April 2009

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_12/b4124030837359.htm

Smart Management for Tough Times

Breakthrough management ideas for a world in which the game will never be the same

John Chambers knows what it feels like to survive a crash. In 2000, Cisco (CSCO) Systems had the largest market cap in the world and more than 50% annual sales growth. Then the dot-com bubble burst, and the Cisco chief executive watched the networking giant's stock drop 86%, from 80 to just over 11 by September 2001. Chambers laid off thousands of employees, shrank the number of suppliers, and simplified or jettisoned many products. He also radically changed the way he managed, turning a command-and-control hierarchy into a more democratic organizational structure. The company emerged from that recession more profitable than ever and went on to outperform many tech rivals. In retrospect, Chambers wonders if he could have done even more. "Without exception," he says, "all of my biggest mistakes occurred because I moved too slowly."

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http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=29903

Web shoppers are less pessimistic than they were in the fall, survey shows

Online shoppers are not quite as reluctant to spend as they were in the fall, according to a survey by comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber.com.

50% say they have cut back spending in the past few months in a survey conducted in February and March, compared with 59% who said so in a PriceGrabber survey in October and 56% in May. In the recent survey, 23% say they have not changed their spending habits, up from 16% in October, while 27% now say they try to save money regardless of the economic situation, down from 25% in the fall. The recent data is based on a survey of 4,239 shoppers who made purchases through PriceGrabber.com and was conducted between Feb. 10 and March 9.

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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/case-study-for-years-a-family-bakery.html

Case Study: Skinner Baking Builds a Brand

For years, a family bakery sold unbranded pastries to supermarkets. Should the owner now put his name on the box?

His bakery business was doing just fine. But in the fall of 2007, Jim Skinner called a meeting of his executive team and three-person sales force to discuss a big strategy shift. It was time, he believed, to reinvent the company and its image. For most of its 25-year history, the James Skinner Baking Company had been strictly a wholesale operation, selling unbranded Danish, coffeecakes, and cinnamon rolls to supermarkets and national bakery brands. Over the years, the business grew steadily, under the radar of consumers. The strategy produced profits nearly every year, and today the company, which employs 300, has yearly sales of about $60 million. Not bad for a family business in Omaha whose first customer was a six-store supermarket chain called Hinky Dinky.

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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126046291682.htm

As Factories Fail, China's Business Law Does, Too

With the bankruptcy law in its infancy, violence often erupts when factories collapse

Dongguan, China - Business had been good, even great. But by early 2008, the lighting manufacturer realized his factory in China was heading for failure. The collapse of the U.S. housing market had devastated demand for his lamps and fixtures sold at American retailers. Costs kept rising in Dongguan, the southern city where he had expanded his operations. So the 43-year-old boss quietly slipped out of China, leaving behind $100,000 to cover the final month's rent and salary for his 400-plus workers. Suppliers were left unpaid.

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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/in-times-like-these-you-get-a-chance.html

Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009

As part of our 30th-anniversary issue, Inc. asked Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, what we might expect in the next 30 years. His answer: uncertainty, chaos, turbulence, and risk. In other words, it's not a bad time to be an entrepreneur
You would be hard pressed to find two individuals more determined to uncover the secrets of business success than Jim Collins and Bo Burlingham. Collins is the author of the best-selling business books Built to Last and Good to Great, both of which address this simple but vexing question: Why do some companies become great while others flounder? Burlingham, an editor-at-large of Inc., has spent his career pondering the same question. The author of Small Giants and co-author of The Knack (with Inc. columnist Norm Brodsky), as well as two books with open-book-management guru Jack Stack, Burlingham joined the magazine's staff in 1983 and has developed an unmatched ability to get inside some of the nation's most fascinating organizations. For Inc.'s 30th anniversary, we decided to bring these two business thinkers together for a conversation that would serve as a kind of state-of-the-entrepreneurial nation -- examining where we have been, where we are, where we are headed, and what it will take to succeed once we get there. Burlingham met with Collins at his research firm, the ChimpWorks, in Boulder, Colorado. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126054303966.htm

Job Anxiety: Workers Are Really Working Up a Sweat

Employees anxious about layoffs want to look irreplaceable. Managing that fear can be challenging

Bosses are witnessing a lot of bizarre behavior in Officeland these days. The lumpy and rumpled are showing up all spiffy and dry-cleaned. Mouthy iconoclasts are newly docile. Clock-watching slackers are suddenly the last to leave. People, it seems, are performing transplants on themselves--like the senior vice-president at a pharmaceutical company known as a terrible flirt who says she recently forced herself to go oh-so-straitlaced.

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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/recruiting-tapping-the-talent-pool.html

Recruiting: Tapping the Talent Pool…

How to use skill tests, applicant tracking software, video interviews, and industry-specific job sites to find the best candidates in a large stack of resumes.

Despite the mass layoffs dominating the headlines, plenty of companies are still hiring. But doing one's part to lower the unemployment rate can present some challenges. Just ask Raising Cane's, a chain of 80 fast-food restaurants that booked sales of about $140 million last year. The Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- based company, which has 3,500 employees, recently decided to open another office in Dallas. To staff it, Clay Dover, the company's president, needed to hire 32 people, including a receptionist and a human resources manager. Dover's first step was to post the positions on major online job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder.com. He also bought ads in The Dallas Morning News and on local radio stations. Within days, the company had received more than 10,000 resumés, so many that Dover wound up hiring a local recruiting firm to help him screen and interview the applicants.

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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/the-business-owners-bookshelf.html

The Business Owner's Bookshelf

30 books you should read and put to use

1. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, by Peter Bernstein (1996)

From the ancient Greeks' belief that the universe was divvied up in a game of craps to Keynes's assertion that uncertainty makes us free, this lively economic history helps readers understand why we think -- and bet -- the way we do.

2. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, by Guy Kawasaki (2004)

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1889696,00.html

Gilt-y Pleasures

In fashion's loftiest ranks, the concepts of luxury and discount go together about as well as navy and black, except in one rarefied setting: the sample sale. Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson set out to re-create that élite, high-adrenaline environment with their members-only retail site, gilt.com Every day the site plays host to fashion sales, which, just like the real thing, fling open the doors to the current wares of a single designer—Zac Posen, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Alessandro Dell'Acqua—at insider prices ranging from 50% to 70% off. All sales have a daily start time of noon Eastern and last for a breathless 36 hours. And, of course, only invited guests are privy. (Befriend a member and ask for an invite to join.) "We really prize doing it in a way that is incredibly exciting," says Maybank. But the bottom line, says Wilson, is that "we provide access to hundreds of highly sought-after brands for both men and women. We have a lot of depth to our site."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/smallbusiness/09hunt.html?_r=1&ref=smallbusiness

Tapping Business Skills That Already Exist

ENTREPRENEURIAL impulses can be stirred to life by the most unexpected influences.

Donna Young's case, it was culture shock. Ms. Young grew up on the sparsely populated Andros Island in the Bahamas with 10 siblings and had long pursued a professional career. But after she married Larry Young, an architect, and moved to Epping, N.H., in 2003, she struggled to adjust to New England's taciturn ways. "I was the only black woman in my work place," she said. "A lot of the time, I felt I didn't fit in. I felt I had to be best at everything I did."

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http://www.nytimes.com/allbusiness/AB12278200_primary.html?ref=smallbusiness

Tax Credits Your Small Business Might Overlook

The Internal Revenue Service allows a number of tax credits that many businesses might not be aware of. Unlike tax deductions, tax credits are subtracted from the amount of taxes you owe. Most credits are broadly applicable, so there are usually more than one that cover a business's expenditures and investments.

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http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/best-behance-13-tried-and-true-practices-making-ideas-happen

Best of Behance's 99% Conference: 13 Tried and True Practices For Making Ideas Happen

The Behance "99%" conference wound up on a high note with Pentagram designer Michael Bierut offering five sane and simple principles for maximum productivity. Given his track record--hundreds of design awards, work at MOMA, a faculty appointment at Yale, a hugely popular blog, and a book or two, (I'm exhausted just listing all his accomplishments!)--his was advice with instant cred.