Business

The future of capitalism in five minutes: meaning-driven business in fast times

Never let a crisis go to waste! Inspired by the transformative impetus of the economic downturn, we’ll soon be starting our series about “Meaning-Driven Business” that invites leading business thinkers as well as C-level executives to discuss alternative ways of doing business and creating value. The series is based on the assumption that the current crisis is also a moral crisis, a fundamental crisis of trust in business leadership. According to the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index from April 8, trust in business has reached unprecedented lows, with only 10% of Americans now saying they trust large … Read more

Bill Gates offers the world a physics lesson

It's been a year since Bill Gates left full-time work at Microsoft, but he's found plenty to keep him busy.

In between trying to eradicate polio, tame malaria, and fix the broken U.S. education system, Gates has managed to fulfill a dream of taking some classic physics lectures and making them available free over the Web. The lectures, done in 1964 by noted scientist (and Manhattan Project collaborator) Richard Feynman, take notions such as gravity and explains how they work and the broad implications they have in understanding the ways of the universe.

Gates first saw the … Read more

The conversation wars

Modernista did it. Skittles did it. And now the world’s hottest advertising firm, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB), has done it, too: the NY outfit has re-launched its corporate web site as a conversational social hub that curates what is being said about CPB rather than staging what CPB has to say. Some may scoff at this move and denigrate it as “sooooo six months ago,” but I agree with Paul Isakson when he heralds the influence of the new CPB site on the rest of the industry as potentially paradigm-shifting.

The demarcation line here runs between pioneer and early … Read more

frog design, the book: How design strategies are shaping the future of business

Forgive this self-serving plug but I think this is worth sharing: My colleague, Frog Design founder and former CEO, Hartmut Esslinger, has written his first book, and it is available in stores now: A Fine Line - How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. Part autobiography, part how-to innovation guide, part outlook to the future of design, A Fine Line is "a must-read for designers and business people alike" (Satjiv Chahil, senior vice president, Hewlett-Packard).

A Fine Line offers a step-by-step overview of the innovation process -- from targeting goals to shepherding new products and services … Read more

Get social now!

Several blog posts this week, combined, pinpoint what are arguably the two most influential trajectories for the impact of communication technologies on business these days: from real-time web to real-time business, and from social media to social business design.

Let’s start with the former. Referring to Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his presentation at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco last week, DigitalBeat claims that the real-time web is not only shaping the future of all computing but also that of business overall: “In business it’s real-time or it’s no time.” It goes … Read more

More on the Windows 7 upgrade program

Although Microsoft is on track to deliver Windows 7 for the holidays, the new operating system will miss the back-to-school buying season.

For that reason--and to prevent the stall in sales that can precede any new operating-system release--Microsoft has been working for months on the free-upgrade program it announced earlier Thursday.

Under the program, those who buy a PC with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate will get a free upgrade to the comparable version of Windows 7, once it is released in October. Microsoft is hoping that will help juice PC sales a bit.

"With PC prices … Read more

Father's Day special: Baby care and meaningful marketing

The $10 billion market for baby and young children’s furnishings (cribs, other case goods, layette, nursery decor, and the like) and accessories (car seats, strollers, baby monitors, diaper bags, etc.) is a lucrative market, and the baby stroller is one of its most competitive sectors. Hundreds of models vie for the attention of parents-to-be, and the level of detailed research, due diligence, and individual preferences may come close to the decision making process by an airline for the purchase of a Boeing 787. There are only few things – at least that’s what the industry makes you believe – that … Read more

Intuit discounts Quicken as MS Money fades

With Redmond discontinuing Microsoft Money, Intuit is offering a series of discounts aimed to lure more folks to use its Quicken personal finance product.

In a blog posting, Intuit said it is offering the discounts on Quicken products through the end of July to all users, not just the Money users left in the lurch.

Specifically, Intuit said that it is offering $20 off on Quicken Deluxe (now $39.99) and $30 off Quicken Premier (now $59.99). It is also chopping $30 off its Home & Business product and $50 off its Rental Property Manager product. The company is … Read more

Yahoo-Microsoft deal less likely, analyst says

In Vegas terms, the likelihood of a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is now a "pick 'em."

That was the takeaway from a report Tuesday by Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

"In our view, the likelihood of a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal has gone down materially in recent weeks," Aggarwal wrote in a research note. The biggest hurdle remains the price of a deal, he said.

"We believe that a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal can happen but we are reducing the probability from 80 percent-plus to 50 percent, and with the lowered probability, we restrain ourselves in terms of … Read more