Posts Tagged “business”
Ross • 29th Jul 2010 • Thinking • business, economics, free market, health, heart, medicine, microeconomics, NHS, profit
The next time a zealot headbanger doorsteps you to tell you how bringing proft motives into the NHS is evil, kindly point them to this BBC article:
With its varnished wooden floors and plush sofas the European Scanning Centre looks more like a boutique hotel than somewhere to scan your heart. But it is the first in the country to have a CT scanner that can produce a three-dimensional picture of a patient’s heart with a very low radiation dose….
…Having a CT scan is much safer than an angiogram, where one in every 500 patients suffers a heart attack or stroke….
…The scan is also cheaper, says Dr Kostas Manis, a GP in Bexley. “The angiogram is £1,300, and the private clinic scanner is £900 and we’re negotiating to bring the figure down to £600.”
A better medical service, in nicer surroundings, with less risk, and at less cost. This is why I love competitive markets.
Ross • 26th Jul 2010 • Learning • banking, business, economics, finance
…private sector balance sheets will always fail at internalizing systemic risk. The official sector will always have to step in to help.
This is one of the conclusions of a New York Fed paper (PDF) on the shadow banking system, which provides a good overview and definition of the sector.
Ross • 15th Jul 2010 • Learning, Thinking • bonds, business, crime, finance, green, justice, offender, policy, prison, social
During the Peterborough Prison pilot, experienced social sector organisations, such as St Giles Trust, will provide intensive support to 3,000 short-term prisoners over a six year period, both inside prison and after release, to help them resettle into the community. If this initiative reduces re-offending by 7.5%, or more, investors will receive from Government a share of the long term savings. If the SiB delivers a drop in re-offending beyond the threshold, investors will receive an increasing return the greater the success at achieving the social outcome, up to a maximum of 13%.
A colleague told me about these bonds (pdf) this afternoon. They are designed by Social Finance. Bonds with coupons linked to policy outcomes appear to be experiencing a surge in interest at the moment – note also the World Bank’s 2009 Green Bonds and US’s Qualified Green Building and Sustainable Design Project Bonds.
I like the idea of green financial products, but why stop at bonds? Going further in this direction could get us all the way to a Hansonian Policy Analysis Market.
Ross • 1st May 2010 • Learning • business, consulting, dubai, work
Consulting can add huge value to organisations. Note the use of ‘can’: my claim is deliberately conditional. When done badly, consulting can knock value off firms. That is the point made well by this piece from The Tech. Although you must always be sceptical about the tone of articles such as this, especially when the paint a picture of personal moral superiority, it does contain some passages that will ring true from most consultants, like this:
This leads to what I like to call, “Find me a rock” problems. The classic “find me a rock” story is as follows: A manager goes to his engineer one day and asks for a rock. “A rock?” asks the engineer. “Yes, a rock. That isn’t going to be a problem, is it?” replies the manager. The engineer laughs and tells the manager he’ll go pick one up during his lunch break and it will be no problem. After lunch, the manager visits the engineer again and the engineer shows him the rock. The manager looks at it for a moment before telling the engineer, “No, that one won’t work at all. I need a rock.”
“Find me a rock” problems sound dead simple, but in actuality have requirements that are poorly stated or unknown. You never know what you’re looking for; you only know that you’ll know it when you see it.
If only badly specified requests were limited to consulting.
Ross • 8th Apr 2010 • Learning • business, economics, industry, piracy
Piracy has an established business model, a developing management lexicon, a developing literature, and its own public relations. A rum comment on the FT’s story asks:
How long before they’re talking about “a new parrot-digm” or “a raft of new initiatives” to “take piracy into the twenty-first century” ?
Ross • 18th Mar 2010 • Learning, Thinking • business, charter cities, ecological, economics, green, work
I have just come across Harvard Business Review‘s summary of ideas to watch in 2010. It’s great. Best bits:
- A Charter Cities plug
- It turns out that workers value progress in their workplaces. They like to hit project milestones and get stuff done. Managers don’t realise this.
- Short discussion of green bond financing for ecological building retro-fits.
There is also an ethically dubious encouragement to ‘hack work’. While I think this is valid in some cases, I don’t think it is a model that one should promote. In a good organisation, it shouldn’t be necessary, and the ideas that need to be promoted are those that fix the organisation, not learn to work around it more cunningly.
Ross • 7th Nov 2009 • Learning • books, business, business school, education, harvard, MBA, reading
I have just finished reading Philip Delves Broughton’s book on the topic (called Ahead of the Curve in the US). I loved the book: it’s one of the best reads of my year. It has also made me want to go to HBS. I think that the school comes across as a place that teaches well and broadly, that strives for a balance of the academic and the social, and which, fundamentally, tries hard. It’s a shame that in his subsequent work, Broughton appears to blame MBAs for the failures of the world economic system. Taking such a position turns him from an interesting outsider with a fresh perspective to a caricature of a bitter critic peddling exposé. It’s not clever.
Ross • 27th Oct 2009 • Learning • advice, business, presentations, strategy
In a chapter of Winning that appeals to the consultant in me, Jack Welch thinks that you can sum up strategy in five slides.
- What the Playing Field Looks Like Now
- Who are the competitors in the business, large and small, new and old?
- Who has what share, globally and in each market?
- What are the characteristics of this business? Is it commodity or high value or somewhere in beteen? Is it long cycle or short? Where is it on the growth curve? What are the drivers of profitability?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor? How good are their products? How much does each one spend on R&D? How big is each sales force? How performance-driven is each culture?
- Who are this business’s main customers, and how do they buy?
- What the Competition Has Been Up To
- What has each competitor done in the past year to change the playing field?
- Has anyone introduced game-changing new products, new technologies, or a new distribution channel?
- Are there any new entrants, and what have they been up to in the past year?
- What You’ve Been Up To
- What have you done in the past year to change the competitive playing field?
- Have you bought a company, introduced a new product, stolen a competitor’s key salesperson, or licensed a new technology from a start-up?
- Have you lost any competitive advantages that you once had – a great salesperson, a special product, a proprietary technology?
- What’s Around the Corner
- What scares you most in the year ahead – what one or two things could a competitor do to nail you?
- What new products or technologies could your competitors launch that might change the game?
- What M&A deals would knock you off your feet?
- What’s Your Winning Move?
- What can you do to change the playing field – is it an acquisition, a new product, globalisation?
- What can you do to make customers stick to you more than before and more than to anyone else?
If you run all or part of a large business, buy this book, of which Warren Buffett says: “No other management book will ever be needed.” Now to try and apply this thinking to public policy…
Ross • 8th Oct 2009 • Learning • buffett, business, finance, investing, investment, shares, stock market, stocks
Very slowly, I am learning about investment and investing. I do believe that investing requires learning: I am firmly in the ‘value’ school. From the various books I have read and people to whom I have spoken, this is the wisdom I have distilled to date, with sources and my subsequent embellishments.
- Never invest what you can’t afford to lose. From Caleb Loom, my grandfather. You need an income, and you need shelter. Don’t do anything that jeopardises this. Your investment baseline should not be zero, nor should you consider all your assets as part of your portfolio.
- Invest on the basis of fundamental value. From Benjamin Graham. Every system is phoney, every day-trader a gambler. Patience is not only a virtue, but a competitive advantage.
- Diversification reduces your potential for large losses, but also your potential for large gains. From Warren Buffett (who put it more succinctly, “When your advisor tells you to diversify, he’s telling you he doesn’t know what he’s talking about”). Note that (as John Kay would argue) diversification is the best way to ensure modest growth – but by prioritising the need for diversifying your portfolio, you are adding another reason to buy a stock: for the sake of diversity. This is one reason too many. The only reason you should have is because it’s a good stock.
- Hammer down your investment costs. From John Kay. Fees and charges eat your return. Buy and sell smartly – take advantage of deals, buy in bulk. Try for a maximum 1% annual overhead.
I hope to learn much, much more, but this isn’t a bad start.
Ross • 26th Aug 2009 • Living • business, filesharing, internet, law, p2p, sweden
“You are not supposed to buy an illegal site,” he said. “This is out-of-the-box thinking.”
That’s Hans Pandeya of Global Gaming Factory, on the decision to purchase filesharing site The Pirate Bay for £4.3m, via BBC News.
