At a DIY store like Lowe's or Home Depot all customers see themselves and others as experts of some sort. So as the tornado is at the front door and Lowe's managers are trying to get everyone to the rear of the store and safety, a customer yells that "this is no tornado" and peopleContinue reading “How did Lowe’s at Raleigh NC save customers from the tornado? Store manager as ship captain”
Category Archives: Corporate Social Responsibility
Deja vu 1982- well not entirely for Tylenol with FDA consent decree
The makers of Tylenol have a consent decree with FDA who will be additional supervisors at three of their plants for primarily following good manufacturing practices. No one has died but sort of brings back memories of the 1982 Tylenol crisis that had almost passed onto history in marketing classrooms. This time the situation seemsContinue reading “Deja vu 1982- well not entirely for Tylenol with FDA consent decree”
“Worst” companies need to improve their websites: Fortune Most Admired Companies
Tonight those companies which made it to the top spots in each Fortune best category are churning out PR news releases , justly proud of their accomplishments. Those who appear in the “worst” list would be hiding or don’t even know it,I guess.For starters, those companies judged as “worst” should get their websites better organized. When I went to one such “worst” company’s website I was totally surprised to encounter all kinds of slow flash introductions, random pop ups and even a spam video!
[Note: This post is from March 3, 2011 and was updated for formatting on May 19, 2021]
Libya- is it time for private initiative to help Build,Operate,Transfer (BOT) democracy ?
One was aghast at seeing Libyan diplomats defect the Gaddafi Government. Diplomats are usually very circumspect folks and this brings up the idea of private initiatives to Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) democracies in entire parts of he world. Seems like an unusual business idea but by the time official folks in the UN andContinue reading “Libya- is it time for private initiative to help Build,Operate,Transfer (BOT) democracy ?”
Why do you cover glass buildings with fishing net – in India? -To balance democracy with business-
By the time (this post from January 2011) I figured this one out, our favorite taxi-cab company cab had reached the Hyderabad,India airport and I missed taking a picture. This was one image that should have appeared in this “New Year” post. Anyway let me explain why 20-50 floor glass buildings were covered with aContinue reading “Why do you cover glass buildings with fishing net – in India? -To balance democracy with business-“
Microfinance problems in the developing world – let’s look at the math
Last month (in 2010) this blog had reported about the microfinance industry problems and now there is a story in the NY Times . Let’s get the math straight- if you hire a CEO at a salary of 0.5 Million $/year and the the typical loan you give out is $200 at let us say 10 % ( rates for microfinance loans are reported at 30-70%) you make 20 $ a customer on interest. Just to make up the CEO salary you need 25,000 good microloans and this number would be about 10 thousand loans if you went up on the interest rate. If you counted the whole other administrative costs of putting loan officers in every village the number of loanees needed to break even would sky-rocket.That’s hard (find “good” loans to give out) for a populous country like India, very hard for less populated Latin America and truly difficult in many sparsely populated parts of Africa.
[Note: This post from November 19, 2010 was updated on May 31, 2021 for formatting issues]
Ahead of President Obama India visit- India signs IAEA treaty to limit nuclear accident liability to operators
The Indian nuclear power equipment market is estimated (October 2010) at 175 Billion $ and both GE and Westinghouse are very interested in supplying nuclear power equipment. Worrying potential US suppliers, Indian lawmakers in August had passed a law that might have made equipment suppliers liable for 80 years in case there was an accident and faulty equipment was to blame. Obviously the memories of Bhopal don’t fade and a nuclear leak like Chernobyl would be catastrophic in densely populated India.
[Note: This post is from October 27, 2010 and was edited for formatting on May 22, 2021]
Robo-signing foreclosure mess – applying auto assembly Taylor logic to services?
Fredrick Taylor famously did “time and motion” studies to improve productivity in the automobile industry. The American auto worker, pressured to produce more – did always honestly give a bolt the number of turns required. We seem to not understand how or if Taylor’s principles apply to the service economy. It now turns out thatContinue reading “Robo-signing foreclosure mess – applying auto assembly Taylor logic to services?”
Google to build off-shore wind energy transmission lines
Google’s foray into promoting the building of off-shore transmission lines for wind energy farms off the US East Coast is a great idea. Googe does this with a 37.5% stake (alongwith Good Energies and Marubeni Corporation ) in the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) project of Trans-Elect .Trans-Elect is the implementing organization for AWC.
[ Note this post is from October 12, 2010 and is updated for formatting on May 19, 2021
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ” does not apply to Infrastructure renewal policy for gas pipes, bridges
// <![CDATA[ // <![CDATA[ // &lt;![CDATA[ var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([&#39;_setAccount&#39;, &#39;UA-857684-6&#39;]); _gaq.push([&#39;_trackPageview&#39;]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(&#39;script&#39;); ga.type = &#39;text/javascript&#39;; ga.async = true; ga.src = (&#39;https:&#39; == document.location.protocol ? &#39;https://ssl&#39; : &#39;http://www&#39;) + &#39;.google-analytics.com/ga.js&#39;; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(&#39;script&#39;)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); // ]]&gt; // ]]> // ]]> We are all carefulContinue reading ““If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ” does not apply to Infrastructure renewal policy for gas pipes, bridges”