Things are still busy for me here on the coast and I haven’t much time to spend posting. That said there is one story from the business world I caught a while back from the New York Times via Yahoo I thought was good. Turns out the statistics our government uses to calculate levels of economic activity are unreliable. Then again we all knew that for example in the Summer of 2008 when gas prices were at $4 the Bushie economic team was telling us the economy was not in recession when most of the populace was clearly struggling. Now we know why:

A widening gap between data and reality is distorting the government’s picture of the country’s economic health, overstating growth and productivity in ways that could affect the political debate on issues like trade, wages and job creation.

The shortcomings of the data-gathering system came through loud and clear here Friday and Saturday at a first-of-its-kind gathering of economists from academia and government determined to come up with a more accurate statistical picture.

The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.

American workers lose their jobs when carburetors they once made are imported instead. The federal data notices the decline in employment but fails to revalue the carburetors or even pinpoint that they are foreign-made. Because it seems as if $100 carburetors are being produced but fewer workers are needed to do so, productivity falsely rises — in the national statistics.

The article deals with the arcane area of economic statistics but is well worth the read especially since some of those stats like consumer price data are commonly used in the business world such as in escalator clauses in employment contracts.

Next up we’d like to welcome the former employees and readers of Mr Liberty Mutual who was kind enough to link one of our posts. I’ve always thought most of those on the inside don’t care for the McKinsey and Company way of adjusting claims.

Next up is a tirade from a stock board I will not name. The poster throws the best cyber tirades in the medium IMHO and today, posting constantly since just before 1:00Pm our time is still on quiet a roll here at 5:30. Today’s installment included an interesting YouTube playlist following:

This one brings back some great (backseat) memories.

sop

shambollywood and albert cho are friends on facebk. see if you guys can connect some of the dots. we’ll fill in as time goes along.

On the 3rd of December 2009, Microsoft and with McKinsey & Company hold a presentation, in front of the Solvay Business School Alumni (Marketing & Sales Club), in the building of Microsoft.

130 people attended to this event, at Microsoft,  organised by Solvay Business School Alumni and McKinsey & Company.

During this presentation, we talked about the following subject:

Consumer technology gene: innovating in consumer products and services?

• Click HERE for the Mc Kinsey & Company presentation.

• Click HERE for the Microsoft presentation.

• Here-below, the speakers for this presentation :
  • Philippe Mauchard (SBSA 1991), Partner, Mc Kinsey & Company.
  • Michael Renous (SBSA 1992), McKinsey & Company.
  • Luc Van de Velde, Director Developer & Platform Group, Microsoft.
  • David Merzel (SBSA 1996), Country Manager Microsoft Entertainment & Devices.

• As the document is too heavy with the video’s we’ve shown, you will find the key video’s here-below :

For any information / feedback on this, feel free to contact me directly.

David Merzel
Country Manager – Microsoft BeLux
Entertainment & Devices Division

Mobile : +32 (0)477 45 14 90
Tel : +32 (2) 704 31 02
Mail : dmerzel@microsoft.com
Visit my blog | http://davidmerzel.wordpress.com

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I was struck by Joel Klein’s statement in introducing the latest McKinsey & Company report on the impact of achievement gaps.

Klein stated:

People have said to me ‘Chancellor, we will never fix education in America until we fix poverty in America.’ Now I care about fixing poverty, but those people have got it exactly backwards folks. We are never going to fix poverty in America until we fix education in America, and this report shows that it is entirely doable.

Klein has both his theory of causality and priorities correct. It is perfectly idiotic to wallow around in helplessness claiming that education cannot radically improve in the absence of the vanguard of the proletariat seizing the commanding heights of the American economy and creating the New Jerusalem.

It should be painfully obvious even to the most ardent collectivist that this is never going to happen even if it were true, which as it happens, it isn’t. Welfare programs won’t change the fact that we recruit too few of the right people, and too many of the wrong people into teaching. It won’t change the fact that we distribute the limited supply of high quality teachers as if we are out to get poor inner city children. For that matter, it won’t change the fact we still don’t measure teacher effectiveness, and that when we do, we don’t do much of anything with the information.

Parental choice can be seen very much through this same lense. If you draw the short stick and grow up in an inner city area with terrible schools, why should anyone stand in your way of accessing a different group of educators for the same or less funding?

It is absurd to sit in the wealthiest major nation on the planet and have to listen to people claim that $10,000 a year is not enough to teach children how to read. Anyone who actually cares about the plight of the poor would do well to listen to Klein, not Rothstein.

  Internet search giant Google has emerged as the most sought after company for business as well as engineering graduates, according to two surveys, which term the company as the world’s “most attractive employer” followed closely by rival, Microsoft.

According to the surveys compiled by global employer branding firm Universum, Google has been ranked at the top spot in the list of top 50 global businesses and engineering companies.

About Google, the surveys said, “Google’s number one position is no surprise. Due to its remarkable brand image, students worldwide see it as a company they would like to work for.”

The search giant is followed by Pricewaterhouse where most B-Schools students want to work, while engineering graduates preferred Microsoft as their second choice.

For business students, Microsoft is the third choice, financial services major Goldman Sachs Group is fourth, Ernst & Young (fifth), Procter & Gamble (sixth), J P Morgan (seventh), KPMG (eighth), McKinsey & Company (ninth) and Deloitte (10th).

“The employers that feature in this Top 50 all have one thing in common: they successfully appeal to current and future talent, and they are aware of how scarce talent is,” Universum said.

Soft drink major Coca-Cola has been placed at the 13th position, while Citigroup has cornered the 21st place for itself among the list for business students.

However, irrespective of ranks, the top 50 global employers for business and engineering students are very similar, showing strong employer brands transcend many skill and industry groups.

Conversely, Oracle and Philip Morris make it to the top 50 for business students, but not for engineering students. GlaxoSmithKline and Alcatel-Lucent appear in the engineering ranking, yet not in the business ranking.

Meanwhile, in the list of top 50 employers for engineering students Microsoft is followed by IBM at the third spot, BMW (fourth), Intel (fifth), General Electric (sixth), Sony (seventh), Siemens (eighth), Shell (ninth) and Procter & Gamble (10th).

However, despite it being one of the toughest years for car manufactures, BMW and Daimler appear in the global top 50 ranking in both lists.

The global rankings based on the survey of about 1,20,000 students highlights the world’s most powerful employer brands and those companies that are “the most successful in talent attraction and retention.”

Students from the US, Japan, China, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada and India’s top academic institutions took part in the survey.

Mckinsey & Company’s name has been in the news a lot lately and much of it has been on the negative side.  I wanted to shed some positive light on what the company does, especially via their Social Sector Office, which studies Global Public Health, Economic Development, Philanthropy, Education and Climate Change.

Here’s a link to a not so new report, but one that is a fascinating read.  It examines the economic impact of the achievement gap in America’s schools.

Read and Download Full Article Here

The U.S. DOJ announced that it has filed charges against several people involved with the Galleon Group hedge fund, including founder Raj Rajaratnam. The Galleon Group has about $3 billion under management, and is highly involved in high technology stocks.

The charges stem from insider knowledge involving trades of stocks, including Hilton Hotels, AMD (AMD), Clearwire (CLWR) and Google (GOOG), Akamai (AKAM). A number of other individuals were named in the complaint, including an executive from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel, and one from McKinsey & Company. 

All of these white-collar-thieves must be severely punished if found guilty of these high crimes against the public’s interest in seeing honesty in the stock market.  How much money is too much for these jokers?  These individuals are making tens of millions of dollars each year. Why do they have to steal?  Are they bored? 

Like you, I am absolutely fed up with white collar criminals in the stock market and banking industries.  Look for these fine folks to spend several decades living in a 6 x 9 space in a nice federal prison. 

 Here’s the indictment (via DealBook)

Hablamos mucho de como Social Media y Web 2.0 sirve mucho para contactar clientes, desarrollar marca, generar ventas, etc. Pero también hay usos y beneficios muy grandes dentro de la empresa y con tus socios y proveedores. Un estudio de McKinsey & Co. nos dá un poco de datos al respecto.

McKinsey y su estudio Web 2.0

Hace un par de meses McKinsey & Co. publicó su encuesta anual de usos Web 2.0 en la industria. Cerca de 1700 ejecutivos en diferentes industrias y niveles encuestados respecto al nivel y tipo de uso de herramientas Web 2.0 en sus compañías.

Daré un pequeño resumen de ciertos resultados. Pero les recomiendo visitar el artículo y en su debido caso suscribirse a McKinsey Quarterly, una gran fuente de información.

Siempre estamos hablando de cómo Social Media y Web 2.0 puede ayudarte en cosas externas como relaciones con el cliente, customer service (CRM), ventas y desarrollo de productos en conjunto con tu cliente. Por supuesto el estudio demuestra los beneficios en este sector pero también nos presenta el cómo están utilizando las empresas estas herramientas en otros 2 niveles: interno y para relación con socios y proveedores.

El estudio, que se encuentra en su 3er año de publicación,  llega a conclusiones muy interesantes: Muestra que en total 69% de las respuestas mencionan tener beneficios medibles en algún área al usar estas herramientas. Además, los beneficios son proporcionales al grado de uso, entre más aspectos se utilicen mayores son las recompensas.

Concentrándonos en los beneficios que puede tener tu empresa internamente los que reportaron las más grandes mejoras fueronobtuvieron fueron: Mejores canales para compartir ideas, acceso más fácil, rápido y directo a expertos (tanto internos como externos) y en tercer lugar, menores costos de viajes, comunicaciones y operaciones. En la imagen siguiente podemos observar el total de beneficios para las 3 áreas diferentes:

Por supuesto estos beneficios derivan de la capacidad del Web 2.0 para multiplicar posibilidades de colaboración y diseminar más fácilmente el conocimiento. Esto se logra a través de herramientas como RSS, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Messengers, etc. Pero este año la herramienta que mostró un crecimiento más grande en cuanto al año pasado fue — El Video. Los avances que se han tenido en el ámbito de grabación y propagación de videos han ayudado mucho a las empresas para mejorar esta comunicación interna y diseminar más fácilmente el conocimiento que tienen todos los empleados dentro de ella y que forma una gran conciencia y una de las ventajas competitivas más poderosas de una empresa. Un detalle a notar es que en todas las herramientas que reportó la encuesta hay una cantidad muy parecida entre ejecutivos que reportan tener un beneficio con el uso de estar herramientas contra los que reportan aún no ver un beneficio claro de las mismas.

Lo anterior nos dice que no solo se trata de la herramienta, no se trata de la cantidad de Web 2.0 que haya en tu empresa sino también del modo en que lo implementes, las políticas, la cultura y las características intrínsecas de tu compañía.

El reporte muestra en resumen que, de manera interesante, son las compañías grandes las que suelen tener los beneficios; las compañías pequeñas no logran obtener dichas ventajas de las herramientas. Además el ámbito tecnológico y de servicios logra llevarse el éxito con mayor frecuencia que otras industrias.

Finalmente, y un punto clave en este tema es respecto a la adopción y forma de integrar estas herramientas en tu empresa. El estudio revela que es necesario tener bien integradas las herramientas en el flujo de trabajo del empleado y sus actividades diarias, además de tener un alto uso de ellas y de preferencia varias al mismo tiempo. ¿Cómo lograr esto? se sugiere usar recompensas como estatus y reconocimiento dentro de las mismas herramientas en vez de recompensas financieras o de desempeño — reputación antes que nada –; y para acabar, tratar de tener un modelo de liderazgo y modelo de parte de los altos mandos. Sin duda esta es una de las partes más difíciles de tener sobretodo aquí en México y Latinoamérica dónde aún hoy los altos ejecutivos temen mucho a estas herramientas y son pocos los nativos, por lo tanto encontrar a un gerente, director o VP que utilice completamente un Wiki, un blog o un twitter es algo muy difícil.

Les recomiendo ver el artículo entero o revisar la herramienta interactiva del mismo tema. Los resultados arrojados en esta tercera encuesta son muy útiles.

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It isn’t like the news was unexpected. Condé Nast, Gourmet’s parent company, hired McKinsey & Company to perform a productivity study of the publishing giant’s operations three months ago.  With things so grim in the publishing industry speculation was high that the hammer would fall on some of the second tier periodicals like Cookie and Modern Bride and more than likely either Gourmet or the other foodie magazine, Bon Appétit.  But what is shocking is the big money was on BA being the odd magazine out as Gourmet was the oldest food magazine in the nation having been published since January 1941.

Understandably, the news was still not well received by Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl as is evidenced from her Tweet from today, “Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support. It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I’m packing. We’re all stunned, sad.”  No word as to the future of her new PBS series Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth, but it is safe to say that with her resumé she’ll find another gig.

Condé Nast has suggested the popular recipe site Epicurious.com (digital alter ego of Gourmet) is safe.  Twitter has been all a buzz about the closing of the popular magazine especially among those in the food writing business like Tampa Tribune food writer Jeff Houck who tweeted, “True/Slant: ‘This is Condé Nast looking @ Gourmet & saying, this business doesn’t work, but we don’t know how to fix it, so we’ll close it.”

Renowned food writer Michael Ruhlman also weighed in via Twitter saying, “how incredibly sad, gourmet to cease publication” and adding, “surely the superb site, gourmet.com, will not shut down.”

On the subject of the Gourmet Institute, Condé Nast has released the following:

As you may have heard, Condé Nast announced the closing of Gourmet magazine. Unfortunately, this means that Condé Nast is no longer able to produce the Gourmet Institute, and thus all session(s) of the Gourmet Institute have been cancelled.

If you have already bought tickets to Gourmet Institute sessions, we will refund to your credit card all amounts paid to Condé Nast for your tickets.

We are sorry for this inconvenience. Please be assured that these steps were not taken lightly.

If you have any questions regarding your tickets, please call 1.866.811.4111.

Found at http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=870

McKinsey, the venerable management consulting company, has produced their second piece of ‘Web 2.0 in business‘ research this year. This is arguably a sign of the rapid maturation of the 2.0 technology and associated (and I’d argue more important) change management sector: the pricey consulting company presumably smells money given their focus for their prospects and customers with this free (with login) information.

It’s a solid and useful report, albeit a little definitively written given that it is essentially the results of an online survey they ran in June of this year which sixteen hundred and ninety five people responded to – not really a big effort given McKinsey’s ubiquity worldwide…

More on the report in a moment, but first my thoughts on the ‘Business and Web 2.0′ consulting landscape. In the last couple of weeks two of the smartest Forrester analysts (Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang) left that company to join former Forrester analyst Charlene Li at the Altimeter Group, and the still-in-stealth-mode Dachis Group purchased UK and Australia based Headshift.

McKinsey have a long history in the management consulting world (’the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance, primarily through the analysis of existing business problems and development of plans for improvement‘ - wikipedia). Most of Enron’s top management were McKinsey alumni and some blame the industry for aspects of the current economic crisis. This is one of the challenges of being a major player – you leave a trail through history.

Given the heft of large players like McKinsey, and to be fair also their historical global competitors, it is relatively easy for them to consume the innovation in the Enterprise 2.0/’Web 2.0 in Business’ space and roll it up into their offerings.

There’s a sea change in the way capitalism is emerging from the financial conflagration which is asking serious questions about the way things we got into the mess in the first place.

A new generation of informed and agile consulting is coalescing around the new technologies; these new companies aspire to break the old order and lead the way on how to extract value from rapid cultural and technological change for their clients.

Like Microsoft Sharepoint (’the Chrysler Sebring of software’ as someone tweeted today), there’s nothing disastrously (usually) wrong with the old order: plenty of people will pay handsomely for guidance from trusted software vendors and consultants going forward.

The bigger question – and the challenge for the new generation consultant community of which I am a part – is differentiating from these more conservative players to demonstrate greater business value. The DNA of older firms like McKinsey have ‘old school’ written large throughout, but the new game of identifying and delivering business value in specific ‘Web 2.0 in business’ context is rapidly changing what businesses seeking competitive advantage are looking for.

Having said this, the McKinsey ‘Web 2.0 in business’ report, which to be fair is their third yearly offering (In 2008, the survey received 1,988 responses; in 2007 it received 2,847 responses) is a solid, middle of the road effort, not unlike the Chrysler Sebring. In employee appraisal terms it ‘meets expectations’…

Hitting the McKinsey report highlights, their findings

…demonstrate that success follows a “power curve distribution”—in other words, a small group of users accounts for the largest portion of the gains. According to our research, the 20 percent of users reporting the greatest satisfaction received 80 percent of the benefits. Drilling a bit deeper, we found that this 20 percent included 68 percent of the companies reporting the highest adoption rates for a range of Web 2.0 tools, 58 percent of the companies where use by employees was most widespread, and 82 percent of the respondents who claimed the highest levels of satisfaction from Web 2.0 use at their companies.

…While the evidence suggests that focused management improves Web 2.0 performance, there’s still a way to go before users become as satisfied with these technologies as they are with others. The top 20 percent of companies reached a performance score of only 35 percent (the score increased to 44 percent in the 2009 survey). When the same score methodology is applied to technologies that corporations had previously adopted, Web 2.0’s score is below the 57 percent for traditional corporate IT services, such as e-mail, and the 80 percent for mobile-communications services.

‘Increasing speed of access to knowledge’ for internal purposes, and also when working with external partners/suppliers tops the ‘measurable gains’ charts, while for customer related purposes (the social CRM space) increasing effectiveness of marketing leads in the third category.

Video sharing, then blogs lead the measurable benefit from using a given web 2.0 technology in the same categories. Rather than regurgitate the report in this truncated format I suggest digesting the six pages of tables and findings. They are broad but you may find them to be of value to your specific context in some cases…

Read more at http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=870

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I sure hope this never happens.  As an avid reader of various periodicals such as Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, Mens Health, Esquire, Newsweek and others, I dread the day when these crisp volumes are no longer available by subscription or to be curled up with in the corner of a bookstore.  An article was recently published in the New York Observer entitled, “The Gilded Age of Condé Nast is Over” in which John Koblin writes of the death of the magazine giant, one budget cut at a time.

Apparently, consultants from McKinsey & Company have been meeting with executives at the company and are just weeks away from handing down final recommendations for further cost-cutting.  At first glance, the reactions of employees to their Fiji, Orangina, and shrimp being taken away might seem trivial; however, if executives can no longer expense lunches and entertain clients, how far are they from cutting top writers and before the content really suffers?

Read the full New York Observer article here.

Last week I tweeted regarding the McKinsey & Company report regarding unlocking energy efficiency in the U.S.   Now you can download the full report.

In summary, the report finds that investing $125 billion in efficiency measures over the next decade  would reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. commercial sector to pre-2008 levels.

In addition, McKinsey’s website states that “…five observations will be relevant to a national debate about how best to pursue energy efficiency opportunities of the magnitude identified and within the timeframe considered in this report. Specifically, an overarching strategy would need to:

• Recognize energy efficiency as an important energy resource that can help meet future energy needs while the nation concurrently develops new no- and low-carbon energy sources
• Formulate and launch at both national and regional levels an integrated portfolio of proven, piloted, and emerging approaches to unlock the full potential of energy efficiency
• Identify methods to provide the significant upfront funding required by any plan to capture energy efficiency
• Forge greater alignment between utilities, regulators, government agencies, manufacturers, and energy consumers
• Foster innovation in the development and deployment of next-generation energy efficiency technologies to ensure ongoing productivity gains.”

To download the the Executive Summary or the full report, click here.

Hemos hablado mas de una vez de neuromarketing en este blog. Lo hicimos en Serpentinas y confeti (Noviembre 27, 2008) en el que hablamos sucintamente del libro de Martin Lindstrom “Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy” estructurado en un estudio de neuromarketing que tomó 3 años y costó 7 millones de dólares y fue llevado a cabo por un equipo de investigadores, utilizando la neurotecnología más avanzada: la digitalización por resonancia magnetica funcional  functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) y la electroencefalografía (EEG) en dos mil personas de cinco países, con el objetivo de evaluar la eficacia de las advertencias sanitarias, product placement y mensajes subliminales.

También analizamos otros documentos varias veces, cuando no existía este blog sino unos mails enviados a un grupo de “mercaderes”. He hecho un recuento porque sé que hay varios lectores interesados en el tema y algunos viejos amigos que quieren revisar el tema. Lo pongo al final de este post.

El doctor Tjaco Walvis(1) se hizo conocido por un trabajo sobre los focus groups que publicó en 2003 “Avoiding advertising research disaster: Advertising and the uncertainty principle”, del que se puede encontrar un abstract en la red, que advertía que la mayor parte de la investigación cualitativa se hace a través de focus groups y entrevistas en profundidad cara a cara. Y proponía algunas técnicas para asegurarse que la metodología es aplicada correctamente. Esto, para evitar, principalmente, desechar buena publicidad y validar mala publicidad(2).

El mismo autor ha publicado, a fines del año pasado, otro estudio llevado a cabo durante 18 meses a través del cual ha descubierto que el cerebro trabaja como Google: utiliza una serie de algoritmos, en un proceso inconsciente, para escoger la marca que mejor encaja con las necesidades emocionales y funcionales del individuo, en ese momento en particular. Dice el autor que ese proceso despertó su interés en la interacción entre el branding, la neurociencia y lo que llama la neuroeconomía.

También indica que las reglas de selección son consistentes y por lo tanto le permiten a los responsables de marketing establecer sus estrategias de marca de tal forma que los procesos inconscientes dentro del cerebro decidan lo que compramos de manera ayudada. Sin embargo, (supongo que porque el cerebro es muy perspicaz), eso mismo podría ayudar a los consumidores a entender como es que los responsables de la estrategia, están tratando de persuadirlos.

Lo más importante de todo lo que halló Walvis es que el algoritmo del cerebro, para escoger una marca, se basa en tres elementos:

(1)     el cerebro escoge la marca que ha aprendido que es la mas apta para satisfacer sus metas biológicas y culturales. Escogemos inconscientemente la marca que es excepcionalmente gratificante basándonos en sus asociaciones con nuestras metas y los centros de recompensa del cerebro (es decir el sistema de neurotransmisores de la dopamina)

(2)     el cerebro selecciona la marca que ha mostrado que es capaz de satisfacer esas metas, con mayor frecuencia, en el pasado. Las marcas con coherencia que repiten su promesa tienen, por lo tanto, mejores posibilidades de ser escogidas: Volvo, Coca Cola y Disney son ejemplos de marcas coherentes.

(3)     el cerebro escoge la marca con la que más intensamente ha interactuado en el pasado. Las sucesivas participaciones de la marca crea numerosas nuevas conexiones en nuestro cerebro, facilitando el proceso de recuperación de la misma. Nike Plus es un ejemplo de este concepto de sólida participación (los ejemplos los toma el autor del estudio)

Explica finalmente el Dr. Walvis que la metodología con la que ha llevado a cabo su estudio es distinta a la que se muestra en la mayor parte de los libros y estudios de neuromarketing y es, además, el primero en probar y aplicar sistemáticamente el nivel más fundamental de la neurociencia al branding. Examina los procesos a nivel de la célula en el cerebro del cliente cuando está decidiendo que marca prefiere. Ese camino científico es llamado “la ruta reduccionista” de la investigación en la neurociencia, lleva a insights completamente diferentes y demuestra lo que el estudio representa para la gente de marketing. Mientras que la otra metodología, llamada “la ruta holística”, utiliza técnicas de escaneo del cerebro como el fMRI —resonancia magnetica funcional  (del inglés functional magnetic resonance imaging)— para investigar los temas de marketing. Por ejemplo el libro de Martin Lindström (del que hablo en el primer párrafo de este post) es el mejor ejemplo de esto.

El estudio “Three laws of branding: Neuroscientific foundations of effective brand building” está disponible en la red: el abstract, el estudio completo y el estudio en PDF.

El libro “Branding with Brains: The Science of Getting Customers to Choose Your Company” que publicará Financial Times Prentice Hall el 29 de octubre, aún está en proceso de edición pero se puede solicitar una comunicación a Amazon.com en esta dirección para que avisen cuando esté disponible.

Para los que quieran recordar lo que discutimos por mail en meses y años anteriores, sigue el recuento de esos correo.

————————-

Recuento

Hace casi dos años el 8/10/07 en un mail titulado “Nuevos métodos de investigación en proceso de desarrollo” dijimos: Formas novedosas de medir la reacción de los televidentes a los programas, a los comerciales. Métodos neurológicos y biométricos para detectar a través de sensores una respuesta galvánica de la piel, midiendo además respiración, ritmo cardiaco, actividad física y la dilatación de la pupila y a través de ropa especial y comentábamos un artículo de Multichannels News  Cablers Brainstorm Innovative Research Tactics de Julio 23 de ese año y otro de ese mismo día (8/10/07) This Is Your Brain on Advertising aparecido en Business Week.

Una persona sometida a un test conectado a una máquina de EEG ( Fuente Ad Age)

En “La electroencefalografía cada vez más cerca de medir comerciales en varios parámetros” del 11/02/08 hablamos de dos artículos: Nielsen, NeuroFocus Allign To Develop High Tech Ad Monitoring del 7 del mismo mes, sobre la inversión estratégica realizada por Nielsen en la empresa especializada en la aplicación de la investigación de las ondas cerebrales en la publicidad, la programación y la mensajería Neurofocus de Berkeley, California. Pero sobre todo de The Super Bowl Spots That Got Inside Consumers Heads de Ad Age con fotos interesantísimas de un sujeto siendo sometido a un test mientras está conectado a un aparato de electroencefalografía (ver foto más arriba). Sands Research, una empresa de investigación hizo la prueba durante el Super Bowl XLII ( 2008) con veinte individuos a los que se les colocó un casco con electrodos conectados de forma inalámbrica al electroencefalógrafo. La prueba no puede aún calibrar la intención de compra pero sí una medida del vínculo que se crea con algunos comerciales y la relaciona con un nivel de recordación.

Dos scans muestran distinta actividad (fuente Ad Age)

El scan superior muestra la actividad durante la proyección de un comercial de Bud Light del Super Bowl XLII (2008). La segunda con menos sinapsis (lugar de encuentro de dos neuronas) cuando el mismo sujeto fue sometido a un aviso de la Oficina Nacional de Control de Drogas de los EE UU. Apareció en el artículo The Super Bowl Spots That Got Inside Consumers Heads de Ad Age.

Y en Neurociencia, biométrica, sensores a una respuesta galvánica de la piel analizamos un artículo del NYT del 31 de marzo del 2008: Is the Ad a Success? The Brain Waves Tell All en el que hablábamos a los parámetros de medición del título agregábamos movimiento de ojos, pulsaciones y otros y nos sorprendíamos de que  Frank Stagliano, vicepresidente ejecutivo del Nielsen Entertainment Television Group en NuevaYork dijese “En muchas formas estamos testeando la publicidad de la manera en que lo hacíamos hace 22 años en Procter & Gamble”. Y hablamos sobre EmSense Corporation el principal competidor de Neurofocus mencionada en un interesante artículo del Wall Street Journal del 14 de diciembre del 2007  Reading the Mind Of the Body Politic, con un subtítulo sugerente “El subconsciente es la nueva frontera en la política. Pero ¿es buena para la democracia?” que seguía a uno de Los Angeles Times del 10 de Febrero 2008 sobre el mismo tema, la política, con otro título provocativo: “Peeking inside voters’ minds” también sobre el subconsciente del elector y la manera de medir lo que lo motiva, lo que toca su sensibilidad.

Neurociencia (y neuromarketing) en busca de la conciencia

Nuevo fascinante reportaje de la TV pública (o de la ciencia y el conocimiento) alemana sobre cómo neurocientíficos siguen la huella caliente de la conciencia humana e intentan leer los pensamientos.

Mas centrado en el neuromarketing no-político está: “Mind Over Matter – New tools put brands in touch with feelings” del 18 de febrero del año pasado en Newsweek,  revelando que las dos empresas antes mencionadas y otras dos OTX Research e Innerscope habían desarrollado instrumentos de medición portátiles, menos intrusivos y más baratos para verificar tanto las ondas cerebrales como lo información biológica.

Para terminar con el recuento histórico de lo tratado con este grupo están las conferencias del Dr. Kyle Murray, Director de la Facultad de Comercio de la Universidad de Alberta, en Caligary (Canadá) sobre el tema del neuromarketing To Buy Or Not To Buy y A Peek Inside Your Mind? y una serie de trabajos del mismo profesional cuya relación sería muy extensiva para ponerla en este recuento, pero que, desde luego, puedo enviar a solicitud.

———————–

(1) es socio de They, que debe ser una consultora en gerencia de marca (pero no lo he podido saber porque su presentación en la web, además de bastante tenebrosa dice poco sobre las actividades) con base en Ámsterdam y trabajó anteriormente en BBDO. Es master en economía y filosofía y da asesoría en creatividad para las marcas y temas estratégicos de comunicación incluyendo posicionamiento de la marca, extensiones, gerencia de portafolio y branding territorial (por ejemplo para países). Entre sus clientes está el Aeropuerto Schiphol de Ámsterdam, DaimlerChrysler, Dorito’s, Mars, McKinsey & Company, Robeco, Sanoma Publishers, Getronics, NPO (Dutch Public Broadcasting), Aegon, Insinger de Beaufort, UPC y Bacardi entre otros.

(2)     El estudio: “Avoiding advertising research disaster: Advertising and the uncertainty principle”, publicado en el Journal of Brand Management, Vol. 10, No. 6, pp. 403-409, propone tres caminos para asegurar que lo básico se hace bien y da algunas pautas para que los que compran investigación cualitativa puedan determinar si los investigadores que contratan las marcas, las aplican o no. Partiendo de una afirmación de Werner Heismberg llamada “el principio de la incertidumbre” de la física cuántica “lo que observamos no es natural por sí mismo, sino lo natural expuesto según nuestro método de interrogar”, por lo que el diseño de un focus group (la selección de los participantes, las preguntas formuladas, la forma como han sido construidas, el escenario, la persona que hace las preguntas o lleva la orientación, etc.) afecta las respuestas obtenidas de los encuestados. Por otro lado los investigadores no son observadores aislados sino participantes, siempre.

Si desea suscribirse gratuitamente a Mercaderes Asociados pulse el botón

From time to time, I will let you know about an item of possible interest.

Here is the first paragraph of an article featured online by McKinsey & Company, Leadership lessons for hard times:

“During the global recession, much attention has been devoted to mistakes that sparked the financial and economic crisis, in hopes of not repeating them. Less has been given to what’s been done well amid the turmoil—to learn, for example, how best to lead a company through these tough times. To contribute to that understanding, we interviewed the leaders of 14 major companies (see sidebar, “Who’s who”), all seasoned CEOs or chairmen, asking them to reflect on what they felt they have learned so far. We were keen not to limit their comments to the current recession and therefore also asked them to consider previous challenges they had faced in a turnaround or a crisis. The companies they lead are in different industries, face different challenges, and have performed quite differently. We are attempting neither to judge their performance nor to draw up a set of rules on how to lead through tough times. Instead, what emerges from the interviews is agreement on some broad principles that can help guide behavior in the executive suite and the boardroom, as well as interactions with employees, customers, and investors.”

Here’s a link to the article (which you can download as a pdf) as well as to a wealth of other resources:

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Talent/The_Six_Leadership_Musts_for_CEOs_in_Tough_Times_2413

Los tiempos han cambiado, los canales de información han cambiado y con ello también la manera en que un cliente camina por el proceso de tomas de decisiones de sus compras. Las áreas de mercadotecnia y ventas de las empresas tienen que estar actualizadas al respecto o arriesgarse a perder mucho dinero en mensajes y esfuerzos mal canalizados.

Este artículo es una traducción libre de un artículo presentado por McKinsey Quarterly elaborado por David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susie Mulder y Ole Jorgen de diferentes oficinas de la firma. en ningún momento me atribuyo la creación de ninguna de estas ideas y lo hago solo con el fin de compartir un modelo a mi parecer de suma importancia.  Se publica con expreso consentimiento de McKinsey Quarterly.

Link al artículo: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Strategy/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373

Parece ya hace tanto tiempo que el proceso de decisión de un cliente estaba definido por un “embudo” que empezaba con la idea de que el cliente empezaba con la etapa de “awareness” (descubrimiento, conocimiento) acerca de un producto y en donde la mayor cantidad de marcas se veían involucradas en la mente del cliente mientras comenzaba a considerar la compra. De ahí se pasa a “familiarity” y el cliente investiga un poco más del producto y reduce la cantidad de opciones que tiene al respecto, pasando después a “consideration” con ya una cantidad mínima de marcas escogidas mientras pondera su compra la cual realiza finalmente en la etapa de “purchase” y termina en una etapa de “loyalty” en donde la marca debe canalizar sus esfuerzos en mantener la lealtad del cliente y dejar ir a los que no son leales.

Toma de Decisión Lineal (Embudo)

Pues bien, recientes estudios de la firma de consultoría McKinsey & Co. han concluido en que este modelo es ya obsoleto dada la vasta cantidad de información  y formas de conseguirla y la proactividad del cliente para conocer acerca de los productos que le interesan. Mantener los esfuerzos y los recursos de una compañía en las etapas descritas anteriormente puede ser totalmente un desperdicio.

“Marketers have long been aware of profound changes in the way consumers research and buy products. Yet a failure to change the focus of marketing to match that evolution has undermined the core goal of reaching customers at the moments that most influence their purchases. The shift in consumer decision making means that marketers need to adjust their spending and to view the change not as a loss of power over consumers but as an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time, giving them the information and support they need to make the right decisions”

De lo lineal a lo circular

McKinsey propone a través de su estudio un nuevo modelo de toma de decisiones del cliente, basado en estudios con alrededor de 20,000 clientes en 3 continentes y en 5 diferentes industrias. Este modelo aplica a todos los mercado geográficos que tengan diferentes tipos de media, acceso a internet y amplia cantidad de marcas lo cual ya aplica incluso en grandes ciudades de mercados emergentes.

Este nuevo modelo considera la mayor complejidad de los clientes y su proceso de decisión y encuentra algunos puntos básicos a considerar:

1. Debido a la proliferación de productos y media se requiere de nuevas maneras para hacer que el producto entre en la etapa inicial de consideración del cliente.
2. Se requieren formas sistemáticas de manejar el word to mouth y satisfacer las demandas del cliente debido a la nueva cultura de conversación entre empresa y cliente opuesta al tradicional mensaje de una sola vía que se tenía antes ( empresa -> cliente)
3. La lealtad del cliente se divide en 2 tipos y ya no es solo una lealtad absoluta. esto manda a cambiar los programas de lealtad y la forma de manejar la experiencia de compra del cliente.

Además resalta la importancia no solo de alinear todos los elementos de marketing con el camino que toman los clientes durante sus procesos de decisión sino también de integrar estos elementos a través de toda la organización. De tal forma que se puedan dirigir los gastos y mensajes a los momentos de mayor influencia con el cliente y tener mayor oportunidad de contactar al cliente con el mensaje correcto en el momento y lugar correcto.

Todos los días estamos en contacto con mensajes y publicidad de marcas, productos y servicios sin discriminar a través de diferentes puntos de contacto y es una exposición que parece desperdiciada pero no lo es realmente, porque en el momento que algo activa el impulso de compra de la persona toda esa exposición se vuelve crucial en formar el set de opciones inicial a considerar del cliente. Este set es un pequeño número de marcas que el cliente considerará inicialmente como su punto de partida de la compra.

Mientras que el modelo del “embudo” señala que el cliente avanza linealmente en su decisión deshaciéndose de opciones conforme avanza en el modelo y finalmente te entrando en un periodo de prueba después de la compra en donde confirma su lealtad, sin embargo, el estudio destaca que este ya no es el caso en muchas industrias y que realmente se llega ya a un modelo circular con cuatro etapas principales en donde se lleva a cabo la lucha por ganar al cliente por parte de los esfuerzos de marketing:

• Consideración Inicial: Donde como ya dijimos se activa el deseo de compra y se recuerdan las marcas iniciales por la exposición a ellas. Esta fase es importante pues se tiene 3 veces más probabilidad de que compren tu marca si se encuentre en este set inicial.
• Evaluación Activa: Un proceso de investigación de compras potenciales en donde incluso las opciones pueden aumentar (dando un respiro a tu marca si no estuvo en el set inicial) y no disminuir al investigar más acerca del producto y las ofertas en el mercado. Aquí tu marca puede “interrumpir” el proceso de compra al entrar en las opciones e incluso forzar la salida de rivales.
• Cierre: Cuando el cliente va a comprar el producto.
• Postcompra: El cliente experimenta el producto.

Modelo circular

Mientras que el modelo de embudo aún ayuda mucho para identificar y comparar fuerzas de marca en diferentes etapas o destacar cuellos de botella que frenan la adopción de tu marca.

Sin embargo los cambios que se han dado en la forma en que el cliente considera  las marcas, reduciendo su número incial  debido al incremento de mensajes y de media y opciones esto no es el fin del mundo pues es donde entra lo contrario al modelo del embudo y en la siguiente etapa de evaluación activa las marcas consideradas vuelven a aumentar al evaluar el cliente sus opciones, dando una excelente oportunidad. También cambió el poder del cliente, siendo ya una conversación y no un monólogo la relación que la compañía tiene con ellos. Los anuncios tradicionales o el marketing directo que se “empujaba” en cada etapa del embudo para atraer la decisión del cliente es imprecisa y no toca al cliente adecuado en el momento adecuado. Hoy en día son los clientes los que “jalan” la información útil para ellos haciendo del marketing guiado por el consumidor (reviews, boca a boca, interacción en la tienda, experiencias pasadas)  algo de vital importancia. Esto significa que aunque el marketing tradicional sigue siendo importante las compañías deben de ir más allá para poder influenciar en los puntos de contacto guiados por el cliente.

Lealtades varias

Después de la compra el trabajo del área de mercadotecnia apenas comienza. Cómo te afecta a ti el servicio de tu coche y como te atienden cuando vas a la agencia? esos factores crean lealtad en la marca y hacen que la marca esté en tu set inicial al considerar una nueva compra en ese sector cierto?

“When consumers reach a decision at the moment of purchase, the marketer’s work has just begun: the postpurchase experience shapes their opinion for every subsequent decision in the category, so the journey is an ongoing cycle. More than 60 percent of consumers of facial skin care products, for example, go online to conduct further research after the purchase—a touch point unimaginable when the funnel was conceived.”

Pero bien sabemos que eso no es nuevo pero sí ha cambiado, identificándose ahora 2 tipos de lealtades: Activa, la común, el cliente es leal y te recomienda. pero también tenemos la Pasiva, en donde el consumidor puede ser flojo o estar confundido por tantas opciones, por lo que se dice leal a la marca pero en realidad sigue abierto a otros mensajes.  Volvemos al ejemplo de los coches donde no es tan fácil hacernos quedar con una marca aunque seamos muy leales no? en cualquier momento otra marca puede sacarnos de ese ciclo de lealtad al darnos razones para irnos. Asi hoy en día hay que esforzarse en convertir a todos tus clientes en leales activos con un esfuerzo serio no solo en internet o servicio al cliente sino en nuevos puntos de contacto y esfuerzos novedosos para ello. al mismo tiempo estar conscientes de que  la lealtad pasiva existe y da un área de oportunidad para la conversión.

Que causa todo esto? Simplemente que se debe hacer un cambio en el enfoque de estrategias y gastos hacia los puntos de contacto de mayor influencia. La complejidad del proceso de toma de decisiones del cliente forzará a las empresas a buscar nuevas formas de medir las actitudes del cliente, el desempeño de una marca y la efectividad del gasto de mercadotecnia a través de todo el proceso para evitar el gasto de dinero y quedar fuera y desactualizados en la mirada del cliente.

Algunas actividades sugeridas en el reporte para poder adaptarse a este nuevo modelo de pensamiendo del cliente:

• Dar prioridad a objetivos y gastos en los puntos de contacto donde la compañía sea más débil
• Mejorar los mensajes y enfocarlos a las etapas del proceso en donde se sea más débil
• Invertir en mercadotecnia guiada por el cliente (siendo el internet lo más obvio y poderoso pero no lo único)
• Ganar la batalla “dentro de la tienda”. Uno de los cambios menos conocidos de esta nueva era es que el cliente pospone su decisión final hasta estar en la tienda. Ahí se encuentran las oportunidades de empaque, puntos de contacto, mensajes en los anaqueles que a veces no son aprovechados al máximo.
• Finalmente, integrar todas las actividades relacionadas con el cliente dentro de la empresa, llegar a establecer una “voz del cliente” dentro de la compañía para canalizar y realinear a la compañía dentro de este nuevo proceso de compra de los clientes.

“Marketers have long been aware of profound changes in the way consumers research and buy products. Yet a failure to change the focus of marketing to match that evolution has undermined the core goal of reaching customers at the moments that most influence their purchases. The shift in consumer decision making means that marketers need to adjust their spending and to view the change not as a loss of power over consumers but as an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time, giving them the information and support they need to make the right decisions.”

El artículo presenta muchos datos y anécdotas interesantes y nos hace abrir un poco más los ojos a los temas de Social Media y CRM entendidos más allá de simples herramientas de análisis o técnicas de marketing. Es hora de hacer que la empresa sea un amigo más del cliente, con quien platique converse y aprenda a usar sus productos. una compañía que esté con el en cada paso de su proceso de decisión guiándolo a lo que mejor le convenga a él y a la compañía. Tratar de engañarlo o empujarle información ya no funciona y puede incluso provocar crisis severas de relaciones.

Que tal? sé que está largo pero es interesante el artículo y merecía una poca de traducción. Si pueden vean el artículo original en la liga que está al principio. Les recomiendo seguir en Twitter @McKQuarterly para muchos más de estos interesantes artículos en muchas áreas de negocios y si no pues dejen sus comentarios aqui!

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Here are four quite different perspectives:

1. In the February 1924 issue of American magazine, an anonymous business leader wrote an essay, “Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men,” in which he explains, “Business and life are built on successful mediocrity and victory comes to companies, not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks.”

2. Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, Beth Axelrod coined the term in 1997 while working at McKinsey & Company and wrote a book bearing that title, The War for Talent (2001). Their core assertion (based on a McKinsey study of 77 companies and surveys or interviews of almost 6,000 managers) is that the most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent: smart, sophisticated businesspeople who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile. They provide case studies of 20 exemplary companies, one of which is Enron.

3. In an essay published by The New Yorker (July 22, 2002), “The Talent Myth,” Malcolm Gladwell asks, “What if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if mart people are overrated?” Gladwell challenges an assumption shared by McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron “that an organization’s intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees…[However, companies] don‘t just create; they execute and compete and coordinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.” Many of Gladwell’s ideas are based on research conducted by Anders Ericsson and his associates at Florida State University and are developed in greater depth in Outliers.

4. Finally, in Mavericks at Work, Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre add their own thoughts about all this: “We think that’s a false assumption – a phony war on the war for talent [either talent or system but not both]. The maverick companies [we examine] invest in stars and systems. They are determined to secure more than their fair share of the great people in their business. But they understand that what it means to be great is as much about values as virtuosity, as much about what makes people tick as how much they know. Call it the character of competition – the relationship between a company’s identity in the marketplace and the sense of identity that talented people bring to the workplace. Nit every great performer is a great fit with the ideas that animate an organization. But organizations that are content to fill their ranks with unremarkable performers aren’t likely to achieve remarkable performance.”

What do you think?

In Q&A #217, I share Taylor and LaBarre’s response to the question, “why do the most original minds in business win?”

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

As part of our June 25^th segment “Emerging Giants; The New Titans of the SaaS World,” we will be featuring senior executives from five of these future “Titans,” highlighting why their organizations are unique, capable and well positioned to reverse the trend of failed initiatives associated with the traditional licensing model vendors.

Joining me on June 25^th to discuss their take on this changing of the guard are Anurag Dixit, Vice President, Marketing (Zycus), Steve Wargalla, Vice President, Foundation & Managing Director (QStrat), Rob Bernshteyn, Chief Executive Officer (Coupa), Leonora Valvo, Chief Executive Officer (etouches) and Rich Becks, Senior Vice President (E2open).

Today we feature Rob Bernshteyn from (Coupa)

Rob brings 15 years of experience in enterprise software to his position as CEO at Coupa.  Prior to joining Coupa, Rob spent four years with SuccessFactors, the global leader in Performance and Talent Management delivered via the software-as-a-service model.  As a member of the SuccessFactors executive management team he served as their global vice president of product marketing and management.

Rob also directed product management at Siebel Systems, where he contributed to building their Employee Relationship Management suite of applications into Siebel’s fastest-growing product two years after launch.  Before that, Rob was an associate at McKinsey & Company and a global project manager at Accenture where he managed numerous successful global SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementations.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Systems from the State University of New York at Albany and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Rob Bernshteyn Coupa

Here is the link to the June 23rd, 2009  Procurement Insights profile article on Coupa titled “Redefining Procurement: How Coupa has bridged the Gap Between what is known and what is possible.”

NOTE: This is the first in our “Titans” series of broadcasts.

Artist Samuel Zueder http://samuelzuder-photography.com/

Flattening organizations, diminishing value of the traditional role as gatekeeper. Not the source of relevant data sources, information broker or even knowledge guru. These are hard times for any middle manager who still believes that contexts are not changing. Reflect and act!

Source: http://markbower.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/thoughts-on-enterprise-2-0-and-corporate-culture-change

Lawrence Liu wrote in Key success factor for Enterprise 2.0: Finding new roles for middle management

…Enterprise 2.0 technologies enable people who are doing the “real” work within organizations to bypass their middle management and connect and collaborate with each other directly as well as update and engage upper management directly. By cutting out middle management, the savings are not only in the salaries of those individuals but also in the time and energy expended by their subordinates and upper management to interact with them. Yes, middle management is the tangible overhead in many organizations that Enterprise 2.0 can eliminate!

I too believe this change will come, and that the flatter organisations of the future may well resemble the consulting organizations of today – the likes of IBM Global Services, McKinsey or Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), where until a few moths ago I worked.

Lawrence goes on to argue that a manager to report ratio of 1:30 is impossible, but in MCS that is exactly what it was.

Managers were not your traditional manager though.

They were not responsible for giving reports work to do.  Instead a resource pool operated with resourcing managers identifying staff with the right skills mix to quickly staff-up and tear down projects.  Consultants had to proactively go about managing their career, promoting themselves and finding their next job.

This, I believe will become the new model of the corporation in a Web 2.0 world.  And the fact of the matter is this model exists today in many consulting firms.

But the impact and change brought about by Enterprise 2.0 will not be without pain.

MCS went through plenty when they made the change some 3 years ago. A lot of middle managers DID have to find themselves new jobs.  And it was VERY painful.

If you are interested in the cultural impact this new world of work will bring, Tom Peters has written some good stuff on the topic of working and thriving in this kind of workplace.  The best place to start would be his Brand YOU article in Fast Company.  An absolute must read for anyone in the professional services industry.

Artist Samuel Zueder http://samuelzuder-photography.com/

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I riccioli sono quelli, ma ci sono tanti modi di essere un Tronchetti Provera. Si può anche essere laziali e preferire treno e metropolitane al trasporto su gomma. E questo è il modo di Nino Tronchetti Provera, cugino di Marco (”Mister Pirelli”) e presidente e fondatore del fondo Ambienta, in Italia il primo specializzato nel settore ambientale.

Nino Tronchetti Provera discute con il principe di Galles della prima lobby del green al mondo e alla famiglia ha già dato il Gecam, il “gasolio ecologico” con cui la Cam (controllata dalla Pirelli Technologies) fa metà cento del fatturato.

Se ci mettiamo anche una tesi di laurea profetica nel 1992, la prima sul tema del business green, che gli valse la lode e l’ingresso in McKinsey, le credenziali aumentano. E sentirgli dire che l’Italia rischia di perdere il treno verde non fa piacere. Soprattutto se in mano ha 175 milioni da investire.

“Sulle fonti rinnovabili abbiamo un sistema di incentivi molto avanzato, però green economy non vuol dire soltanto questo. Nel mondo c’è fermento, mentre in Italia il valore del settore ambientale non è ancora stato compreso. Eppure, il grande interesse che si è creato sulle energie rinnovabili e sulla tutela dell’ambiente non è una bolla: se internet significa comunicare, il green vuol dire sopravvivere”. I 150 miliardi messi a disposizione da Barack Obama e la svolta ambientalista annunciata dal premier spagnolo José Luis Zapatero sono due esempi di quel piano organico nazionale che in Italia ancora manca.

Da Panorama.it la notizia qui…

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One of the best pieces of advice given during the Fed’s Money Smart Week is–in one form or another–”don’t spend more than you can afford.”  This week came more news that Americans have been doing just that, and perhaps “paying it back” is going to be painful.

Warren Buffett once famously quipped that “only when the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.”  And a New York Times op-ed piece this week by Thomas Friedman suggests that America has been swimming “buck naked.”  Unemployment numbers continue to grow, with Illinois’ now at 9.1 percent. 

Not surprisingly, financial aid applications in the state of Illinois are up nearly 21 percent over last year’s record numbers, with a 27 percent increase in those eligible for need-based aid.  Friedman said the same credit bubbles that led to record consumer demand and the housing boom have masked our fundamental economic weaknesses in addition to something far worse:  how much we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is costing us.

A recent study by McKinsey & Company entitled, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” stated the educational gaps impose the equivalent of a national recession upon the United States.  If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher.

And if the gap between black and Latino student performance and white student performance had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher.  The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3-to-5 billion more per day.

Last summer, it was David Brooks that wrote “America rose because it got more out of its own people than other nations. That stopped in 1970. Now, other issues grab headlines… but this tectonic plate is still relentlessly and menacingly shifting beneath our feet.”  The solution rests with the combined efforts of federal, state and local governments; the education community; and students and families.

 It won’t be easy.  The shifting is becoming more pronounced due to other forces, not the least of which is tuition inflation, which continues to soar.  An article by Jeanette Der Bedrosian in the USA Today (April 22) reports that public university tuition “increases of at least 5% to 6% – and in many cases higher – are expected as university administrators struggle to maintain quality education amid state budget cuts.”

This tuition inflation has in part resulted in increased demand for student loans, and an increased debt load for students and graduates. Tough economic times have led to an increase in cohort default rates, especially at proprietary schools.

While discussions are underway relative to overhauling education, financial aid and student lending in this country, it is everyone’s responsibility to close the gap and ensure future prosperity for our children. Access to and success in higher education is critical in this regard, and all have a stake in meeting this goal. That means for government and citizens to make education and education funding a priority. It’s a new type of patriotism.

We have an extraordinary opportunity to invest in the future of our country through an investment in our children’s education. Agencies such as ours are critical in this endeavor on the front end of the process of applying for and paying for college as well as the back end of student loans.

On the back end, ISAC participates in the Department of Education’s loan rehabilitation process, which allows defaulted borrowers to clean their credit by making nine straight on-time loan payments before the note is sold to a lender and removed from the DOE’s books. This program has been jeopardized by the freezing of the credit markets, in that there has not been a market for these rehabbed loans since Sun-Trust stopped purchasing them last November.

Through the hard and creative work of staff from throughout the agency, ISAC is on the verge of being able to be in a position to purchase these rehabbed loans. A bill co-sponsored by State Representative David Miller and State Senator Ed Maloney would allow ISAC to designate a $50 million bond issue as backed by the General Obligation of the State of Illinois, proceeds from which would allow IDAPP to purchase loans from the U.S. Department of Education through ISAC–loans that ISAC has worked to rehabilitate. IDAPP’s purchase of these loans would complete their rehabilitation, restoring an important revenue stream from the federal government to ISAC and allowing these students to again qualify for financial aid and return to school.

After being unanimously approved in the Senate, Senate Bill 325 vaulted Wednesday over its subsequent procedural hurdle by passing unanimously out of the House Higher Education Committee. The bill has been moved to the order of “Third Reading” on the House calendar, which means that the full House chamber could take a vote on it next week, after which only the Governor’s signature will be required for it to become law. Government for the people. I will keep you posted on any new developments.

Until next week,

Andy

Recently, I have been speaking to lead marketers about growth — how they define it and what they are doing to achieve it. Through 13 interviews, not one lead marketer has mentioned pricing as a way to increase revenue or profits. Is price no longer a marketing function in corporations?

According to a McKinsey study, a 1% increase in realized price delivers the greatest improvement – a healthy 10% increase in operating profits. This is exactly why marketers need to be thinking about pricing strategies and price management disciplines. As an example, one industry that is ripe for a price increase is the aftermarket auto parts business like Carquest and Autozone. With sales of new cars at all time lows, people are trying to extend the life of the car they have.   I recently spent $95 dollars to replace the battery on my car and would have easily paid another $5. It is these types of small increases that drop all of that incremental $5 to the bottom line.

Other price strategies exists, such as bundling or understanding “basket of goods”. When my wife and I go into Target we can not, for some reason, leave without  spending ~$50. That is no accident. Are they the cheapest on everything? No, but we continue to pay because my wife believes certain categories of products are price competitively and we just can’t help ourselves buying other products due to convenience.

The Bottom Line:

Price is a big lever! Learn how to employ it and manage it.  For further justification in how this works even in a down market please read my friend Sid’s post.

McKinsey and Company has partnered with the World Economic Forum to produce a map of innovation clusters by market location.

From McKinsey and Company:

…in times of economic turbulence, innovation remains the most important differentiator separating economic winners from also-rans.

Global Innovation Heat Map

The McKinsey report places innovation clusters into four categories: Dynamic oceans, Silent lakes, Hot springs and Shrinking pools.

More from McKinsey about their report:

…we have examined the evolution of hundreds of such clusters around the world and analyzed over 700 variables, including those driving innovation (business environment, government and regulation, human capital, infrastructure, and local demand) along with proxies for innovation output (for example, economic value added, journal publications, patent applications) to identify trends among the success stories. In the process, we have found patterns that suggest the critical ingredients required to grow, nurture, and sustain innovation hubs.

Not without surprise, Silicon Valley is the largest Dynamic ocean of innovation in the world.

Financial engineering and marketing advantage excluded, I am convinced all new profits are fueled in part by technological advancements.

From where I sit in Oklahoma and for some time, it has looked like the majority of America’s innovations (technological advancements) and the world’s for that matter – have originated from Northern California (Silicon Valley & San Francisco).

Thus for any business to capture new profits from within its market  – and again barring financial engineering and marketing advantage – the profit seeking business must embrace technological innovation – innovations more than likely developed in Silicon Valley.

Coincidentally, the combination of these factors were what lead to my decision to become a Google Adwords Professional long ago.