The decision to join a family business can be difficult because once you're in, you're in for the long haul. You can leave IBM with two-weeks notice. But mixing blood and money means you are committing big time to Johnson's Distributors or Jones and Sons Auto Repair. ...
There was Microsoft. Then Carl Ichan. Then the vindication at a shareholders meeting. Isn't it time for Yahoo to get a break? Apparently, not. It now turns out that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock did not get the resounding affirmation rates of of 85.4...
When tough times come, too many CEOs knee jerk themselves into cost-cutting mode. Big mistake, write two Booz & Co. consultants. What's needed instead is a smart, targeted investment strategy, say Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand in a recent Booz report. By making an intelligent study of...
You know the boom times are over when it "bankruptcy PR" becomes the newest market niche for PR agencies. PRWeek reports that "retailer Mervyns is working with Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher for communications support during its Chapter 11 filing," which the company made on Tuesday. ...
One of the books on my summer reading desk is a page-turner about the mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin back in 1905. After taking over by force, more than 700 sailors roamed the Black Sea spreading terror for nearly two weeks. What caused the mutiny? Cheap pursers aboard the...
The cold war among proxy service companies has been getting a lot hotter lately. Proxy Governance, a proxy service firm based in Vienna, Va., has gone on the offensive by pushing for a "code of ethics" among its group which includes Glass Lewis & Company and Egan...
Online communities can serve as a corporation's R&D lab by offering a broader talent reach and closer contact with consumers' needs, according to a new McKinsey Quarterly study. Historically, innovation has started in in-house labs where researchers must proceed through a series of closely-managed steps, write McKinsey...
All of you Lou Dobbs fans out there might be curious about what happened to one of the greatest travesties in American economic history -- a proxy fight by an English hedge fund over board seats on CSX, an American railroad. Apparently, The Children's Investment Fund, the...
Say "whistleblower" to some execs and the reaction your likely to get is one of fear and loathing. It shouldn't be that way. Whistleblowers can help keep your company out of trouble by catching fraud and corruption – things harmful to your company's reputation and bottom line over the long...
In a much debated research paper last year, Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder concluded that up to 38 million jobs, or 29 percent, of US jobs are potentially offshorable within the next couple of decades -- that is, capable of being outsourced to workers in other countries. ...
Seems like it's Cosmopolitan Day here at BNET. Over at the Corner Office, Peter Galuszka notes that U.S. companies are, in increasing numbers, tapping executives and board members from abroad, notably China and India (Or, as the kids are calling it, Chindia.) Meanwhile, BNET1's...
BNET Industries editor, David Hamilton, blogs up the skinny on Roche's attempted acquisition of biotech giant, Genentech. Writes Hamilton: The deal also has a funny smell to it. Roche CEO Severin Schwan claims the merger would save $800 million a year in administrative costs from merging commercial and manufacturing...
Wall Street is coming on strong for Barack Obama in this year's presidential campaign donation race. Big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan favor Obama over John McCain by margins of roughly four or five to one. So states a recent report by Chief...
Just in time for the home stretch of summer, Joe Nocera of the New York Times a paper I sometimes write for has posted his list of the the best business books ever Nocera has been a top business writer for decades now -- for instance, his story...
The world of Executive Coaching continues to evolve. Two big recent developments are worthy of note: firstly, the emergence of smaller professional service firms focused on coaching and secondly, organisations are pulling together their own ?Benches? of coaches. There is a third movement - not large enough to merit the...
To make a critical decision, we often siphon in as much raw data as possible, listen to expert advice, run scenarios, and then place our bet or bets on the most logical course of action. But if you notice, the captain of the Starship Enterprise was not...
The housing market may be taking a hit, but the digital real estate market is taking off. Digital Realty Trust Inc. DLR, a landlord of data centers, can hardly keep up with demand.
Managers who manage their time well not only get more accomplished, but they also set the tone for employees to be more proactive about their own schedules. Melissa Raffoni, author of the Harvard Business Review article "Are You Spending Your Time the Right Way?", shares techniques that will help you...
The Find: Governance advisory firms claim they can predict the future performance of a public company by analyzing public data, but new research claims the value of their ratings is dubious at best. ...
