Book recommendation - The Halo Effect

edit Our good friend Phil Rosenzweig has just published a terrific book, called The Halo Effect. It's main thesis is that we come to a lot of erroneous conclusions because knowing the outcomes biases our reasoning. It's a fascinating read.

For more on Phil and the book, check out his website -

http://www.the-halo-effect.com

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What Americans spend on pets

edit I ran across the following mind-blowing numbers - and came to the conclusion that there are vast sums of money out there if one is creative enough to capitalize on what people are willing to buy!

$38 Billion - Amount Americans spent on pet food and care in 2006, nearly double that spent 10 years ago

$2,000 - cost of a doggie nose job in Los Angeles

$395 - cost of a Burberry dog bed

$50 - price of an oatmeal body wrap for big dogs at LA Dogworks, a doggie spa

47% of dog owners say they buy holiday or birthday gifts for their pets.

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ILO Institute

edit Visitors to our site might have an interest in the work of the ILO Institute. Here's the news about them:

The ILO Institute brings together senior executives from Fortune 500's, for dialogue with Nobel Prize winners and other distinguished thinkers (Christensen, Lessig, Dyson, others), and to provide research on best practices to make innovation a reality. Gathering are very small, the research is top-shelf, and the cost is relatively low.

For more information, email peter@ilo-institute.org.

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Comment on Virtual Operations

edit From our good friend in Korea, Hyokon Zhang (we've temporarily disabled comments due to too much junk and spam - but if you email me comments I'll happily post them - Rita)

I absolutely agree. If you want to improve the service level of store operation, six-sigma could help. But if you want to remove the store altogether and go virtual, you need a totally different perspective. Six-sigma assumes continuity, but what you are doing is destroying and recreating.

We just reopened our company website including a blog. I find blog as a great tool for expressing ourselves and communicating with people. And it shows that you are there. I think we are one of the earliest adopter of blogging among consulting firms (actually we aspire to be something else than a traditional consulting firm). It has a news entry about our seminar in 2005, but it is in Korean.


Hyokon Zhiang
Founding Partner
Innomove Group (http://www.innomove.com)

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Women owned businesses

edit I thought this update on the status of female entrepreneurship was very interesting:

Women-owned Firms Increase Nearly 20 Percent

Women-owned firms increased nearly 20 percent over the latest period studied, according to a report released last week by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Between 1997 and 2002, women-owned firms grew by 19.8 percent while all US firms grew by seven percent. A significant portion of those firms were in professional, scientific, and technical services, and in health care and social assistance. Women in Business: A Demographic Review of Women’s Business Ownership, using newly released Census and other data, also finds that:

In 2002, women owned 6.5 million (28.2 percent) nonfarm US firms with 7.1 million employees and $173.7 billion in annual payroll.

Women-owned firms accounted for 6.5 percent of total employment in U.S. firms in 2002 and 4.2 percent of total receipts.

Of all women business owners in 2002, 85.95 percent were White, 8.43 percent African American, 8.33 percent of Hispanic heritage, 5.25 percent Asian, 1.23 percent American Indian and Alaska Native, and 0.18 percent Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (total does not add to 100 due to some double counting across ethnic groups).

Women in Business: A Demographic Review of Women’s Business Ownership, written by Office of Advocacy senior economist Dr. Ying Lowrey, is available at http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs280tot.pdf.

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