UW Madison & Harvard Grad Thomas P.M. Barnett discusses the value of Harvard and mentions that the UW now has more Fortune 500 CEO’s than Harvard (I’m not sure if that’s good or bad).
Too Much Choice?
Virginia Postrel, writing in Reason:
When customers enter the Ralphs supermarket near UCLA, they see a sign announcing how many different fruits and vegetables the produce department has on hand: “724 produce varieties available today,” it says, including 93 organic selections.
Sixty dozen varieties is a mind-boggling number. And that’s just in the produce department. Over in the cheese section, this pretty run-of-the-mill supermarket offers 14 types of feta alone. Not so long ago, finding feta of any type required a trip to a specialty shop.
During the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products, more varied experiences, and more choice.
Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a bookstore with 2 million titles, while Netflix promises 35,000 different movies on DVD. Choice is everywhere, liberating to some but to others a new source of stress. “Stand in the corner of the toothpaste aisle with your eyes wide open and–I swear–it will make you dizzy,” writes design critic Karrie Jacobs. Maybe the sign in Ralphs is not an enticement but a warning.
Free Culture: Isenberg on The Star Wars Money Machine
So here is the question which you should be asking yourself. If you released full digital copies of all of the Star Wars films — with no DRM — allowing anyone to duplicate and distribute to their hearts contents… would sales in the toys, video games, and publishing categories increase by enough to offset the loss in sales from video and DVD?
Templeton: 22 Steps to Successful Investing
1. There is only one long term investment objective, maximum total after tax return. More here.
Parales: The Case Against Coldplay
Jon Pareles takes it to Coldplay:
HERE’S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it’s right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There’s nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that’s under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable.
GM Janesville?
GM Chairman Rick Wagner mentioned additional plant closings & layoffs during today’s shareholder’s meeting in Wilmington, DE:
Going forward, in order to achieve full capacity utilization based on conservative volume planning scenarios, we expect to close additional assembly and component plants over the next few years, and to reduce our manufacturing employment levels in the U.S. by 25,000 or more people in the 2005 to 2008 period. We project that these capacity and employment actions will generate annual savings of approximately $2.5 billion.
10 Big Thinkers for Big Business
They work in vastly different fields, but the leaders profiled in the following pages are much alike—they have new takes on old business models, a knack for seeing around corners and an appetite for big risk. A case study of New Thinkers.
Swim Finder
Lands’ End introduced its Swim Finder feature this spring. The online service lets a user view different versions of swimsuits on a three-dimensional body likeness.
The Car Quality Gap?
One debate that never dies is who makes the best cars: the United States, Japan or Germany? U.S. automakers may be closing a perceived quality gap.
Lessons in Gratitude @ the Kitchen Sink
AS I told them, we could do without Hollywood for a century. We could not do without them and their sacrifice for a week. Gratitude. As my pal Phil DeMuth says, it’s the only totally reliable get-rich-quick scheme. Gratitude. Losing the luxury of feeling aggrieved when, if you look closely, you have an opportunity. My father washed dishes at the Sigma Psi house so that he could build an education and a life for the family he did not even have yet.
At my house, I always insist on doing the dishes, and I feel a thrill of gratitude for what washing a dish can do with every swipe of the sponge. Wiping away the selfishness of the moment, building a life for my son. The zen of dishwashing. The zen of gratitude. The zen of riches. Thanks, Pop.