The multi-domestic strategy is appropriate for innovations that depend on understanding local customer preferences, tastes, expectations, distribution channels, and local government regulations than they do on the technological knowledge on which they rest. This strategy is appropriate when the need for market information is high while that for technological information is low. Makers of packaged consumer goods (detergents and cereals) such as Unilever have pursued this strategy. Firms that pursue the multi-domestic strategy have self-sufficient units in each country to better discern and meet local customer preferences and tastes. On the other hand, if technological information requirements are high relative to market information requirements, a firm may want to pursue a global strategy. Firms can locate their facilities either where the environment is most suitable for technological innovations or at home where they have some endowments that give them some advantage. From there they develop products for world markets. If both market and technological information demands are low, a firm can operate using the international arrangement. It can take advantage of whatever home capabilities it has to develop products for its home market. Once the products are successful at home, it can then transfer the capabilities and the innovation to overseas. If both market and technological information needs are high. The transnational arrangement is best. In this mode, firms have access to the best sources of innovation, and the technological knowledge and the market knowledge that underpin them, worldwide.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight.

An observer of Canada and especially the CBC would be forgiven if they thought all the drama in the country was taking place at CBC News and CBC News Network. Being Erica can’t compete and Dragon’s Den doesn’t come close to the reality TV nonsense swirling around Peter Mansbridge, Richard Stursberg et al at Canada’s national network.

A few weeks after the disastrous launch of the new National and the unwatchable programming on CBCNN, the drama continues. From the outside it looks like Stursberg and his happy band of naysayers are attempting to build a wall around the Corpse that will keep out all the negative reactions. So far they do not, at least publicly, admit that there are any problems with the new direction that CBC News has attempted to sell to a dwindling audience.

Unfortunately for the CBC they have accomplished only one goal: yes, they have united Canadians, created consensus. Everybody hates the new news. Forgive me if I exaggerate, I have seen two articles from people who mildly like the new direction, but I have yet to speak to a single person who has anything positive to say about CBC News as it appears today. I have had conversations with people of all ages from many different parts of Canada. Not one likes what he or she is seeing.

What’s worse, whenever two media people get together, or whenever a CBC News staffer meets a news viewer, the dreadfulness, is that a word, of the changes is still the main topic of conversation. Rather than going away, it is growing. The viewers are as pissed off at CBC management as the news staffs are. Really, the entire episode is a great embarrassment, or at least it should be.

The most damning result of the changes to CBC News is playing out in the ratings. CBC made the changes to combat poor news numbers. Most nights the CBC peaked at about 600,000 viewers. CTV and Global generally got over one million viewers for their national newscasts. Now the CBC is barely breaking the 400,000 viewer mark. That’s a drop of one third of the audience. If rumours are to be believed, the back half, where the documentaries once ran, is losing viewers at an even greater pace. Failure has been swift and clear cut. In the meantime numbers at CTV and Global are rising. The damage is actually worse than the last CBC disaster when they tried to move the news to nine p.m.

So what can the CBC do to deal with the self inflicted wounds before they become fatal? The first step, it would seem obvious, is to admit there have been big mistakes made. You cannot begin to make changes if you don’t admit change is necessary. Step back. Have a look at the programming. Remove the rose coloured glasses. Look at CBC News for what it has become, not what you predicted, attempted or wanted. News viewers, especially CBC News viewers, want depth, context, serious reporting. They want interviews and documentaries that engage and inform. They want the news content as it was before. As far as style is concerned, they are willing to accept change that is motivated by bringing better quality coverage. They don’t want standing for the sake of standing and moving graphics because a U.S. TV doctor says that’s what you need to be young and modern. If you can’t answer the question “Why is Peter standing?” then he shouldn’t be standing.

I repeat, all of this is predicated on the CBC bosses admitting they goofed…big time. The way the CBC works I can’t see that happening. Last time CBC goofed Ron Crocker and Tim Kotcheff were run out of the CBC. They took all the blame even though they were mainly there to implement what the entire braintrust had created. Sure they played their part in the changes but they were no more responsible than the rest, the ones who took over and changed the news back to 10 o’clock and the old format. This time that will be more difficult. Many of the old bosses, the ones who know what they are doing, have been shuffled off the news if not out of the CBC entirely. The new bosses come from radio, from current affairs. It is questionable as to whether they know what they are doing and further whether they even know how to put the news back together. There are no possible scapegoats that are not directly tied to Uber boss Richard Stursberg. If Stursberg were to fire Jennifer McGuire it would reflect directly on him personally and his poor judgment. I don’t know Stursberg, but I know people who do know him, and they tell me this is not going to happen. They tell me according to King Richard, he doesn’t make mistakes.

In the meantime, as viewers drift away and the credibility of the news service suffers, major cracks are starting to appear inside the newsroom. Insiders tell me the news team is finding it almost impossible to fill the hour. The news desk is begging all the units to send them stories, any length…even long docs of 20 minutes or more. Many of the best reporters are beginning to revolt. They want to produce better stories but feel the desk has no understanding of what that takes in time and energy. They also feel they are being made to look bad. Their reputations are suffering. I think they are right. The editors are saying the new young producers don’t understand how news works. They are generally unprepared and don’t understand the editing process. Fingers are being pointed in all directions. Everyone is looking for someone to blame and Richard Stursberg and Jennifer McGuire are the names I hear most often. We are talking about massive breakdown at all levels.

Humpty Dumpty has fallen down. Predictably, all King Richard’s horses and all his men so far cannot put Humpty together again.

For this column I thought a lot about how we set up our campaigns for tracking and optimization, as well as the launch and rollout process itself. I think there are a few parts of this that could be instructional for most marketers. I like it when others can learn from my mistakes J

Last month we took a look at how to plan, budget and organize around a Global Brand Campaign with paid search. Now I’d like to walk you through the launch process and talk a little bit about how you’ll need to set your campaigns up for tracking and optimization. Hopefully my experience will serve you in an instructional way so when the time comes, you will be equipped to execute flawlessly.

Tracking: Optimization vs. Analysis

Just a reminder, the goal of the brand campaign is to drive deeper engagement with Yahoo! products and services. In looking at how to execute on this, it became clear that the extent to which your site is (or isn’t) instrumented with web analytics support will dictate the amount of near-real-time campaign data you will be able to collect, and the degree to which you will be able to optimize your campaign. In our case we faced some really interesting challenges on this front, which forced us to split our world of data into two distinct halves – data we use to analyze overall results, and data we use to optimize the campaign.

In order to gather data that we can use to optimize our campaigns in near-real-time, we tagged a set of actions on our sites that we thought were good indicators of engagement – everything from page views on marketing microsites, to primary and secondary calls to action, on to to harder conversions like homepage sets (‘set my homepage to Yahoo!’) and downloads of the Yahoo! toolbar. Now comes the hard part (only since I’m a direct response marketer from way back). Because none of these events drive direct revenue, we had to look at all the conversions we tagged, and assign them values. We opted for a points system that would consider the relative engagement value of each of these conversions, so we could optimize our campaign to user engagement.

In order to evaluate the success of the campaign ongoing, we realized that we could leverage the awesome volume of data we collect on a regular basis. This process is much more post hoc (looking back) and not necessarily actionable, but for showing our success to upper management we decided this was the best route to take. More details on this in our next column.

Ready to Launch

Now that you know how you’re going to collect your conversion data, you have all your campaigns built out for each market (we covered this last month), it’s time to plan the launch. Naturally, you’ll want to launch SEM when the other media launches in each market. You’ll take your media flighting calendar, sit down with your agency, and work on a rollout plan that will synchronize your launches with in-market media across the globe. Not so fast. In our case we were doing our first launch, in the US, on a Monday morning at 12:01 a.m. EDT. Since I’m on the west coast, that meant 9:01 p.m. Sunday night. We set everything up for launch on Sunday night and naturally I got on my computer at the same time to look for our ads. Nothing. I started pinging our agency in a small panic – turns out we were having problems with the ads. Needless to say it was a late night and we spent quite a bit of time working through the issues with various parties.

We learned from this experience quickly and when it came time to launch in the UK and India markets the following week, we got a little smarter. Rather than launching on Sunday afternoon/evening, we set all our campaigns up and did what I called a ‘QA launch’ on Friday. We turned our budgets way down and flipped everything on. This way we could quickly identify and fix problems so that by Sunday, when the rest of the media went live, all we had to do was change our campaign budgets. No late nights, no lengthy calls with the engines. Beautiful. Looking back on this I really should have known better. Having executed countless launches in the past, I wouldn’t normally try to pull this off outside of normal business hours when search engine account managers are not standing by. Live and learn, I say.

That’s all for this month. Tune in next month when we look closely at what to do once your campaign is up and running, namely optimization and reporting.

A while back, Time Magazine had a really interesting photo essay based on Peter Menzel’s book Hungry Planet: What the World Eat.

I thought I would share it here because I thought it was extremely interesting.  It shows 15 families around the world with a week’s worth of food spread out on their table.

Click the picture or here for the link!

In my opinion, some of the most interesting parts of this photo essay were:

1. The amounts of food and quality of food.  Certain countries/cultures had more fresh produce than others, as well as the most obvious… different quantities of food.

2.  Take note of the living space.  Most of the pictures are taken where the family eats.  It’s interesting to try to guess how people experience food based on their environment. Who has a TV in the room?  Who has a table?  I think a lot of this is also based on income but still kind of interesting to think about.

3.  The family unit.  Not necessarily food related, but it’s interesting to see what different cultures consider to be the immediate family.

I should also say that I understand that this is by no means representative of countries or cultures.  Every household is different but I think it’s useful to get a glimpse into the way other people live and eat.

Any other thoughts?

LONDON (Reuters) – An alliance of the world’s top public health researchers set out plans on Monday to invest tens of millions of dollars in heart and lung disease studies in a battle against a global epidemic of chronic disease.

The group of agencies, which together manage around 80 percent of global public health research funding, said the health impact and socio-economic costs of chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs) was “enormous and rising.”

Experts estimate that unless action is stepped up, 388 million people worldwide will die prematurely in the next decade of chronic non-communicable diseases — which include heart disease, stroke, some cancers, lung conditions, and type 2 diabetes.

“The epidemic of chronic disease in the world has accelerated. We urgently need to understand how to reverse the trend, not just in small trials, but in all the world communities,” said Oxford University’s David Matthews, executive director of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD).

Dr. Abdallah Daar of the McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health in Toronto, GACD’s chairman, said it expects to invest tens of millions of dollars in coordinated research programs over five years. He could not put a final figure on the projects, since grants have not yet been decided.

Around 11.5 million deaths a year are attributed to hypertension, or high blood pressure, tobacco and indoor air pollution from cooking stoves, the alliance said, making these three areas its first priorities.

High blood pressure and tobacco use are often seen as health problems for richer nations, but the World Health Organization lists them as the top killers worldwide.

Governments and wealthy donors have channeled billions of dollars in recent years into fighting infectious diseases such as malaria or the AIDS virus in the developing world, but chronic disease is now a growing threat there too.

Experts estimate that without action, China and India will lose $558 billion and $237 billion respectively in national income over the next decade due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

The GACD was set up in June by six of the world’s most prominent health research agencies — Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the Indian Council of Medical Research, Britain’s Medical Research Council, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Elizabeth Nabel, director of the U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the NIH and a leading member of the GACD, said its focus would be on so-called “implementation science.”

“We as institutions have already funded a significant amount of work in hypertension and tobacco control, for example — so much of the basic science and the evidence base is already known,” she said in a telephone interview.

The GACD would take that knowledge and collaborate on projects looking at how to use the science learned from richer nations’ experiences with chronic disease to help fight the rising tide in developing countries, she said.

Daar said political collaboration was crucial: “We don’t want this to end with the publication of a paper, we want it to change policy and save lives.”

Source – Reuters, Nov. 16, 2009

Health is a way of living with full autonomy, solidarity and joy. (10^th Congress of Physicians and Biologists of Catalan Language, Perpignan, 1976)

That sentence appears in the third page of the Innovation Plan for Primary health care and Community Health recently published by the Department of Health of the Catalan Government), The quote appears in its third page, after the title and the index and highlighted in bold characters, at least in the version you can download from the internet.

Some local readers may remember what the 10^th Congress of Physicians and Biologists of Catalan Language held in Perpignan in 1976 meant. Most have probably never heard of than event, 33 years old now, and may be unaware of the context (just as the General Franco regime was ending) under which seminal series of works were presented. We may talk more about what it meant in forthcoming notes.

e-Criterium also adopted that definition of what health is. The second session of the quoted Perpignan congress was chaired by Jordi GOL-GURINA and tried to advance from the then accepted 1946 WHO definition of health: “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease”. GOL, as Jordi Font and other speakers at the recent (November 2008) memorial session held in Girona during the recent 18^th Congress reminded us, insisted in the active characteristic of health: “a way of living” and not merely “a state of wellbeing” and also in the personal and political essence of any health related work: personal because health is linked to an active process of personal growth and maturity as human beings and political as we are convinced of the implications of anybody’s actions over the remaining of the community and specifically as we believe in the capacity to influence how our communities organise themselves as healthy, i.e. promoting freedom, autonomy, solidarity and joy.

We felt happy those words were used in the new Report. For us a definition is only  a framework, a common ground, from which actions can be designed and implemented. Otherwise these are only empty words.

E-Criterium is putting that definition at work. How? Explaining how we interpret it and acting on it. How? E-Criterium is a web site where all opinions will have a place to collectively appreciate if our health care system and specifically our primary health care system, that is an essential part of it, works accordingly to what for us that definition implies .. from realism and from desire.

That will be our collective contribution to the implementation of the Innovation Plan.

Olga Fernández Quiroga and Oriol Ramis i Juan

Wizards of Money Part 12: The Imperial Budget And The Mythical Lock Box
by Smithy/Unwelcome Guests

View Transcript

Part Summary: In this the 12th edition of the Wizards of Money we are going to take a look at the biggest budget in the whole wide world in the whole of history – that is, the $2 Trillion USD budget of the US Government.

Series Summary: The Wizards of Money is an educational series that questions the validity of the global monetary system. Listen and discover amazing facts about the world-wide debt system we’ve all been enslaved by, and how this system produces economic disparity and the massive poverty conditions in which most people find themselves today.

About the Host: Smithy has degrees in mathematics and economics. She works as a consultant calculating investment risk for financial institutions, therefore she does not reveal her real name.

Audio/Transcripts hosted online at http://www.antiscia.com/wizardsofmoney/

According to the World Health Organization, unsafe sex is killing women and girls around the globe. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women between the ages of 15 and 44; unsafe sex is the biggest risk factor. The death rates of women in their reproductive years occurred in low-income (22.3 percent) and middle-income countries (15.4 percent).

We must become advocates for ourselves and/or for our girls. HIV is a preventable disease.  If abstinence is not possible, safe sex is a no brainer. It’s time to start talking and sharing information. We can not afford to remain silent- our lives are at stake.

Resources
www.theredpumpproject.com
Kaiser Family Foundation HIV-AIDS Resources
AIDS.gov

The report, Women and Health: Today’s Evidence Tomorrow’s Agenda, focuses on the health and circumstances of women worldwide – specifically, women’s health needs and their contribution to the health of societies.

Despite considerable progress over the past two decades, societies are still failing women at key moments in their lives; mostly women in poor countries and the poorest women in ALL countries.

I am so interested in the American tour that Sarah Palin will be promoting this week for her book Going Rogue: An American Life. I think there is something we all can learn from this. If anything, it is a media spectacle unlike anything ever seen before: Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska, who makes history as the first female Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, dishes her perspective on the inside story behind the McCain campaign. While I haven’t read the book myself, (I plan on buying a copy soon,) it will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the end and how it will bode for the future of national and global politics, if at all.

Spent a fantastically informative time with one of Australia’s highest profile beauty experts today:  Zoe Foster - formerly of Harpers Bazaar, regularly on TV, columnist for Cosmo and the Sunday Telegraph (New South Wales’ equivalent to the Daily Mail, owned by News Corp), author (great book out re the dating game) and her most recent success story – founder of one of the most influential beauty blogs in Australia: primped.com.au

Primped gets around 20,000 users a week but what’s amazing is that these users stay on the site for an average of 12 minutes – not bad!  She has a VIP panel of 100 bloggers/tweeters who are vetted that test beauty products for the site regularly and a rotation of guest bloggers – from beauty experts and scientists to celebs – but the key thing is all content is uploaded with a tongue firmly in cheek.  Zoe wants to demystify beauty and the science behind it but not take it all too seriously – with a fun, irreverent editorial style.

Apparently young women in Australia spend on average 4-5 hours a day on the Net – and this is just re personal use – phew!

Visual, step by step content – especially video guides is really popular.  Users are hungry for skincare and haircare advice and trends – especially organic and natural.  In a country with fabulous weather, it’s no surprise tanning is the national obsession – how to reduce the damage and how to get a natural all over look (white faces and brown bodies are becoming a weird looking trend in the pursuit of younger facial skin!).

The key insight Zoe shared is that very few commercial brands get how to best leverage the digital channel – it’s a route to embrace and explore – and few are doing so.  It’s the perfect vehicle to create mini trends – adopted from the catwalks or simply because you feel like it – because of its real time nature, of course.

Couple of other sites worth checking out re content, including tweets::  www.girlwithasatchel.com – a summary of what’s new and interesting in the Aussie media and Mia Freedman’s mamamedia.com.au – Sydney Morning Herald columnist’s women’s lifestyle site.  The Herald is NSW’s mainstream broadsheet.  Enjoy!

Kita tentu saja tahu pepatah yang mengatakan ‘perlakukan orang lain seperti kamu ingin diperlakukan’.

Sekarang filsuf-filsuf dunia mengatakan kita harus benar benar mempraktekkan pepatah itu. Penjanjian Global untuk Kasih Sayang diluncurkan di berbagai kota dunia. Bertujuan mengajak semua orang untuk sedikit lebih ramah terhadap sesama.

Karen Amstrong, mantan biarawati yang sekarang seorang pemikir religius kritis, menulis perjanjian tersebut dengan bantuan para pemimpin lima agama terbesar dunia. Menurut Karen, dunia menghadapi kekacauan politik dan sosial:

“Sejenis militan keberagamaan yang agresif, kadang disebut juga fundamentalis. Ini tumbuh di dalam semua tradisi agama terbesar dunia, dan terdapat didalamnya rasa marah yang diekspresikan dalam istilah keagamaan. Saya ingin merubah pembahasan itu.”baca selengkapnya..

Kita tentu saja tahu pepatah yang mengatakan ‘perlakukan orang lain seperti kamu ingin diperlakukan’.

Sekarang filsuf-filsuf dunia mengatakan kita harus benar benar mempraktekkan pepatah itu. Penjanjian Global untuk Kasih Sayang diluncurkan di berbagai kota dunia. Bertujuan mengajak semua orang untuk sedikit lebih ramah terhadap sesama.

Karen Amstrong, mantan biarawati yang sekarang seorang pemikir religius kritis, menulis perjanjian tersebut dengan bantuan para pemimpin lima agama terbesar dunia. Menurut Karen, dunia menghadapi kekacauan politik dan sosial:

“Sejenis militan keberagamaan yang agresif, kadang disebut juga fundamentalis. Ini tumbuh di dalam semua tradisi agama terbesar dunia, dan terdapat didalamnya rasa marah yang diekspresikan dalam istilah keagamaan. Saya ingin merubah pembahasan itu.”baca selengkapnya..

This is looking better and better. Swedens #2 newspaper (SvD) is now running a series of columns where both AGW-proponents and AGW-skeptics get to have their say. The proponents are shouting the usual “hurry its too late” and “the humanity! think of the suffering”. The skeptics are presenting the facts, as I’ve tried to do by links (Lindzen and Choi is being referenced more and more). Hopefully, it’s just a matter of time until every newspaper in the world has “global warming fraud” as their main item. The Guardian accepted some skepticism recently, as well as a few other lesser known papers.

I hope Al Gore and James Hansen are getting nervous breakdowns. This cannot go away, no matter how much cow flatulence you try and blame.

P.S Anyone who has been used as a “useful idiot” by the global warming crowd still has time to revert their position. Better to admit having been wrong then kling to a ship that is sinking faster than the Titanic D.S

Kinder oder andere sagen Menschen kommen als unwissende zu Welt. Eindrücke und Wissen wird ihm im laufe der Jahre vermittelt, eingetrichtert oder es lernt dazu. Das erschein allen Logisch. Doch das verwerfliche an der ganzen Sache ist die, kommt die Peson jedoch ins Jugendalter und wird später Erwachsen, stoppt bei den meisten der Wissenshunger auf neue eindrücke. Nicht bei alle natürlich, doch bei vielen. Sie Interessieren sich nur noch für ihr Kümmerliches da sein und fristen so dahin. Sie meinen mit dem lesen eines Modeblattes oder Belletristik sei es getan.  Wie armselig sind doch solche Personen, die sich für nichts Globales mehr Interessieren. Das Hirn verkümmert, die Person stirbt an Unwissenheit. Somit fehlt die eigene Meinung und noch schlimmer, es entsteht keine neue Meinungsbildung mehr. Die meisten ausreden sind „ Oh ich habe keine Zeit, ich verstehe das sowieso nicht“. Solche Personen kann ich nicht verstehen. Ich verachte sie nicht, jedoch empfinde ich für solche Personen auch keine Wertschätzung. Zumindest sollten einem die Zutaten des Kuchens bekannt sein, auf dem sie sich ausruht. Oder man sollte den Baum kennen auf dem man sitzt.  Nie ist jemand ausgelehrt, doch die verschiedenen zusammenhänge der Welt sollten  von Interesse sein. Die Eigenständigkeit solcher Unwissender geht vor die Hunde. Solche Personen sind sehr schnell zu beeindrucken und zu Manipulieren. Das zeigte die Geschichte. Tatschen müssen immer hinerfragt werden, zumindest so lange bis der einzelnen davon überzeugt ist. Seine eigene Meinung hat nun ein Gesicht, sein Gesicht. Wobei von Zeit zu Zeit die eigene Meinung aufs Neue  überdacht werden muss. Ansonsten würden wir noch heute daran glauben, die Erde sei eine Scheibe.

Today, we’d like to stop to thank the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation for its long support of PeacePlayers International.

The Foundation, founded in 2000 by Daimler and Richemont, and supported by Mercedes-Benz, IWC Schaffhausen, and Vodafone, uses the positive influence of sport to tackle society’s most pressing challenges around the globe, supporting projects on every continent.  Laureus was PeacePlayers International’s first institutional funder, and PPI has been lucky enough to receive support from Laureus  in three separate locations: Israel and the West Bank, South Africa and Cyprus. Most recently, PPI has partnered with Laureus and the Arbinger Institute to enhance PPI’s peacebuilding curriculum and develop a toolkit to help other organizations use sport to bridge divides.

In the video above, Laureus Academy Members (and Olympic and Paralympic Champions) Edwin Moses and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson visit PPI’s programs in Israel and the West Bank. For more information about the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, visit www.laureus.com/foundation.

Suspected cannibals killed a young man, ate parts of him and then sold other bits to a kebab shop.
Cops also believe the 25-year-old victim’s body parts may have been used to fill pies too.

The trio of homeless guys were arrested in Russia – accused of murdering the man with knives and a hammer.
Prosecutors revealed: “After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up – part of it was eaten and part of it was sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies.”
Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm – which is 720 miles east of Moscow.

The three men all have criminal records, said Russian cops.
They have been arrested on suspicion of killing their victim – who has not been named – before chopping up his corpse to eat.

Detectives for the Prem region released the astonishing statement that the human remains could have been used for kebabs and pies on their www.susk.perm.ru website.
But police said it was not clear yet if any of the human meat had been sold to customers.