Daily one-minute webcast of Seattle business news

The Puget Sound Business Journal now offers a daily one-minute online video summary of local business news.

I keep tabs on national and international business news by reading the Wall Street Journal every morning on the bus. But I haven't been covering local business news too closely lately, so I'm happy to see a quick and easy way to do this.

Tags: Seattle business news online video Puget Sound Business Journal

Your password: not a secret to Sprint customer service

If you want to change your password at the Sprint Wireless site, you're informed of the following password stipulations:

• Must be 6 to 8 letters or numbers (A-Z and 0-9)
• Cannot include more than 3 repetitive digits (e.g. 111)
• Cannot be all or part of your social security number or Sprint PCS phone number
• Should not be something easy to guess, such as your birthdate.

Such extensive precautions should be reassuring. But when you call Sprint to resolve a billing issue, as I did recently (they have not yet received the check I sent two weeks ago), you are asked to give your password for verification purposes.

And all those privacy precautions go out the window.

When I called earlier today and the representative asked for my password, I said I'm uncomfortable giving that information and asked if there is another way to confirm my identity. She responded: "I'm looking at it anyway, so you might as well just tell me."

Do you know of any other companies that routinely ask for your password? I don't. When I worked for Amazon.com customer service back in 1999-2000, we simply did not have access to customers' passwords. Sometimes customers would call and ask us to tell them their password, and the best we could do was reset their password -- because we didn't have access to this information. And that's the way it should be.

I'm beginning to understand why Sprint received the dubious honor of last place in call center satisfaction. Add to this the recent fallout from their mass dumping of customers, and it's clear that Sprint has a rather serious PR situation to attend to.

Tags: Sprint password customer service

Why phone books will probably keep getting printed

I recently mused about phone books and why they seem to stack up unnecessarily in my apartment building lobby.

Coincidentally enough, the Wall Street Journal printed an article about the businesses that publish phone books (sub req'd): R.H. Donnelley Corp. and Idearc Inc. These companies have an Internet presence, but that's not where they make their money:

Donnelley, which operates dexknows.com, receives less than 2% of its revenue from the Internet, while Idearc, which owns superpages.com, receives about 9%.

So despite the waste and the fact that so many people don't even crack them open, and despite the fact that Bill Gates recently said "yellow-page usage amongst people,...say, below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years," physical phone books will probably continue to be printed for the forseeable future.

Tags: paper phone book

And my internship starts off with a bang

On my second morning with my internship at Healia, the press release came out: Healia has been acquired by the media and marketing firm Meredith.

Considering the fact that Meredith is 105 years old and Healia is younger by a century plus, it's an interesting convergence. (I'll refrain from MBA-speak.) The two companies are clearly very different, and yet the acquisition makes sense: each offers something that the other needs. A stalwart of the traditional media world, Meredith needs a way to keep its customer base from defecting to new online competitors. Healia offers an award-winning product, and needs a way to develop awareness in its target customers.

For my part, I'm already seeing why an internship is such a crucial part of the full-time MBA educational experience. Just two days in, and I've already learned a lot.

Moreover, being involved with a forward-looking search engine is, for me, very fun. Musing over the future of internet has been a pastime of mine for a while now, and now I get to keep geeking out on this subject - at work? Lucky me. :)

Tags: MBA internship Healia Meredith acquisition

Do messy problems beget messy sentences?

Nasty day in the stock market today.

Is there a correlation, I wonder, between the severity of an imbroglio and the length of the sentence that describes it?

"Around 2:00 pm today the market's extraordinarily heavy trading volume caused a delay in the Dow Jones data systems and as a result, the calculation of the Dow Jones Industrial Average temporarily lagged behind the market decline and as we identified the problem we decided to switch over to a back-up system and the result was a rapid catch-up in the published value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average," explained a Dow Jones spokeswoman.

I can't help it, folks. It's the editor in me.

Tags: run-on sentence stock market imbroglio Dow Jones editing required

Silicon Valley road show: quick observations

Thursday night, I flew down to Silicon Valley for a whirlwind company tour with a group of classmates. Bryan Tomlinson, who coordinates employer relations at our career center, did a great job organizing the whole event.

The fun company
Our day started off with a quick tour of the Yahoo! campus, followed by a presentation and Q&A session. I was struck by how friendly the campus felt: bright yellow colors are everywhere, both inside and out. I found the employees who spoke with us incredibly funny. At one point the recruiter thanked me for constantly laughing during her presentation. Always the jovial one, that's me.

One way they conveyed the Yahoo! culture to us was through a "sucks list": stuff that they're not about:

• Decaf coffee
• Bad grammar
• "Too big for your britches" attitude
• Early meetings
• Formality (did I mention that we felt self-conscious in our suits and ties?

I left Yahoo! feeling quite excited about the company; I definitely plan on applying for an internship there. Out of the three companies we visited that day, I personally felt the closest fit with Yahoo!. I like the focus on unique user experiences, the refreshingly humor-friendly culture, and the nurturing environment.


Serious secrets
I never thought of Apple as a serious company, but compared with Yahoo! and Google, Apple is serious indeed. From the people to the architecture, there's much less wackiness at Apple. But still, I got the impression that it's an amazing place to work for. Jo Lawson, UW MBA '00, gave us an informative presentation on her experience there in small business marketing.

Both Jo and Gary Wipfler (Apple treasurer, also a UW alum), mentioned more than once that secrecy plays a key role in Apple company culture. As the recent stories about the iPhone attest, Apple's competitive advantage depends on certain employees keeping secrets: from their family, friends, and other employees. While these communication restrictions can be taxing on everyone, the payoff is huge: jaw-droppingly innovative products.


The center of the universe (for now)
Simply put, Google exceeded my expectations. It's like Disneyland for grownups -- very, very smart grownups. The architecture and landscaping really present a feast for the eyes. Micro-kitchens are spaced throughout the campus, none too far from the next, and they pipe out the most amazing odors of delicious food. Our tour guide, Vicky Wang, (also a UW alum) enthusiastically explained that Google hires top-notch chefs from the region, and, as is widely known, the ingredients are largely organic and locally-sourced.

The feeling I got at Google is that everyone there is always "on" -- everything is in a state of flux, and to fit in there, you should be ok with that. Nay, you should thrive on chaos. It seems like a truly fun, challenging place to be, but it's not for everyone. I talked with three employees there, and I got a similar feeling from them that I got from employees at Amazon.com back in 1999 (when Amazon stock was sky-high): we are at the center of the universe right now. It's an intoxicating feeling, but it never lasts forever.

Could I see myself at Google? Certainly, I'd love to intern there. I confess, though, that it's competitive to the point of being a bit intimidating. Our hosts described how many of their employees are former CEOs, and how, upon arriving at Google, they gladly accept mid-level management positions.

The reception
After the Google visit, we headed to Nola for a reception with UW MBA alumni. I had a great chat with Beth Gorell, UW MBA '86, who shared the story of her career. Later, my old college friend Doug swung by with his wife. Doug works in the area at eHealthInsurance and I crashed at his place that night.


Visa? Visa?
Alright, so we didn't visit Alaska Airlines, but most of us flew down on an Alaska flight. I must say, I found it very odd when a flight attendant gave an announcement that was essentially an ad for the Alaska Airlines Visa card. Clearly the flight attendant hated doing this; I could hear the annoyance in her voice.

Another flight attendant walked down the aisle with Visa cards in her hand, waving them and saying "Visa? Visa?" as if she were offering us peanuts. How strange! She was walking really quickly and of course no one was interested.

I can understand the cost-based argument that motivates Alaska to ask its flight attendants to do this sort of marketing work. There's a problem, however, with using your firm's employees to advertise for you on the cheap (or for free) -- they might not, um, want to. And if they're unenthused about the whole thing (who can blame them?), those feelings show through. The real risk to Alaska here is of its employees reducing the brand equity of its Visa card by creating negative associations in customers' minds. For me, certainly, this is now the case.

Final thoughts

• Walk around in a Silicon Valley company in full formal attire, and you'll receive plenty of inquisitive stares.
• While you can learn a lot about a company by reading about it, you need to physically visit the company to get a real taste of its culture.

Tags: MBA UW University of Washington Apple Google Yahoo Alaska Airlines culture intern

IBM, Second Life, and v-business

Futurismic reports that IBM is heavily involved in Second Life. According to Reuters (itself a big player in Second Life), IBM has the biggest Second Life presence of any Fortune 500 company. The CEO, Sam Palmisano, even has his own avatar there:

The company's move into virtual worlds is due in large part to the efforts of its "multiverse evangelists," Ian Hughes (Epredator Potato) and Roo Reynolds (Algernon Spackler in-world), who said last month that IBM wanted to make "v-business" a priority just as it championed "e-business" during the dot-com boom.

"We always ask the question, 'if you knew 20 years ago what you know about the Web today, what would you do differently?'" Sandy Kearney, IBM's director of emerging 3-D Internet and virtual business, told Reuters in a Second Life interview. "The Web took decades. This will likely take half that time."

V-business? It's a term presumably indicating business done in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Wikipedia has a brief entry on virtual business, which gives an old-school definition, bascially non-bricks 'n' mortar e-business: "a business which operates without a corresponding physical identity."

But no entry for v-business.

I get the distinct feeling that this will change in the near future, as the term picks up steam.

P.S. Looks like this blog post is the first with the Technorati tag v-business.

Tags: Second Life IBM v-business multiverse virtual world

Lean dwelling

Recently Bob Cremin, CEO of Esterline Technologies, was a guest lecturer in my IT & Innovation class. Two things stood out to me about his philosophy of management:

• He treats his employees as knowledge workers rather than expendable drones, and often incorporates their ideas for workflow improvement. He trusts his employees to learn from their mistakes (which will inevitably occur), and to contribute their experiential knowledge to the firm.
• He's a big believer in lean manufacturing: simplifying operations and eliminating clutter.

Somewhere over the course of midterms, much mysterious detritus has accumulated about my apartment. So, inspired by Mr. Cremin's approach, I've been tidying things up, to make my home environment more conducive to distraction-free learning.

I'm not quite done yet, but I can already feel my stress level reducing. Somehow, cleaning house seems to clean out my mind as well.

Tags: business lean manufacturing Esterline clutter

YouTube: not a cheap date

The big news today is that Google aims on buying YouTube. The rumored price tag: $1.6 billion. Apparently, News Corp is another interested suitor.

Speculation about the acquisition of YouTube has been buzzing for months now, but there hasn't been anything like today's news flurry. Will Google succeed in this? The market seems to think so; its stock (GOOG) is up over 2% today.

$1.6 billion. Staggering. Google is sitting on mountains of cash and short-term investments, so this isn't going to break its back or anything. Still, Google should have given this a shot earlier this year, when it could have secured a better purchase price. Perhaps they tried this; I'd be curious to find out.

Tags: Google YouTube acquisition

Plunging in

Over the past week, I attended the official kickoff for the full-time MBA program at the University of Washington. My classmates and I began to get familiar with the academic structure of the program: textbooks and syllabi, faculty expectations, and so on. But the program goes beyond classroom learning, and we learned about the multitude of opportunities for career preparation, club participation, and development of presentation and communication skills.

Visiting organizational development specialists Peter and Susan Glaser worked with us on communication in groups. These sessions focused on criticism -- how to receive it and give it -- and how to achieve consensus. I met with my study team members, who I'll be spending a lot of time with over the quarter. We discussed an issue that we originally disagreed about until we came to a point of consensus. As we talked, another group watched us and gave feedback.

It was a very helpful exercise for me personally. On the one hand, I learned that I'm great at being friendly and encouraging with the other group members. On the other hand, they told me that I talk too fast and I need to slow down for the benefit of our international team members. These sorts of communication skills are tremendously valuable virtually everywhere in life, and I wish I would have learned them (particularly the tips on working with criticism) a long time ago!

We also listened to a presentation by Richard Tait, founder of Cranium. He explored examples of how to succeed in business, gleaned from his own experiences with Cranium. Now, I'm as wary of motivational speeches as the next person who came of age in the sarcasm-drenched 90's. But Richard was magnificent. He's a hilarious speaker with a crystal-clear passion for the aim of his business: to encourage people to truly enjoy each other's company and to see each other's unique strengths. His primary point was that your business must have a mission: a clear sense of meaning that employees and customers can feel good about participating in.

I believe that his approach will greatly pay off in the long term. Customers and investors are paying increasing attention to what some refer to as the triple bottom line: people, planet, profit. And tomorrow's workforce -- today's teens -- will be motivated much more by meaning and values in their work than previous generations, according to a to a recent BusinessWeek article.

One message that has consistently come through is that we'll be busy...very busy. Second-year students showed us pages from their calendars from last October, and precious little white space could be seen. They explained how much of their time in the first quarter (the busiest of the program) was filled with class, team meetings, career coaching meetings, and informational interviews.

To prepare for this coming deluge, I've been planning my own time management strategy. Some of my classmates are using traditional paper day planners; others are keeping everything in Outlook. I'm going to be going with a combination of OneNote (my class schedule and a notes template in OneNote, pictured above) for notes and to-do lists, and my trusty Treo 600 for all things calendar-related.

Alright! I've got some Boards of Canada playing and I'm going to get studying here. :)

Tags: UW business school MBA Cranium Richard Tait communication consensus Glaser time management OneNote productivity

Dorje-generated content

My good friend Dorje, apparently distraught over the lack of recent news updates here on Fixing Foibles & Follies, has started sending me suggestions for blog posts. Or perhaps he just thinks he's sending me interesting news stories, and I'm interpreting these emails as reminders to me to keep posting good stuff. Whatever your intent, Dorje, do keep sending me the goodies!

The first thing Dorje sent me, in the middle of my skool(intentionally misspelled cuz I'm hip like that!)-centric week, was this New York times article about Google.org, Google's new philanthropic organization. It's exciting to see what Google.org is committing to, namely:

plans to develop an ultra-fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline.

The philanthropy is consulting with hybrid-engine scientists and automakers, and has arranged for the purchase of a small fleet of cars with plans to convert the engines so that their gas mileage exceeds 100 miles per gallon. The goal of the project is to reduce dependence on oil while alleviating the effects of global warming.

Dorje also directed my attention to a great blog called The Greener Side, which is a truly linkalicious resource for alternative energy, socially responsible investing, and other green blogs. Check it out.

Tags: Google.org philanthropy green

Senior Citizen 2.0

In a long-winded stentorian monologue, one of my fellow morning bus passengers confidently explained his business prospects to his patient seatmate. "My future's bright," he said, "because geriatrics are really hot right now." The garrulous passenger didn't appear to notice my seatmate, who sat covering her ears and glaring at him. It was a little too early on a Monday morning to listen to unsolicited motivational speechifying.

At best, we view the elderly as a market demographic. At worst, we look down on them as an expensive problem. Age discrimination is widespread in the workplace. People are embarrassed simply about getting older (there's a point where it's rude to ask someone's age, as if you're drawing attention to an unmentionable ailment). Unsurprisingly, depression and inactivity are common among the elderly. Many feel that they have no value in the current milieu of fast-paced technological change.

We need to substantially readjust our attitude about our living ancestors. Your grandfather may not have heard of digg.com, but he has accumulated a wealth of experience in other areas. He's made mistakes and learned from them. In short: he's got wisdom. And while we're trying our best to ensure that the planet will sustain life 100+ years from now, we can use all the wisdom we can get.

To address this need, Rakesh Khurana and his colleagues at Harvard Business School have come up with an ingenious idea: the School for Advanced Institutional Leadership.

He says he woke up in the middle of the night and realized he had "solved the Social Security problem"....[the school is] not for people entering the workforce but for older people preparing to leave it. Enrollees would use their years of experience in science, government, business, or the arts to solve social problems. "Many of these people would like to give back, but they don't have a pathway," says Khurana. "The role of this university can be to create this third stage of education."

This plan is absolutely on the right track. BusinessWeek has argued that we've been ignoring certain intangible aspects of the economy. Might the collective wisdom of our elders be included in such an assessment?

Via Fast Company

Tags: business elderly senior citizen

And in the business blogs...

Check out the latest Carnival of Business at Consumerism Commentary. It features a number of recent business-related blog posts, covering productivity, career issues, and marketing. And although they didn't quite get my blog's name right, I'm honored that they're featuring one of my posts as well. :)

Tags: business blogging blog carnival

Sub Pop Records: 100% green

Wired reported today that Sub Pop records is the "first record label in the world to 'go green' by reducing its effective CO2 output to zero." How? Via the Bonneville Environmental Foundation,

which lets people or companies buy "green tags," – vouchers that help subsidize the use of renewable energy, which is generally more expensive to produce than dirtier sources.

Tags: green business Sub Pop

A blueprint for rural economic rebirth

During our recent road trip, my family's van broke down just a short stretch of road from the Idaho-Montana border. We were towed back to Dave Smith Motors in Kellogg, Idaho. This town of 2,400 is where we spent two (long) days selecting a new van and getting it equipped to tow our camper.

During this time (which was an exercise in patience and flexibility), we had ample opportunity to learn about the town. Dave Smith Motors is a ubiquitous presence in Kellogg -- its balloon-festooned car lots and chipper salespeople are all over town. It employs over 200 people, and strangely enough, it's the largest Chrysler dealership in the world.

How did this happen in a small, remote Idaho town?

Like many communities in Montana and Idaho, Kellogg's economy was originally grounded in the mining industry. But the good times didn't last. In the 70s, 91 miners died in a mining accident in Kellogg. And in the 80s, after massive layoffs at one of its mines, Kellogg plunged to an economic nadir, with 95% unemployment. Kellogg wasn't alone; other mines in the region were suffering a similar decline.

Enter Dave Smith Motors. During the early 90s, its managers took a big gamble: they decided to use the Internet (an emerging technology at that time) as a fundamental sales medium. They did this with a sophisticated in-house application that facilitates web marketing and sales. The gamble paid off. Sales have grown from $45 million in 1994 to over $200 million in 2000.

It's a compelling story of a small-town business taking advantage of technology. But much better stories lie ahead for communities that tap into the current alternative energy boom. Biodiesel, ethanol, wind and solar energy: these are the technologies that venture capital firms are currently pouring boatloads of cash into. With an abundance of biofuel resources and untapped wind power, rural communities are in a position to reap tremendous benefits.

For further reading about the current alternative energy boom, see these two excellent articles:

• Cleantech Gets Green in Seed magazine.


• The Prius Bubble in Slate. "We're irrationally exuberant about alternative energy—but that's good."

Tags: business Kellogg Idaho Dave Smith Motors rural economy alternative energy web business

Al Gore to address Wal-Mart executives

Former Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore is planning to address Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executives next week at the retailer’s quarterly conference on sustainability, part of the company’s recent efforts to become an environmental leader, a Wal-Mart spokesman confirmed.

All the blue-chip companies are going green this year. The question, of course, is: what's the signal-to-greenwash ratio here? As this Treehugger post points out, there's much to applaud in Wal-mart's recent sustainability commitments. Sure, it's a cunningly smart PR campaign: bring in Al Gore to reach the coastal urban demographic, a group that has particularly low "approval ratings" for Wal-mart these days. But there's no reason to doubt that Wal-Mart will follow through on these commitments. After all, their business will only benefit.

via Wall Street Journal | digg story

Tags: Al Gore Wal-Mart PR sustainable business

Wind power's other benefit

On September 30, 2005, this report indicated that there is enough offshore wind power within 50 miles of the coasts of America to meet its current electrical energy needs.

A mere nine months later, new developments in wind power technology are occurring around the world at a (happily) dizzying pace. Within the last few weeks alone:

• Southwest Windpower released a residential small wind generator, the first fully integrated generator of this type.


• GE opened a wind turbine assembly plant in China.


• It was announced that a $200 million wind power farm will be built on Maui, which will provide 20% of its power needs.


• The big story: as mentioned in my last post, Chinese developers have unveiled a new magnetic levitation wind power generator that will provide a 20% increase in energy output over traditional wind generators.

Most of the focus is on how wind power is emerging as a truly viable source of alternative energy. But there's another benefit that we'll hear more about over the next few years: wind power is injecting new economic opportunities into communities. Take this Seattle Times story ("Wind power generates a new cash crop in state"), which discusses the construction of a large wind power farm in a rural community in southern Washington state.

Wind power is arriving in Bickleton at a time when local farming is in serious decline. Founded more than a century ago, this town of about 90 people prospered for decades as grasslands were turned into wheat fields. There once was a bank, meat market, hotel and theater. All are long gone.

Wind power can reverse this type of economic decline, which is a common scenario across rural America, by providing a steady stream of income. As Wall street continues to take note of the growing wind power industry (wind power output has quadrupled in the past seven years, according to this article that appeared today in TheStreet.com), we're bound to see this trend continue.

Tags: wind power alternative energy Southwest Windpower GE rural economy