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Beijing Car Sales Tick to 1,200/Day
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Beijing reported the registration of 261,000 new cars in the first seven
months, or about 1,240 daily, up 9 percent from the same period
last year.Private cars took about 97 percent of the new cars registered in this period,
according to the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau.New cars with engine displacement of 1.6 liters or below hit nearly 200,000
in this period. It could be attributed to the government's policies to encourage
the public to buy low-emission cars for environmental protection.
New Global Indian: Outsourcing is Out, New Business Model is In - WSJ.com
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First, he explains, was the body shop model: Indian companies set up to export
technology workers to companies in the west. Then came traditional outsourcing;
think Y2K and Indians executing others' marching orders throughout the night.
Now, businesses will form borderless partnerships to facilitate innovation and
efficiency -
"In the third wave," says Mr. Ram in an interview last week in New York, "Indian
companies design the platforms and systems. This is far more appealing to the
customer … more predictable and cost effective."
What Does Your Credit-Card Company Know About You? - NYTimes.com
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Well, how much are you gonna help me?” the man shot back. “These banks
got all this taxpayer money from the government, and they’re the ones who ruined
the market for my house! I helped bail them out. I think the banks should be
paying me, instead of trying to suck all the life out of us they can!”
AppleInsider | Apple developing "active packaging" for iPods and iPhones
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Known for thinking outside the box, electronics maker Apple Inc. is now
apparently working on an in-the-box concept that could provide power to iPods,
iPhones and other electronics devices still inside their retail packaging,
allowing them to display demo videos and receive firmware updates while hanging
unopened on a shelf in a retail store. -
And although this typical packaging for an electronic media device may be
designed to adequately protect the device from shock or damage, the packaging is
extremely limited in other respects.
"For example, the ability to fully
view or interact with the electronic media device while still inside the
packaging is severely limited in most packaging designs," Apple says. "In
addition, typical packaging designs do not enable the electronic media device or
devices housed within the packaging to present content (e.g., media content or
advertising) while inside the packaging and without draining battery power.
Other functionality, such as firmware or software upgrades, are also typically
not available while the electronic media device is housed within the product
packaging (e.g., at a retail location). This is primarily due to the inability
to provide external power or data to the device while still housed within the
packaging." - 1 more annotations...
Self-Service Nation: Why Targeting Small Business Is Good Business
U.S. Business Statistics | The Economics of Sales\n\nA quick look at Census Bureau statistics on business size reveals some startling information:\n\n * Of the 25 million U.S. businesses, only 5.9 million employ one or more people.\n * Of the 5.9 million employer firms, only 17,047 have 500 or more employees, yet those firms account for 49 percent of U.S. employment and 61 percent of revenue. That translates into well under 1 percent of U.S. firms accounting for 61 percent of revenue\n * Of the 17,047 firms with more than 500 employees, the 890 with 10,000 or more employees account for 26 percent of U.S. employment and 37 percent of revenue.\n\nLet's say you're an enterprise software company and that your economic model requires each sales professional to earn $2 million-$3 million in revenue a year to cover the costs of your operation, including the cost of the sales themselves (salaries, commissions, travel and entertainment, sales support and operations, etc.). Each one of these representatives can only do so many deals every quarter, so the revenue per deal must be fairly high - let's say that the average deal size per customer, per year, must be around $100,000. And that's just your part of the solution. There are likely other software, hardware and consulting costs associated with the complete solution.\n\nIf we assume that the average pre-tax margin of a small business is 10 percent and we take revenue for the 98 percent of U.S. firms with 99 or fewer employees, divide their aggregate revenue by the number of firms to get average revenue per firm and then take 10 percent of that number to derive pre-tax profit per firm, we get $103,962. In other words, the direct sales model would require taking roughly 100 percent of pre-tax profit from firms with fewer than 99 people for just your component of the solution. These are back-of-the-envelope assumptions and are for illustrative purposes only - the point is that direct sales organizations cannot serve the vast majority of businesses on the planet.\n\
Welcome To Our Flat World | George Benckenstein
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- Political Barriers
- Trade Barriers
- Transportation Barriers
- Communication Barriers
The first half of the 20th century was an absolute disaster in human
affairs. A cataclysm. We had the first world war, the great
depression, the second world war and the rise of the communist nation.
Each one of these forces tore the world apart at the seams. We also threw
up barriers to human affairs which include: - Political Barriers
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Whatever you want to call it, we are coming full circle. In the beginning,
we participated in commerce at the local level. You did business with the
people you knew. Business was done on a relationship level. Then
along came the automobile and communication devices. By the time the
television came along, we were all exposed to mass advertising and mass
manufacturing. The whole notion of “brand” was to develop a relationship
with a product where we once relied on relationships with individuals.
Well here we are in the “relationship age.” Where your ability to succeed
has more to do with orchestrating effort thru your network or connections.
TV advertising, or advertising in general, is in a fluid state of
disarray. People want to do business with other people again — not
brands. The big will get smaller and the small get bigger. Say
goodbye to institutional friction. We will witness the rise of the
individual. We’ve come full circle folks! - 1 more annotations...
Coca-Cola Seeks Edge With 120-Drink Jet Fountain (Update2) - Bloomberg.com
Coca-Cola Seeks Edge With 120-Drink Jet Fountain
(Update2)
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By Duane D. Stanford
April 6 (Bloomberg) --
Coca-Cola Co.
is using
micro-dosing technology from drugmakers, a smart phone operating system from
Microsoft Corp. and style tips from Italian auto designers in its latest attempt
to revive falling sales of fountain drinks.
Coca-Cola spent four years developing a self-serve beverage dispenser that
can pour as many as 120 drinks. It uses 40 percent less storage space than
traditional six- or eight-tap fountains, said Gene Farrell, the project’s
manager.
Code-named “Jet,” the company will test the touch-screen- operated fountain
in fewer than 10 Atlanta restaurants starting this month and another 70 or more
in Southern California during the summer. The company declined to say where the
expanded trials would take place or whether any Jets have been sold.
Coca-Cola is betting a larger variety of beverages, including Orange Coke,
Powerade and Minute Maid juice, will lure fast-food consumers back to buying
drinks with their hamburgers. People even may pay more for greater choice and a
better tasting, colder beverage, Farrell said.
“The way you grow
profit
for everybody is, you
grow the size of the pie,” he said. “When there’s new growth, there’s
opportunity for everyone.”
Fountain sales for Coca-Cola, which controls 70 percent of the U.S. market
and is the exclusive supplier to
McDonald’s Corp.
, have not “grown as robustly as we would have
liked,” Farrell said.
Industry volume sales for U.S. fountain drinks probably fell more than 3
percent last year, after a 1.3 percent drop in 2007, according to
John Sicher
, publisher of Beverage Digest newsletter. He
estimates the overall soft-drink market, including fountain, at $72.7 billion.
Fountain Sales
Coca-Cola sells concentrated beverage syrup to restaurants, convenience
stores and entertainment venues to be mix
Say ‘Hybrid’ and Many People Will Hear ‘Prius’ - New York Times
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riddle: Why has the Toyota
Prius enjoyed such success, with sales of more than 400,000 in the United
States, when most other hybrid models struggle to find buyers?One answer may be that buyers of the Prius want everyone to know they are
driving a hybrid.
Innosight | Innoblog discusses disruption, business model innovation, and strategy
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Elastic Compute Cloud: Amazon leases computing
horsepower over the web; the equivalent of one server costs about 10 cents an
hour. Computing-hungry startups can make expensive capital equipment
investments by buying their own servers or can lease the processing power they
need when they need it at a very low cost leasing a full year of power
equivalent to one server would cost just $876.
Simple Storage
Service: Amazon leases digital storage at 15 cents per gigabyte per
month. Buy backup drives or zap it over to Amazon for a buck eighty a gig a
year.
Amazon Mechanical Turk: Amazon matches up
online temp workers with companies that need menial tasks done. There are
some menial, frustrating tasks that any bozo on the street can do easily but
that computers just cant do right; when these tasks present themselves companies
can either hire interns, tie up their low-level employees with mindless work,
or, in some cases, simply leave loose ends untied. Now they can have Amazon
connect them with an online temp painlessly, rapidly and at a miniscule cost.
Fulfillment by Amazon: End-to-end e-commerce
operations and logistics. Companies can operate their own e-commerce
operations and frequent eBay sellers can buy new shelving units for their garage
and wait in line at the post office everydayor they can outsource part or all of
the process to the worlds most efficient e-commerce logistician. Amazon
warehouses merchandise and handles orders, payments, and shipping.
Zipcar - A Product Becomes a Service : TreeHugger
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Zipcar - A Product
Becomes a Service
by
TreeHugger
on
10.26.04
Science &
Technology
(
product
service system
)
Buzz
up!
Zipcar is a cool
example of a product being made into a service—i.e. people pay to use a service
(use of a car) instead of buying the product (the car itself). For those where
Zipcar hasn’t yet hit—so far it’s in MA,NY,NJ,NC and DC—Zipcar is a like a
community rental service, you become a member and then use the service whenever
you want. It’s there for you when you need it, but isn’t a hassle when you
don’t…
Plus, Zipcar claims to reduce car usage by individuals by as much as 50% and
also that one Zipcar replaces 7-10 privately owned cars, giving people the
option to share cars instead of everyone buying and using their own, which is
good in ways that we’re sure we don’t need to explain to you, savvy reader.
Now imagine if we implemented similar services for things like power drills
and chainsaws—things are that handy to have, but that you don’t necessarily use
all the time. By creating community centers for use, we’d eliminate tons of
barely-used product, and therefore, waste.
Now imagine if consumers bought things like their oil tanks and washing
machines based on the services provided to them instead of based on the object
itself. It would encourage people and vendors alike to value the service,
instead of the material item, thereby encouraging long-lasting products—and good
service. Now we begin to see the bigger picture that something like Zipcar
presen
Google’s Competitive Advantage: Plumbing : Beyond Search
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- Next-generation computing is about scale. Google has the requisite
engineering and infrastructure in place and up and running. The “sub half second
response” is brutal evidence that Google’s Web search, video, and map
applications don’t choke the as-is Google system. That’s not impressive; that’s
a feat that none of Google’s competitors can match on cost and scale. - Google has been chipping away at scaling for years. The fact that Google is
revealing how it does a few whizzy things is a wake up call to its competitors.
Google, a very secretive company, is now explaining what it does and how it does
it. This means that Google is confident of its technical lead, and it is moving
on to even more difficult challenges. - Duplicating Google’s as-is infrastructure won’t help competitors narrow the
gap between their data center technology and Google’s. Google is designing
hardware and coding its own hardware and software. Catch Google’s present
capabilities does one thing–you remain behind the GOOG.
- Next-generation computing is about scale. Google has the requisite
How Companies Increase Innovation - WSJ.com
Those ideas, however, don't really come from nowhere. Instead, they are typically at the edge of a company's radar screen, and sometimes a bit beyond: trends in peripheral industries, unserved needs in foreign markets, activities that aren't part of the company's core business. To be truly innovative, companies sometimes have to change their frames of reference, extend their search space. New ways of thinking and organization can be required as well.\n\nIn other words, they have to look away from the lamppost.\n\nNone of this is easy to do. But companies that succeed may just recognize the next great opportunity, or looming threat, before their competitors do. And that's important in tumultuous economic times with rapidly changing technologies. Indeed, every once in a while, that blip on the horizon turns out to be a tsunami.
Zipcar: IPO or No, a Big Year Ahead
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Based on an interview with Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith, Bloomberg
wrote this week that Zipcar is “gearing up to publicly sell shares in 2010.”
According to Bloomberg, Griffith also said that he expects sales to reach $120
million this year and hit $1 billion within a decade. But yesterday Lyon, the
Zipcar spokesperson we spoke with earlier this year, told The
Deal: “We did not announce an IPO and have no immediate plans to go public.”
The decline and fall of General Motors: Detroitosaurus wrecks | The Economist
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GM’s demise should not be read as a harbinger of doom for the car industry. All
around the world people want wheels: a car tends to be the first big purchase a
family makes once its income rises much above $5,000 a year, in purchasing-power
terms. At the same time as people in developing countries are getting richer,
more efficient factories and better designs are making cars more affordable.
That is why the IMF forecasts that the world will have nearly 3 billion cars in
2050, compared with around 700m cars today. In the next five or six years the
Chinese will overtake the Americans in terms of annual car sales: in 40 years’
time the Chinese will have almost as many cars as exist in the whole of the
world now. Indeed, GM’s own experience abroad shows the promise of emerging
markets. Brazil has long been a source of profits, and GM has a leading position
in China. -
At present, there’s enough capacity globally to make 90m vehicles a year, but
demand is little more than 60m in good economic times. Even as the big global
manufacturers have been building new factories in emerging markets, governments
in slow-growing rich-world markets have been bribing them to keep capacity open
there. - 1 more annotations...
Computing: Unlocking the cloud | The Economist
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The argument has been won. It is now generally accepted that the future will
involve a blend of both proprietary and open-source software. Traditional
software companies have opened up some of their products, and many open-source
companies have adopted a hybrid model in which they give away a basic version of
their product and make money by selling proprietary add-ons (see article). The rise of software
based on open, internet-based standards means worries about lock-in have become
much less of a problem. -
The obvious answer is to establish agreed standards for moving data between
clouds. An industry effort to this effect kicked off in March. But cloud
computing is still in its infancy, and setting standards too early could hamper
innovation. So buyers of cloud-computing services must take account of the
dangers of lock-in, and favour service providers who allow them to move data in
and out of their systems without too much hassle. This will push providers to
compete on openness from the outset—and ensure that the lessons from the success
of open-source software are not lost in the clouds.
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