. IBM has long been a leader in converting all kinds of complex systems into numbers. Right after World War II, Big Blue used a new science called Operations Research to construct a mathematical model of the company's industrial supply chain. It included its costs and capabilities, as well as limitations, or constraints. Once the supply chain existed as numbers, engineers could experiment with it—optimizing it—and later incorporate the improvements in the real-life version. This drove efficiency and lowered costs. It was wonderful for manufacturing. But now, as IBM has shifted its focus to services, the corporate supply chain is made up less of machine parts than of people—Takriti and some 300,000 of his colleagues. His job, quite simply, is to start optimizing his co-workers.
To put together these profiles, Takriti requires mountains of facts about each employee. He has unleashed some 40 PhDs, from data miners and statisticians to anthropologists, to comb through workers' data. Personnel files, which include annual evaluations, are off-limits at IBM. But practically every other bit of data is fair game. Sifting through résumés and project records, the team can assemble a profile of each worker's skills and experience. Online calendars show how employees use their time and who they meet with. By tracking the use of cell phones and handheld computers, Takriti's researchers may be able to map the workers' movements. Call records and e-mails define the social networks of each consultant. Whom do they copy on their e-mails? Do they send blind copies to certain people?
These hidden messages could point to the growth of informal networks within the company. They may show that a midlevel manager is quietly leading an important group of colleagues—and that his boss is out of the loop. Eventually, say experts, e-mail analysis may single out workers whose behavior places them outside the known networks. Are these outliers depressed, about to jump ship, consorting with the competition? In companies around the world, the Numerati will be hunting for statistical clues.
Even without reading all the e-mails, managers can automatically spot the most common words that circulate within each group of workers. This permits them to establish the nature of each relationship. They can also see how communications shift with time. Two workers may discuss software programming Tuesday through Friday but spend much of their time on Monday sending e-mails about the past weekend's football games. "The next big step," says Kathleen M. Carley, a lead researcher in social networks at Carnegie Mellon University, "is to take tools like this and tie them to scheduling and productivity programs."
Takriti's scheme is even more ambitious. He is not given to bold forecasts. But if his system is successful, here's how it will work: Picture an IBM manager who gets an assignment to send a team of five to set up a call center in Manila. She sits down at the computer and fills out a form. It's almost like booking a vacation online. She puts in the dates and clicks on menus to describe the job and the skills needed. Perhaps she stipulates the ideal budget range. The results come back, recommending a particular team. All the skills are represented. Maybe three of the five people have a history of working together smoothly. They all have passports and live near airports with direct flights to Manila. One of them even speaks Tagalog.
Everything looks fine, except for one line that's highlighted in red. The budget. It's $40,000 over! The manager sees that the computer architect on the team is a veritable luminary, a guy who gets written up in the trade press. Sure, he's a 98.7% fit for the job, but he costs $1,000 an hour. It's as if she shopped for a weekend getaway in Paris and wound up with a penthouse suite at the Ritz.
DO THE MATH
Hmmm. The manager asks the system for a cheaper architect. New options come back. One is a new 29-year-old consultant based in India who costs only $85 per hour. That would certainly patch the hole in the budget. Unfortunately, he's only a 69% fit for the job. Still, he can handle it, according to the computer, if he gets two weeks of training. Can the job be delayed?
This is management in a world run by Numerati. As IBM sees it, the company has little choice. The workforce is too big, the world too vast and complicated for managers to get a grip on their workers the old-fashioned way—by talking to people who know people who know people. Word of mouth is too foggy and slow for the global economy. Personal connections are too constricted. Managers need the zip of automation to unearth a consultant in New Delhi, just the way a generation ago they located a shipment of condensers in Chicago. For this to work, the consultant—just like the condensers—must be represented as a series of numbers.
Eventually, companies could take this knowledge much further, using the numbers, in a sense, to clone us. Imagine, says Aleksandra Mojsilovic, one of Takriti's close colleagues, that the company has a superior worker named Joe Smith. Management could really benefit from two or three others just like him, or even a dozen. Once the company has built rich mathematical profiles of Smith and his fellow workers, it might be possible to identify at least a few of the experiences or routines that make Joe Smith so good. "If you had the full employment history, you could even compute the steps to become a Joe Smith," she says. "I'm not saying you can recreate a scientist, or a painter, or a musician," Mojsilovic adds. "But there are a lot of job roles that are really commodities." And if people turn out to be poorly designed for these jobs, they'll be reconfigured, first mathematically and then in life.
DIFFERENT STROKES
Sound scary? It may depend on where you're perched on the food chain. Remember the $1,000-per-hour consultant who almost got dispatched to the Philippines? He didn't end up going, and instead, in IBM's scheme, he remained "on the bench." Takriti smiles. "That's what we call it," he says. "I think the term comes from sports." The question, of course, is how long IBM wants to have that high-priced talent gathering splinters. If there isn't any work to justify his immense talents, shouldn't they put him on something else, just to keep him busy?
Not necessarily, says Takriti. Job satisfaction is one of the automatic system's constraints. If workers get angry or bored to tears, their productivity is bound to plummet. The computer keeps this in mind (in a manner of speaking). As you might expect, it deals very gently with superstars. Since they make lots of money for the company during short bursts of activity, they get plenty of time on the bench. But grunt workers in this hierarchy get far less consideration. They're calculated as commodities. Their skills are "fungible." This means these workers are virtually indistinguishable from others, whether they're in India or Uruguay. They contribute little to profits. It pains Takriti to say this, because humans are not machines. They have varying skills and potential to grow. He appreciates this. But looking at it mathematically, he says, the company should keep its commodity workers laboring as close as possible to 100% of the time. Not much kickback time on the bench for them.
Where is this all leading? I pose the question one afternoon to Pierre Haren. A PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a prominent member of the Numerati, he's the founder and chief executive of ILOG. It's a French company that uses operations research to fine-tune industrial systems, charting, for example, the most efficient delivery routes for Coors beer. ILOG makes allowances for all kinds of constraints. For example, a few years ago, the Singapore government wanted to avoid diplomatic spats at its new airport. So officials asked ILOG to synchronize the flow of passengers, making sure that those from mainland China wouldn't cross paths with travelers from Taiwan. Haren speaks in a strong French accent. We're talking in the lobby of a Midtown hotel in New York, and he has to yell to make himself heard over a particularly loud fountain.
DATA SERFDOM?
Haren says the efforts under way at places like IBM will not only break down each worker into sets of skills and knowledge. The same systems will also divide their days and weeks into small periods of time—hours, half-hours, eventually even minutes. At the same time, the jobs that have to be done, whether it's building a software program or designing an airliner, are also broken down into tiny steps. In this sense, Haren might as well be describing the industrial engineering that led to assembly lines a century ago. Big jobs are parsed into thousands of tasks and divided among many workers. But the work Haren is discussing is not done by hand, hydraulic presses, or even robots. It flows from the brain. The labor is defined by knowledge and ideas. As he sees it, that expertise will be tapped minute by minute across the world. This job sharing is already starting to happen, as companies break up projects and move big pieces of them offshore. But once the workers are represented as mathematical models, it will be far easier to break down their days into billable minutes and send their smarts to fulfill jobs all over the world.
Consider IBM's superstar consultant. He's roused off the bench, whether he's on a ski lift at St. Moritz or leading a seminar at Armonk, N.Y. He reaches into his pocket and sees a message asking for 10 minutes of his precious time. He might know just the right algorithm, or perhaps a contact or a customer. Maybe he sends back word that he's busy. (He's a star, after all.) But if he takes part, he assumes his place in what Haren calls a virtual assembly line. "This is the equivalent of the industrial revolution for white-collar workers," Haren says.
It's getting late in Takriti's office. I can see that he's concerned about my line of questioning. This virtual assembly line sounds menacing. The surveillance has more than a whiff of Big Brother. For those of us who aren't $1,000-per-hour consultants, life bound to a mathematical model is sounding like abject data serfdom.
Here's Takriti's counterargument. As the tools he's building make workers more productive, the market will reward them. We already use math programs to plot our trips and look for dates. Why not use them to map our careers—and negotiate for better pay? (Takriti, it turns out months later, masters these market dynamics: He was able to shop his gilded Numerati credentials to several Web companies and banks, and finally leaves IBM in late 2007 for a post as a top mathematician at Goldman Sachs. Work on the modeling project continues apace, says IBM.) All sorts of workers will be able to calculate their own worth with more precision. Let's say analytical tools show that a consultant's value to the company topped $2 million one year. Shouldn't she have access to that number and be free to use it as a negotiating tool? In a workplace defined by metrics, even those of us who like to think that we're beyond measurement will face growing pressure to build our case with numbers of our own.
By building mathematical models of its own employees, IBM aims to improve productivity and automate management
by Stephen Baker
BusinessWeek's 2006 Cover Story, "Math Will Rock Your World," announced a new age of numbers. With the rise of new networks, the story argued, all of us were channeling the details of our lives into vast databases. Every credit-card purchase, every cell-phone call, every click on the computer mouse fed these digital troves. Those with the tools and skills to make sense of them could begin to decipher our movements, desires, diseases, and shopping habits—and predict our behavior. This promised to transform business and society. In a book expanding upon this Cover Story, The Numerati, Senior Writer Stephen Baker introduces us to the mathematical wizards who are digging through our data to decode us as patients, shoppers, voters, potential terrorists—even lovers.
One of the most promising laboratories for the Numerati is the workplace, where every keystroke, click, and e-mail can be studied. In a chapter called "The Worker," Baker travels to IBM (IBM), where mathematicians are building predictive models of their own colleagues. An excerpt:
On a late spring morning I drive up into the forests of Westchester County, N.Y., to the headquarters of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. It sits like a fortress atop a hill, a long, curved wall of glass reflecting the cotton-ball clouds floating above. I have a date there with Samer Takriti, a Syrian-born mathematician. He heads up a team that's piecing together mathematical models of 50,000 of IBM's tech consultants. The idea is to pile up inventories of all of their skills and then to calculate, mathematically, how best to deploy them. I'm here to find out how Takriti and his colleagues go about turning IBM's workers into numbers. If this works, his team plans to apply these models to other companies and to automate much of what we now call management.
Takriti, a slim 40-year-old with wide, languid eyes, opens the door of his small office. He wears a rugby shirt tucked tightly into blue jeans. I tell him that being modeled doesn't sound like much fun. I picture an all-knowing boss anticipating my every move, perhaps sending me an e-mail with the simple message, "No!" before I even get up my nerve to ask for a raise. But Takriti focuses on the positive. Imagine that your boss finally recognizes your strengths, he says—maybe ones that are hidden even to you. Then he "puts you into situations where you will thrive."
COMMODITIZING WORKERS
Still, Takriti confesses that he's nervous. His assignment is to translate the complexity of highly intelligent knowledge workers into the same types of equations and algorithms that are used to fine-tune shipping or predict the life span and production of a mainframe computer. With time, he and his team hope to build detailed models for each worker, each one complete with a person's quirks, daily commute, and allies, perhaps even enemies. These models might one day include whether the workers eat beef or pork, how seriously they take the Sabbath, whether a bee sting or a peanut sauce could lay them low. No doubt, some of them thrive even in the filthy air in Beijing or Mexico City, while others wheeze. If so, the models would eventually include this detail, among countless others. The idea is to build richly textured models that behave in their symbolic realm just like their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Then planners can manipulate them, looking for the most efficient combinations.
Takriti's team is hardly starting from scratch. IBM has long been a leader in converting all kinds of complex systems into numbers. Right after World War II, Big Blue used a new science called Operations Research to construct a mathematical model of the company's industrial supply chain. It included its costs and capabilities, as well as limitations, or constraints. Once the supply chain existed as numbers, engineers could experiment with it—optimizing it—and later incorporate the improvements in the real-life version. This drove efficiency and lowered costs. It was wonderful for manufacturing. But now, as IBM has shifted its focus to services, the corporate supply chain is made up less of machine parts than of people—Takriti and some 300,000 of his colleagues. His job, quite simply, is to start optimizing his co-workers.
To put together these profiles, Takriti requires mountains of facts about each employee. He has unleashed some 40 PhDs, from data miners and statisticians to anthropologists, to comb through workers' data. Personnel files, which include annual evaluations, are off-limits at IBM. But practically every other bit of data is fair game. Sifting through résumés and project records, the team can assemble a profile of each worker's skills and experience. Online calendars show how employees use their time and who they meet with. By tracking the use of cell phones and handheld computers, Takriti's researchers may be able to map the workers' movements. Call records and e-mails define the social networks of each consultant. Whom do they copy on their e-mails? Do they send blind copies to certain people?
These hidden messages could point to the growth of informal networks within the company. They may show that a midlevel manager is quietly leading an important group of colleagues—and that his boss is out of the loop. Eventually, say experts, e-mail analysis may single out workers whose behavior places them outside the known networks. Are these outliers depressed, about to jump ship, consorting with the competition? In companies around the world, the Numerati will be hunting for statistical clues.
Even without reading all the e-mails, managers can automatically spot the most common words that circulate within each group of workers. This permits them to establish the nature of each relationship. They can also see how communications shift with time. Two workers may discuss software programming Tuesday through Friday but spend much of their time on Monday sending e-mails about the past weekend's football games. "The next big step," says Kathleen M. Carley, a lead researcher in social networks at Carnegie Mellon University, "is to take tools like this and tie them to scheduling and productivity programs."
Takriti's scheme is even more ambitious. He is not given to bold forecasts. But if his system is successful, here's how it will work: Picture an IBM manager who gets an assignment to send a team of five to set up a call center in Manila. She sits down at the computer and fills out a form. It's almost like booking a vacation online. She puts in the dates and clicks on menus to describe the job and the skills needed. Perhaps she stipulates the ideal budget range. The results come back, recommending a particular team. All the skills are represented. Maybe three of the five people have a history of working together smoothly. They all have passports and live near airports with direct flights to Manila. One of them even speaks Tagalog.
Everything looks fine, except for one line that's highlighted in red. The budget. It's $40,000 over! The manager sees that the computer architect on the team is a veritable luminary, a guy who gets written up in the trade press. Sure, he's a 98.7% fit for the job, but he costs $1,000 an hour. It's as if she shopped for a weekend getaway in Paris and wound up with a penthouse suite at the Ritz.
DO THE MATH
Hmmm. The manager asks the system for a cheaper architect. New options come back. One is a new 29-year-old consultant based in India who costs only $85 per hour. That would certainly patch the hole in the budget. Unfortunately, he's only a 69% fit for the job. Still, he can handle it, according to the computer, if he gets two weeks of training. Can the job be delayed?
This is management in a world run by Numerati. As IBM sees it, the company has little choice. The workforce is too big, the world too vast and complicated for managers to get a grip on their workers the old-fashioned way—by talking to people who know people who know people. Word of mouth is too foggy and slow for the global economy. Personal connections are too constricted. Managers need the zip of automation to unearth a consultant in New Delhi, just the way a generation ago they located a shipment of condensers in Chicago. For this to work, the consultant—just like the condensers—must be represented as a series of numbers.
Eventually, companies could take this knowledge much further, using the numbers, in a sense, to clone us. Imagine, says Aleksandra Mojsilovic, one of Takriti's close colleagues, that the company has a superior worker named Joe Smith. Management could really benefit from two or three others just like him, or even a dozen. Once the company has built rich mathematical profiles of Smith and his fellow workers, it might be possible to identify at least a few of the experiences or routines that make Joe Smith so good. "If you had the full employment history, you could even compute the steps to become a Joe Smith," she says. "I'm not saying you can recreate a scientist, or a painter, or a musician," Mojsilovic adds. "But there are a lot of job roles that are really commodities." And if people turn out to be poorly designed for these jobs, they'll be reconfigured, first mathematically and then in life.
DIFFERENT STROKES
Sound scary? It may depend on where you're perched on the food chain. Remember the $1,000-per-hour consultant who almost got dispatched to the Philippines? He didn't end up going, and instead, in IBM's scheme, he remained "on the bench." Takriti smiles. "That's what we call it," he says. "I think the term comes from sports." The question, of course, is how long IBM wants to have that high-priced talent gathering splinters. If there isn't any work to justify his immense talents, shouldn't they put him on something else, just to keep him busy?
Not necessarily, says Takriti. Job satisfaction is one of the automatic system's constraints. If workers get angry or bored to tears, their productivity is bound to plummet. The computer keeps this in mind (in a manner of speaking). As you might expect, it deals very gently with superstars. Since they make lots of money for the company during short bursts of activity, they get plenty of time on the bench. But grunt workers in this hierarchy get far less consideration. They're calculated as commodities. Their skills are "fungible." This means these workers are virtually indistinguishable from others, whether they're in India or Uruguay. They contribute little to profits. It pains Takriti to say this, because humans are not machines. They have varying skills and potential to grow. He appreciates this. But looking at it mathematically, he says, the company should keep its commodity workers laboring as close as possible to 100% of the time. Not much kickback time on the bench for them.
Where is this all leading? I pose the question one afternoon to Pierre Haren. A PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a prominent member of the Numerati, he's the founder and chief executive of ILOG. It's a French company that uses operations research to fine-tune industrial systems, charting, for example, the most efficient delivery routes for Coors beer. ILOG makes allowances for all kinds of constraints. For example, a few years ago, the Singapore government wanted to avoid diplomatic spats at its new airport. So officials asked ILOG to synchronize the flow of passengers, making sure that those from mainland China wouldn't cross paths with travelers from Taiwan. Haren speaks in a strong French accent. We're talking in the lobby of a Midtown hotel in New York, and he has to yell to make himself heard over a particularly loud fountain.
DATA SERFDOM?
Haren says the efforts under way at places like IBM will not only break down each worker into sets of skills and knowledge. The same systems will also divide their days and weeks into small periods of time—hours, half-hours, eventually even minutes. At the same time, the jobs that have to be done, whether it's building a software program or designing an airliner, are also broken down into tiny steps. In this sense, Haren might as well be describing the industrial engineering that led to assembly lines a century ago. Big jobs are parsed into thousands of tasks and divided among many workers. But the work Haren is discussing is not done by hand, hydraulic presses, or even robots. It flows from the brain. The labor is defined by knowledge and ideas. As he sees it, that expertise will be tapped minute by minute across the world. This job sharing is already starting to happen, as companies break up projects and move big pieces of them offshore. But once the workers are represented as mathematical models, it will be far easier to break down their days into billable minutes and send their smarts to fulfill jobs all over the world.
Consider IBM's superstar consultant. He's roused off the bench, whether he's on a ski lift at St. Moritz or leading a seminar at Armonk, N.Y. He reaches into his pocket and sees a message asking for 10 minutes of his precious time. He might know just the right algorithm, or perhaps a contact or a customer. Maybe he sends back word that he's busy. (He's a star, after all.) But if he takes part, he assumes his place in what Haren calls a virtual assembly line. "This is the equivalent of the industrial revolution for white-collar workers," Haren says.
It's getting late in Takriti's office. I can see that he's concerned about my line of questioning. This virtual assembly line sounds menacing. The surveillance has more than a whiff of Big Brother. For those of us who aren't $1,000-per-hour consultants, life bound to a mathematical model is sounding like abject data serfdom.
Here's Takriti's counterargument. As the tools he's building make workers more productive, the market will reward them. We already use math programs to plot our trips and look for dates. Why not use them to map our careers—and negotiate for better pay? (Takriti, it turns out months later, masters these market dynamics: He was able to shop his gilded Numerati credentials to several Web companies and banks, and finally leaves IBM in late 2007 for a post as a top mathematician at Goldman Sachs. Work on the modeling project continues apace, says IBM.) All sorts of workers will be able to calculate their own worth with more precision. Let's say analytical tools show that a consultant's value to the company topped $2 million one year. Shouldn't she have access to that number and be free to use it as a negotiating tool? In a workplace defined by metrics, even those of us who like to think that we're beyond measurement will face growing pressure to build our case with numbers of our own.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Local Ads More Effective When Served by Local Content Owners
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Ad Advantage to Local Online Media
According to a new report by the Online Publishers Association, local media sites hold a distinct advantage when it comes to delivering results for advertisers. The study finds that consumers trust advertising on local newspaper, magazine and television Websites, and are very likely to take action after viewing ads on these sites.
Newspapers rank first, with 46% of consumers taking action, including making a purchase, going to a store, conducting research, after viewing a local ad, as compared to 37% of consumers acting after viewing a local ad on a portal.
Percent of Consumers Taking Action after Viewing Local Ads:
• Local Newspaper Site: 46%
• Local Television Site: 44%
• Local Magazine Site: 42%
• User Review Site: 39%
• Portal: 37%
OPA president Pam Horan, says "... local media sites deliver concrete results for local advertisers... consumers are more likely to act on the ads they see on local TV, newspaper and magazine sites... "
Consumers on these sites are desirable advertising targets, concludes the report. Local magazine, newspaper and TV sites attract significant percentages (48%, 40% and 39%, respectively) of consumers who spent more than $500 online in the past twelve months. Thirty-seven percent of portal visitors and 34% of the overall online population spend this amount in a year.
Consumers express significant faith in advertising on local content sites. Newspaper sites lead the way, with 56% of visitors expressing strong trust of the advertising found on these sites, followed by local TV station sites and portals.
The OPA report finds that satisfaction with local content is high overall, and portals and media sites each have strengths. Portals lead in satisfaction among all local content visitors, followed by local newspaper and TV station sites.
Local media sites have a significant lead over portals:
• 79% of frequent visitors are satisfied with local TV sites
• 77% are satisfied with local newspaper sites
• 65% of frequent visitors to portals are satisfied
Portals, Newspaper and TV Sites Lead in Satisfaction with Local Coverage (% Local Content Users)
% Satisfied with Local Community Coverage
User review sites 13%
Local magazine sites 20%
City guides 26%
Classifieds sites 34%
Online yellow pages 36%
Local TV station sites 48%
Local newspaper sites 48%
Portals 58%
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
An important common trait of all local online content sites is an ability to attract high concentrations of influencers, says OPA:
• 10% of consumers are considered "Influentials" according to research done by GfK Roper
• 29% percent of local online content site users say they are the first person people come to for recommendations about local restaurants and bars
• 26% of local online users say they are the first person people come to for local shopping recommendations
• 23% for local entertainment recommendations
• 23% for local consumer electronics recommendations
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
Local Sites Relied on for Dining, Grocery Store, Financial Services and Department Store Information
Local Sites Relied On % Local Content Users
Local attorneys/ legal services 6%
Local furniture/ appliance dealers 13%
Local home/ real estate services 15%
Local auto dealers/ repairs/ services 17%
Local consumer elec. Stores 18%
Local doctors/ health facilities 19%
Local department stores 24%
Local banks/ financial services 25%
Local grocery stores 28%
Local dining/ restaurants/ bars 38%
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
"Local content sites of all types play an important role in serving the local community. But this report shows that local media sites have a very real advantage when it comes to delivering results for advertisers," Horan said.
Ad Advantage to Local Online Media
According to a new report by the Online Publishers Association, local media sites hold a distinct advantage when it comes to delivering results for advertisers. The study finds that consumers trust advertising on local newspaper, magazine and television Websites, and are very likely to take action after viewing ads on these sites.
Newspapers rank first, with 46% of consumers taking action, including making a purchase, going to a store, conducting research, after viewing a local ad, as compared to 37% of consumers acting after viewing a local ad on a portal.
Percent of Consumers Taking Action after Viewing Local Ads:
• Local Newspaper Site: 46%
• Local Television Site: 44%
• Local Magazine Site: 42%
• User Review Site: 39%
• Portal: 37%
OPA president Pam Horan, says "... local media sites deliver concrete results for local advertisers... consumers are more likely to act on the ads they see on local TV, newspaper and magazine sites... "
Consumers on these sites are desirable advertising targets, concludes the report. Local magazine, newspaper and TV sites attract significant percentages (48%, 40% and 39%, respectively) of consumers who spent more than $500 online in the past twelve months. Thirty-seven percent of portal visitors and 34% of the overall online population spend this amount in a year.
Consumers express significant faith in advertising on local content sites. Newspaper sites lead the way, with 56% of visitors expressing strong trust of the advertising found on these sites, followed by local TV station sites and portals.
The OPA report finds that satisfaction with local content is high overall, and portals and media sites each have strengths. Portals lead in satisfaction among all local content visitors, followed by local newspaper and TV station sites.
Local media sites have a significant lead over portals:
• 79% of frequent visitors are satisfied with local TV sites
• 77% are satisfied with local newspaper sites
• 65% of frequent visitors to portals are satisfied
Portals, Newspaper and TV Sites Lead in Satisfaction with Local Coverage (% Local Content Users)
% Satisfied with Local Community Coverage
User review sites 13%
Local magazine sites 20%
City guides 26%
Classifieds sites 34%
Online yellow pages 36%
Local TV station sites 48%
Local newspaper sites 48%
Portals 58%
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
An important common trait of all local online content sites is an ability to attract high concentrations of influencers, says OPA:
• 10% of consumers are considered "Influentials" according to research done by GfK Roper
• 29% percent of local online content site users say they are the first person people come to for recommendations about local restaurants and bars
• 26% of local online users say they are the first person people come to for local shopping recommendations
• 23% for local entertainment recommendations
• 23% for local consumer electronics recommendations
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
Local Sites Relied on for Dining, Grocery Store, Financial Services and Department Store Information
Local Sites Relied On % Local Content Users
Local attorneys/ legal services 6%
Local furniture/ appliance dealers 13%
Local home/ real estate services 15%
Local auto dealers/ repairs/ services 17%
Local consumer elec. Stores 18%
Local doctors/ health facilities 19%
Local department stores 24%
Local banks/ financial services 25%
Local grocery stores 28%
Local dining/ restaurants/ bars 38%
Source: Online Publishers Association, August 2008
"Local content sites of all types play an important role in serving the local community. But this report shows that local media sites have a very real advantage when it comes to delivering results for advertisers," Horan said.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Power Grid Problems
Seems like a business opportunity in helping fix the grid problem. Would need to understand the supply chain in this industry.
Article in NY times 8/26/08
August 27, 2008
Power Grid Limits Potential of Renewable Energy
By MATTHEW L. WALD
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down — or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.
“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures.
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.
Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
The cost would be high, $60 billion or more, but in theory could be spread across many years and tens of millions of electrical customers. However, in most states, rules used by public service commissions to evaluate transmission investments discourage multistate projects of this sort. In some states with low electric rates, elected officials fear that new lines will simply export their cheap power and drive rates up.
Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built.
Texas and California have recently made some progress in building transmission lines for wind power, but nationally, the problem seems likely to get worse. Today, New York State has about 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity. A megawatt is an instantaneous measure of power. A large Wal-Mart draws about one megawatt. The state is planning for an additional 8,000 megawatts of capacity.
But those turbines will need to go in remote, windy areas that are far off the beaten path, electrically speaking, and it is not clear enough transmission capacity will be developed. Save for two underwater connections to Long Island, New York State has not built a major new power line in 20 years.
A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.
But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”
Article in NY times 8/26/08
August 27, 2008
Power Grid Limits Potential of Renewable Energy
By MATTHEW L. WALD
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down — or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.
“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures.
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.
Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
The cost would be high, $60 billion or more, but in theory could be spread across many years and tens of millions of electrical customers. However, in most states, rules used by public service commissions to evaluate transmission investments discourage multistate projects of this sort. In some states with low electric rates, elected officials fear that new lines will simply export their cheap power and drive rates up.
Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built.
Texas and California have recently made some progress in building transmission lines for wind power, but nationally, the problem seems likely to get worse. Today, New York State has about 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity. A megawatt is an instantaneous measure of power. A large Wal-Mart draws about one megawatt. The state is planning for an additional 8,000 megawatts of capacity.
But those turbines will need to go in remote, windy areas that are far off the beaten path, electrically speaking, and it is not clear enough transmission capacity will be developed. Save for two underwater connections to Long Island, New York State has not built a major new power line in 20 years.
A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.
But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
CNN article - Moms find balance as high-skilled temps 7/17/08
CNN article that shows the opportunity to tap into talent from part time/contract workers. This supports my belief that men and women will be deciding to give up full time work for the family but still want the opportunity to keep their skills sharp and do work as long as it is flexible and project based.
Ashley Hewitt spent 16 years rising through the ranks of corporate human resources, reaching manager and director positions. But after having her third child, a full-time career proved too much.
Even cutting her hours back to 36 a week turned out to be more of a problem than a solution.
"I was trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time employee with part-time hours for both and it just wasn't working well," Hewitt said.
In 2006, she took a voluntary severance package from Duke Energy, her longtime employer, and became one of many professional women who leave the work force at the peak of their careers to focus on their families.
But such new stay-at-home moms can also be the perfect match for companies seeking highly-educated and skilled workers for temporary work.
"They're realizing that ... this is a talent pool that's experienced and professional and efficient and ready to work as long as they're given a little bit of consideration to their personal needs," said Allison O'Kelly, CEO of Mom Corps.
The Atlanta, Georgia, company is one of several staffing agencies formed in recent years to connect career-women-turned-stay-at-home moms with employers. On-Ramps, Flexible Executives, Flexible Resources and FlexWork Connection have similar missions.
Hewitt, 40, said she didn't want to quit working "cold turkey." She submitted her resume to Mom Corps in 2006 and currently works about 10-14 hours per week out of her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, doing human resources work on contract for Wachovia.
"I like the fact that I can do this work and the people that I'm working for... understand that it's only one aspect of my life," Hewitt said.
"They also understand that I'm trying to do this flexibly so I may not be available at 2 o'clock for a conference call because all the kids are coming off the bus."
Money not the top motivator
Mom Corps founder O'Kelly, 35, knows first hand about the tug of war between career and family.
The Harvard Business School graduate was a manager at Toys R Us when she had her first child. The baby had health problems that forced her to frequently miss work.
"I was having a really tough time with that because that just isn't my style," O'Kelly said.
She left the company and began working on contract as an accountant. She ended up with so much work that she offered some of it to her friends. O'Kelly said she soon realized there was enough demand to expand beyond accounting and her circle of acquaintances. Mom Corps was born in 2005.
The company now has 25,000 job seekers in its database, many with marketing, human resources or accounting backgrounds. About 90 percent have a college degree and more than a third have a graduate degree, O'Kelly said. Most are 30-44 years old. Once placed, they typically earn $30-$70 an hour, O'Kelly said.
While the earnings can be high, the money isn't the primary motivator for many of the stay-at-home moms seeking flexible work. Some simply want to stay plugged into their industries and use their skills.
"I think it's probably something that they're missing from a personal, professional point of view, just part of their self-identity is very attached to their career and having to let that go is a big struggle," said Jessica Riester, founder of FlexWork Connection in Irvine, California.
Riester, 35, launched her recruiting business earlier this year after deciding to take some time off from her career to have children. The former finance manager at a start-up company soon landed a part-time corporate job, working 20 hours a week, and realized other professional women were very interested in the arrangement.
"I was telling my friends about this new setup and they were all jealous and wanted something similar," Riester said. "[They] all kind of struggled with wanting to have some kind of career going but also have the time to spend with their kids, not working the crazy hours that we had been."
'New normal of flex careers'
The demands of a full-time job appear to be taking their toll on working mothers. About 60 percent said working part time would be ideal for them, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center. Only 48 percent felt that way in a similar poll done 10 years earlier.
For those who don't want to work full time, turning to staffing agencies that cater to stay-at-home moms can be one option.
The trend reflects "the new normal of flex careers," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.
"There's been an assumption for a long time that a career is a straight and narrow ladder that one climbs and if one steps off of it then you're down at the bottom or if you even step sideways, you plunge, and you climb that ladder until you leap over an abyss ... to retirement" Galinsky said.
"That is not the reality of people's lives."
Ashley Hewitt spent 16 years rising through the ranks of corporate human resources, reaching manager and director positions. But after having her third child, a full-time career proved too much.
Even cutting her hours back to 36 a week turned out to be more of a problem than a solution.
"I was trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time employee with part-time hours for both and it just wasn't working well," Hewitt said.
In 2006, she took a voluntary severance package from Duke Energy, her longtime employer, and became one of many professional women who leave the work force at the peak of their careers to focus on their families.
But such new stay-at-home moms can also be the perfect match for companies seeking highly-educated and skilled workers for temporary work.
"They're realizing that ... this is a talent pool that's experienced and professional and efficient and ready to work as long as they're given a little bit of consideration to their personal needs," said Allison O'Kelly, CEO of Mom Corps.
The Atlanta, Georgia, company is one of several staffing agencies formed in recent years to connect career-women-turned-stay-at-home moms with employers. On-Ramps, Flexible Executives, Flexible Resources and FlexWork Connection have similar missions.
Hewitt, 40, said she didn't want to quit working "cold turkey." She submitted her resume to Mom Corps in 2006 and currently works about 10-14 hours per week out of her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, doing human resources work on contract for Wachovia.
"I like the fact that I can do this work and the people that I'm working for... understand that it's only one aspect of my life," Hewitt said.
"They also understand that I'm trying to do this flexibly so I may not be available at 2 o'clock for a conference call because all the kids are coming off the bus."
Money not the top motivator
Mom Corps founder O'Kelly, 35, knows first hand about the tug of war between career and family.
The Harvard Business School graduate was a manager at Toys R Us when she had her first child. The baby had health problems that forced her to frequently miss work.
"I was having a really tough time with that because that just isn't my style," O'Kelly said.
She left the company and began working on contract as an accountant. She ended up with so much work that she offered some of it to her friends. O'Kelly said she soon realized there was enough demand to expand beyond accounting and her circle of acquaintances. Mom Corps was born in 2005.
The company now has 25,000 job seekers in its database, many with marketing, human resources or accounting backgrounds. About 90 percent have a college degree and more than a third have a graduate degree, O'Kelly said. Most are 30-44 years old. Once placed, they typically earn $30-$70 an hour, O'Kelly said.
While the earnings can be high, the money isn't the primary motivator for many of the stay-at-home moms seeking flexible work. Some simply want to stay plugged into their industries and use their skills.
"I think it's probably something that they're missing from a personal, professional point of view, just part of their self-identity is very attached to their career and having to let that go is a big struggle," said Jessica Riester, founder of FlexWork Connection in Irvine, California.
Riester, 35, launched her recruiting business earlier this year after deciding to take some time off from her career to have children. The former finance manager at a start-up company soon landed a part-time corporate job, working 20 hours a week, and realized other professional women were very interested in the arrangement.
"I was telling my friends about this new setup and they were all jealous and wanted something similar," Riester said. "[They] all kind of struggled with wanting to have some kind of career going but also have the time to spend with their kids, not working the crazy hours that we had been."
'New normal of flex careers'
The demands of a full-time job appear to be taking their toll on working mothers. About 60 percent said working part time would be ideal for them, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center. Only 48 percent felt that way in a similar poll done 10 years earlier.
For those who don't want to work full time, turning to staffing agencies that cater to stay-at-home moms can be one option.
The trend reflects "the new normal of flex careers," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.
"There's been an assumption for a long time that a career is a straight and narrow ladder that one climbs and if one steps off of it then you're down at the bottom or if you even step sideways, you plunge, and you climb that ladder until you leap over an abyss ... to retirement" Galinsky said.
"That is not the reality of people's lives."
Friday, June 6, 2008
Interview with Aetna CEO - Fortune May 1, 2008
Insightful interview with Ron Williams from Aetna. Again, I've been saying we'll see tremendous change in healthcare over the next 10 years and this interview definitely supports this theory.
Most interesting excerpt notes the huge transformation in making data accessible to consumers to research doctors for pricing and for expertise. Huge transformation supports the post I had regarding Newt Gingrich's idea that people should be able to research doctors the same way they research travel today. (see post)
When buying health care, most of us don't behave like regular consumers. Seven out of eight dollars we spend is somebody else's money, and we don't have very good information about doctors or hospitals. What's the outlook for better information?
At Aetna, in 35 markets, you can go online and know what your physician will charge you before you see that physician. That's helpful for a routine service, but when it comes to, say, a serious cardiac condition, what you really want to know is whether this is a high-quality physician. We think there is data available. There's going to be a huge transformation in this area.
SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE
Most interesting excerpt notes the huge transformation in making data accessible to consumers to research doctors for pricing and for expertise. Huge transformation supports the post I had regarding Newt Gingrich's idea that people should be able to research doctors the same way they research travel today. (see post)
When buying health care, most of us don't behave like regular consumers. Seven out of eight dollars we spend is somebody else's money, and we don't have very good information about doctors or hospitals. What's the outlook for better information?
At Aetna, in 35 markets, you can go online and know what your physician will charge you before you see that physician. That's helpful for a routine service, but when it comes to, say, a serious cardiac condition, what you really want to know is whether this is a high-quality physician. We think there is data available. There's going to be a huge transformation in this area.
SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE
Interview with P&G CMO - Fortune June 4, 2008
Great interview with the largest advertiser in the world. Excerpt below two major items I refer to often - 1. large transformation from television to digital 2. Great content is the long term winner - highlighting Harry Potter as a great example:
Two years ago a P&G executive estimated that the company was spending 85% of its marketing budget on 30-second television spots. What is the proportion now, and what will it be in five years?
It continues to go down, but you have to realize we are a global company. We do business in 140 countries. In many of them television is the primary form of entertainment; it's on five or six hours a day. Paid advertising is still effective in those markets, and our challenge is to make our advertising engaging, interesting, persuasive, fun - everything we should be doing. Many of those countries have only a few stations, so the 30-second ad is very important in many countries - including the U.S.
You are going to see us more and more fragmented in our spending. We are spending a lot more on interactive and a lot more on mobile as that makes its way around the world. The trend of the past five years will continue, which is that TV advertising will go down as a percentage of our spending, and we will continue to move money to where the consumers are. The interesting news in all of this is that consumers are spending more time with media than ever. If the content is good, consumers will spend an awful lot of time with media. That is what Harry Potter proved.
FULL ARTICLE HERE
Two years ago a P&G executive estimated that the company was spending 85% of its marketing budget on 30-second television spots. What is the proportion now, and what will it be in five years?
It continues to go down, but you have to realize we are a global company. We do business in 140 countries. In many of them television is the primary form of entertainment; it's on five or six hours a day. Paid advertising is still effective in those markets, and our challenge is to make our advertising engaging, interesting, persuasive, fun - everything we should be doing. Many of those countries have only a few stations, so the 30-second ad is very important in many countries - including the U.S.
You are going to see us more and more fragmented in our spending. We are spending a lot more on interactive and a lot more on mobile as that makes its way around the world. The trend of the past five years will continue, which is that TV advertising will go down as a percentage of our spending, and we will continue to move money to where the consumers are. The interesting news in all of this is that consumers are spending more time with media than ever. If the content is good, consumers will spend an awful lot of time with media. That is what Harry Potter proved.
FULL ARTICLE HERE
Tax Debate We Should be Having - Fortune April 2, 2008
Good article from Geoff Colvin who uses tax information to prove that the rich really are getting richer. "The rich" are paying a larger portion of the overall tax base while there individual rates are actually going down due to the Bush tax cuts. Therefore, the income must be growing. The real challenge comes in how to grow income for the lower end of the tax base...
The tax debate we need to have
A shrinking minority of Americans are paying most of Washington's bills. That's not good.
By Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large
(Fortune Magazine) -- Here's a cold reality that none of the presidential candidates want to tell you: a shrinking number of Americans are bearing an ever bigger share of the nation's income tax burden.
Is that fair? Is it sticking the rich with what they deserve? Or is it a sign of a growing social problem? As you file your tax return, and as the candidates cite assorted half-truths about U.S. taxes, those questions are worth our attention - as long as we spurn political spin and face the surprising facts.
The first surprise for most people is the large proportion of Americans who don't pay any income tax at all. The number of people who actually get money back - not a refund, but a net payment - through the income tax system, is huge. In 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), the bottom 40% of Americans by income had, in the aggregate, an effective tax rate that's negative: their households received more money through the income tax system, largely from the earned income tax credit, than they paid.
That means that the number of people who actually pay America's income taxes - totaling almost $1 trillion in 2005 - is surprisingly small. Of those who filed returns (themselves a subset of the population), just half accounted for 97% of the Treasury's total income tax revenue. The top half's share of total payments has been growing steadily for the past 20 years. The top 10% of taxpayers kicked in 70% of total income tax. And the famous top 1% paid almost 40% of all income tax, a proportion that has jumped dramatically since 1986.
But wait a minute. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rail against President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich." How does that square with the growing share of total tax paid by the wealthy? Are the richest Americans paying so much because they're actually getting clobbered with higher tax rates? No. Their effective tax rate - the total tax they pay as a percentage of their income - has declined substantially. The top 1% paid an effective tax rate of 23% in 2005, down from 27.5% in 2001.
The rich are getting richer, faster
So if the rich are paying more income tax, yet are being taxed at a lower rate, there can be only one explanation: their incomes must be growing fast, much faster than the rest of the population's. That is what's happening. Back in 1986, an income of $119,000 got you into the top 1%. By 2005 it took $365,000 to get into the club. Those numbers are unadjusted for inflation; if you correct them, it turns out the price of admission still rose by a huge 72%. By contrast, the inflation-adjusted definition of a median taxpayer - that is, someone in the 50th percentile - didn't budge.
Now consider some of the heated tax controversies of recent years. Did Bush cut taxes for the rich? Yes. But he cut taxes for the poor even more. If we look at the measure that really matters - the change in effective tax rates - the bottom 50% got a much bigger tax cut than the top 1%. Did the dollar value of Bush's tax cuts go mostly to the wealthy? Absolutely. It could hardly be otherwise. Since the well-off pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, any tax cut with a prayer of influencing the economy would have to go mostly to them. You could completely eliminate income taxes for the bottom half of the population, and the Treasury would hardly notice.
The real issues here are clear. One is having a shrinking minority of citizens pay most of Washington's bills. Social cohesion falls apart. The majority who pay nothing resent those with higher incomes; the minority who pay heavily resent those who don't pay.
More fundamental is why some people's incomes are growing so much faster than other people's incomes. That, and not taxes, is what the supposed tax debate is really about. Watch to see if the candidates make substantive proposals for dealing with the issue, including how low-income citizens can get some of the earning power now going heavily to the better educated, plus how U.S. workers in general can be worth their high cost in a global labor market. It's a lot harder than changing income tax rates.
The tax debate we need to have
A shrinking minority of Americans are paying most of Washington's bills. That's not good.
By Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large
(Fortune Magazine) -- Here's a cold reality that none of the presidential candidates want to tell you: a shrinking number of Americans are bearing an ever bigger share of the nation's income tax burden.
Is that fair? Is it sticking the rich with what they deserve? Or is it a sign of a growing social problem? As you file your tax return, and as the candidates cite assorted half-truths about U.S. taxes, those questions are worth our attention - as long as we spurn political spin and face the surprising facts.
The first surprise for most people is the large proportion of Americans who don't pay any income tax at all. The number of people who actually get money back - not a refund, but a net payment - through the income tax system, is huge. In 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), the bottom 40% of Americans by income had, in the aggregate, an effective tax rate that's negative: their households received more money through the income tax system, largely from the earned income tax credit, than they paid.
That means that the number of people who actually pay America's income taxes - totaling almost $1 trillion in 2005 - is surprisingly small. Of those who filed returns (themselves a subset of the population), just half accounted for 97% of the Treasury's total income tax revenue. The top half's share of total payments has been growing steadily for the past 20 years. The top 10% of taxpayers kicked in 70% of total income tax. And the famous top 1% paid almost 40% of all income tax, a proportion that has jumped dramatically since 1986.
But wait a minute. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rail against President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich." How does that square with the growing share of total tax paid by the wealthy? Are the richest Americans paying so much because they're actually getting clobbered with higher tax rates? No. Their effective tax rate - the total tax they pay as a percentage of their income - has declined substantially. The top 1% paid an effective tax rate of 23% in 2005, down from 27.5% in 2001.
The rich are getting richer, faster
So if the rich are paying more income tax, yet are being taxed at a lower rate, there can be only one explanation: their incomes must be growing fast, much faster than the rest of the population's. That is what's happening. Back in 1986, an income of $119,000 got you into the top 1%. By 2005 it took $365,000 to get into the club. Those numbers are unadjusted for inflation; if you correct them, it turns out the price of admission still rose by a huge 72%. By contrast, the inflation-adjusted definition of a median taxpayer - that is, someone in the 50th percentile - didn't budge.
Now consider some of the heated tax controversies of recent years. Did Bush cut taxes for the rich? Yes. But he cut taxes for the poor even more. If we look at the measure that really matters - the change in effective tax rates - the bottom 50% got a much bigger tax cut than the top 1%. Did the dollar value of Bush's tax cuts go mostly to the wealthy? Absolutely. It could hardly be otherwise. Since the well-off pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, any tax cut with a prayer of influencing the economy would have to go mostly to them. You could completely eliminate income taxes for the bottom half of the population, and the Treasury would hardly notice.
The real issues here are clear. One is having a shrinking minority of citizens pay most of Washington's bills. Social cohesion falls apart. The majority who pay nothing resent those with higher incomes; the minority who pay heavily resent those who don't pay.
More fundamental is why some people's incomes are growing so much faster than other people's incomes. That, and not taxes, is what the supposed tax debate is really about. Watch to see if the candidates make substantive proposals for dealing with the issue, including how low-income citizens can get some of the earning power now going heavily to the better educated, plus how U.S. workers in general can be worth their high cost in a global labor market. It's a lot harder than changing income tax rates.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Research into Word of Mouth and Communities
Interesting blog and study on how paying people to be brand ambassadors can actually reduce the value a person can extract from the experience. Think you could offset this by tying in some type of third party (like a charity) that would benefit.
Click here for the full post
Click here for the full post
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Yahoo!'s 3-year plan
Nicely laid out plan by Yahoo!. Will be real curious to see if they can really get the improvements in yield they project. That is the true execution component they haven't quite shown they can do yet (especially on search).
See the full plan here
See the full plan here
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Walk softly and carry a big checkbook - Fortunue 2/4/08
Good article about GroupM and WPP in general and how they are addressing the dynamic changes in advertising. Completely agree that people who invest and utilize data are the winners here. You can start to understand why the 24/7 deal wasn't completely crazy when you get a little background on their strategy.
(Fortune Magazine) -- It wasn't long ago that the ad biz was ruled by black-clad creative types who could charm an old lady into dropping her last $10 on a jar of get-younger cream. But those days are over. Now, with digital media at the center of the action - Google, Facebook, Microsoft's blockbuster bid for Yahoo - it's all about numbers. And one bookish media buyer is king. His name is Irwin Gotlieb. But we might just as well call him the $59 billion man.
Full article here
(Fortune Magazine) -- It wasn't long ago that the ad biz was ruled by black-clad creative types who could charm an old lady into dropping her last $10 on a jar of get-younger cream. But those days are over. Now, with digital media at the center of the action - Google, Facebook, Microsoft's blockbuster bid for Yahoo - it's all about numbers. And one bookish media buyer is king. His name is Irwin Gotlieb. But we might just as well call him the $59 billion man.
Full article here
Personalized Marketing Preferred; Execution Lagging
Brief below from Center of Media Research highlights a good study on the major problems in marketing today. Lots of data but not a good way to organize it in a way to make marketing decisions. Businesses that can help solve this problem for other advertisers or for themselves will be hugely rewarded.
In 2006, the Chief Marketing Officer Council found over 26% of executives pointed to a lack of data and systems integration that prevented their organization from achieving the optimal level of customer insight and intimacy. the current CMO Council's 2008 Marketing Outlook study still finds that only two of the top five solution investments for the year are CRM tools and customer analytics.
In introducing the study, The Power of Personalization, Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director, CMO Council writes that "...marketers are still missing the mark on how to leverage and utilize data, and because of this they are unable to realize the full potential of personalization tools, services and solutions."
The new emphasis and importance of individualized lifecycle marketing techniques is escalating, says the report, as companies see the impact, differentiation, loyalty and word-of-mouth results of customized communication.
Quoting from current research, the following statistics are said to support the move to the impact of personal communications :
• The Winterberry Group said that spending on direct-mail advertising (an integral part of personalized communication applications) shows no sign of abating; investments by marketers totaled $58.4 billion in 2007, and that figure is expected to increase to more than $70 billion by 2011
• The EmailInsider reports that more than $3 billion was spent in the U.S. alone on e-mail marketing
• The Power of Personalization finds that 56 percent of marketers believe personal communications out-performs traditional mass market delivery. Digital, database-driven channels (email, web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications
The study concludes that personalized marketing techniques are still in the early stages of being integrated into most companies' marketing campaigns and budgets. While the need for quantifiable tools for gauging effectiveness and ROI exists, marketers are also lagging on adoption due to the lack of accurate and reliable customer data sources. Quantitative results include:
• Improving customer retention and loyalty is the primary driver of personalization strategies; while there is high-perceived value of customized communications, usage is still very low despite many years of experience.
• Over 56 percent of marketers believe personalized communications out-perform traditional massmarket delivery; digital, database-driven channels (e-mail, Web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications
• 38 percent of marketers don't know whether their personalized communications have outperformed their traditional marketing communication techniques.
• Nearly 50 percent of marketers report having fair to poor or little knowledge of customers, and almost 47 percent rate their company's data integration capabilities as being deficient or needing improvement
• In professional services, 56.2 percent rated their customer data as "extremely good" or "reasonably reliable."
• Only 10 percent of respondents rate the accuracy and reliability of their customer data as extremely good.
• Chief marketing executives are the primary champions of personalized marketing initiatives, but sales and customer relationship management groups most frequently maintain control of the data that provides the foundational input for these campaigns
• Many marketers currently spend less than 10 percent of their budgets on personalized communications. Looking ahead, 55 percent say they will spend more than 10 percent.
• Almost 40 percent of respondents say they are generating either of "extremely effective and measurable ROI" or "better response rates than other programs."
• Individualized letters and e-mail are by far the most common form of personalized communication. Personalized print on-demand and variable data printing are not showing as much traction
• Currently, conversion and close rates are the primary measure of success, followed closely by e-mail actioning
In 2006, the Chief Marketing Officer Council found over 26% of executives pointed to a lack of data and systems integration that prevented their organization from achieving the optimal level of customer insight and intimacy. the current CMO Council's 2008 Marketing Outlook study still finds that only two of the top five solution investments for the year are CRM tools and customer analytics.
In introducing the study, The Power of Personalization, Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director, CMO Council writes that "...marketers are still missing the mark on how to leverage and utilize data, and because of this they are unable to realize the full potential of personalization tools, services and solutions."
The new emphasis and importance of individualized lifecycle marketing techniques is escalating, says the report, as companies see the impact, differentiation, loyalty and word-of-mouth results of customized communication.
Quoting from current research, the following statistics are said to support the move to the impact of personal communications :
• The Winterberry Group said that spending on direct-mail advertising (an integral part of personalized communication applications) shows no sign of abating; investments by marketers totaled $58.4 billion in 2007, and that figure is expected to increase to more than $70 billion by 2011
• The EmailInsider reports that more than $3 billion was spent in the U.S. alone on e-mail marketing
• The Power of Personalization finds that 56 percent of marketers believe personal communications out-performs traditional mass market delivery. Digital, database-driven channels (email, web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications
The study concludes that personalized marketing techniques are still in the early stages of being integrated into most companies' marketing campaigns and budgets. While the need for quantifiable tools for gauging effectiveness and ROI exists, marketers are also lagging on adoption due to the lack of accurate and reliable customer data sources. Quantitative results include:
• Improving customer retention and loyalty is the primary driver of personalization strategies; while there is high-perceived value of customized communications, usage is still very low despite many years of experience.
• Over 56 percent of marketers believe personalized communications out-perform traditional massmarket delivery; digital, database-driven channels (e-mail, Web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications
• 38 percent of marketers don't know whether their personalized communications have outperformed their traditional marketing communication techniques.
• Nearly 50 percent of marketers report having fair to poor or little knowledge of customers, and almost 47 percent rate their company's data integration capabilities as being deficient or needing improvement
• In professional services, 56.2 percent rated their customer data as "extremely good" or "reasonably reliable."
• Only 10 percent of respondents rate the accuracy and reliability of their customer data as extremely good.
• Chief marketing executives are the primary champions of personalized marketing initiatives, but sales and customer relationship management groups most frequently maintain control of the data that provides the foundational input for these campaigns
• Many marketers currently spend less than 10 percent of their budgets on personalized communications. Looking ahead, 55 percent say they will spend more than 10 percent.
• Almost 40 percent of respondents say they are generating either of "extremely effective and measurable ROI" or "better response rates than other programs."
• Individualized letters and e-mail are by far the most common form of personalized communication. Personalized print on-demand and variable data printing are not showing as much traction
• Currently, conversion and close rates are the primary measure of success, followed closely by e-mail actioning
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Home Theater Enroute to Mass Market
According to Parks Associates' new report and analysis of high-end entertainment systems, total U.S. revenues for installed home theaters and multiroom audio systems will grow from $6 billion in 2007 to more than $11 billion by 2012. The number of new installations are forecast to grow 67% over the same period, from 166,000 per year in 2007 to 277,000 by 2012.
Bill Ablondi, Director, Home Systems Research, Parks Associates, says "The high-end A/V market is in a major stage of transition. Digital content is approaching the... quality of analog media, with... added flexibility. Reduced costs... with advancements in wireless and powerline networking technologies are also growing the retrofit portion of the market... "
Total High-end Home Theater and Multiroom Audio Market ($ in Billions, includes installation)
Year Installations (x000) Annual Revenue ($ Billion)
2005 115 4.3
2006 141 5.2
2007 166 6.0
2008 190 6.8
2009 210 7.8
2010 231 8.8
2011 253 10.0
2012 277 11.3
Source: ? Parks Associates, February 2008
"Currently, the majority of high-end A/V customers are wealthy," Ablondi said. "In addition, most installed entertainment systems are sold into new homes or homes going through a major renovation. This mix will change as builders, installers, and integrators become more accepting of ‘no-new-wires' technologies."
Adoption of networking technologies will make installed home theaters and multiroom audio systems more affordable, opening up this market to more consumers at low-to-medium income level, concludes the report.
High-end Entertainment Systems: Analysis and Forecasts features surveys and research of principals in the home systems installation channel and updated forecasts for home theater, multiroom audio and media server systems, and home entertainment networks.
For more information, please visit here.
Bill Ablondi, Director, Home Systems Research, Parks Associates, says "The high-end A/V market is in a major stage of transition. Digital content is approaching the... quality of analog media, with... added flexibility. Reduced costs... with advancements in wireless and powerline networking technologies are also growing the retrofit portion of the market... "
Total High-end Home Theater and Multiroom Audio Market ($ in Billions, includes installation)
Year Installations (x000) Annual Revenue ($ Billion)
2005 115 4.3
2006 141 5.2
2007 166 6.0
2008 190 6.8
2009 210 7.8
2010 231 8.8
2011 253 10.0
2012 277 11.3
Source: ? Parks Associates, February 2008
"Currently, the majority of high-end A/V customers are wealthy," Ablondi said. "In addition, most installed entertainment systems are sold into new homes or homes going through a major renovation. This mix will change as builders, installers, and integrators become more accepting of ‘no-new-wires' technologies."
Adoption of networking technologies will make installed home theaters and multiroom audio systems more affordable, opening up this market to more consumers at low-to-medium income level, concludes the report.
High-end Entertainment Systems: Analysis and Forecasts features surveys and research of principals in the home systems installation channel and updated forecasts for home theater, multiroom audio and media server systems, and home entertainment networks.
For more information, please visit here.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
JP Morgan Internet Research Report
Interesting view of the 10 top ten themes in the space
Don't necessarily agree with the revenue potential of office productivity since Google isn't charging any money for their services.
Full Report Here
Don't necessarily agree with the revenue potential of office productivity since Google isn't charging any money for their services.
Full Report Here
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