Nau Is Then

The hip green clothing label with an unconventional approach to style, materials, and retailing calls it quits. What went wrong?

BusinessWeek, May 16, 2008 — When the founders of Portland (Ore.)-based Nau first came together in 2005 to lay the groundwork for a sustainable fashion company, their strict eco-principles and innovative e-tailing strategy appeared to be ideas whose time had come. Its stylishly minimal clothes in muted colors, made of sustainable materials such as organic cotton and recycled polyester, went on sale in 2007 and appealed to outdoorsy types and city dwellers, tapping into the growing green fashion trend. Nau's few bricks-and-mortar stores were eco-friendly showcases for products, but customers were encouraged to buy online with a 10% discount. And as part of the company's social enterprise initiative, 5% of all sales—from a $38 tank top to a pair of $138 "lean jeans"—were handed over... continue reading

MindShare Moves Beyond Buying, Planning†

Restructures to Build IP, Create Branded Content and Take On McKinsey

Advertising Age, April 17, 2008 — WPP's MindShare has launched a wholesale restructuring of its business — effectively splitting the agency into four distinct units — designed to move the shop beyond planning and buying, and create new revenue streams from content and intellectual property creation and McKinsey-style business consulting.

The global reorganization, the first in MindShare's 11-year history, comes as at a time when commoditization of media buying is a real threat, as procurement executives and the requirement for transparency in terms of costs have enabled clients to squeeze media agencies' margins to such an extent that many are often left making only a couple of percentage points on marketers' media expenditures — media expenditures that are themselves often flat, or... continue reading

Google and Salesforce Join to Fight Microsoft

New York Times, April 14, 2008 — Google and Salesforce.com, two of Microsoft’s most conspicuous rivals, are expanding a 10-month-old collaboration in an effort to accelerate their sales of customer management and office software to businesses.

On Monday, the two companies will announce that they have integrated Salesforce’s customer relationship management software and Google’s suite of office productivity applications, which includes e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets programs, into a single software package.

Life on the Edge: Learning from Facebook

The social network provides important lessons for executives—and a key forum for innovation and experimentation

BusinessWeek, April 2, 2008 — For most business executives, Facebook remains a remote, somewhat mysterious, online frontier. Many executives harbor strong doubts that Facebook is at all relevant to "real business." After all, isn't it just a bunch of college kids sharing photos of drinking exploits and trying to hook up with each other?

Let's start with the stats. Facebook now brings together 66 million online users. While many of these users are students and recent graduates, users 35 years old and older account for more than half of Facebook's daily visitors and are the network's most rapidly growing demographic. Currently the average Facebook visitor spends about 2.5 hours per month on the site, which was founded in February, 2004, and was valued at $15 billion three years later... continue reading

McDonald's Takes On a Weakened Starbucks†

Food Giant to Install Specialty Coffee Bars, Sees $1 Billion Business

Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2008 — This fall, a McDonald's here added a position to its crew: barista.

McDonald's is setting out to poach Starbucks customers with the biggest addition to its menu in 30 years. Starting this year, the company's nearly 14,000 U.S. locations will install coffee bars with "baristas" serving cappuccinos, lattes, mochas and the Frappe, similar to Starbucks' ice-blended Frappuccino.

Internal documents from 2007 say the program, which also will add smoothies and bottled beverages, will add $1 billion to McDonald's annual sales of $21.6 billion.

Embrace the Edge -- or Perish

The periphery of today's global business environment is where innovation potential is the highest. Ignore it at your peril

BusinessWeek, December 12, 2007 — Most all of us are familiar with the concept of "the edge"—and not only because we're fans of U2's superb guitarist who goes by that name. Edges are the peripheries of the global business environment, the places where innovation potential is the highest. In today's fast-moving business world, playing on the edge increasingly is the best way to gain an edge.

Edges define and describe the borders of companies, markets, industries, geographies, intellectual disciplines, and generations. They are the places where unmet customer needs find unexpected solutions, where disruptive innovations and blue oceans get birthed, and where edge capabilities transform the core competencies of the corporation.

Where Designers Rule

Electronics maker Bang & Olufsen doesn't ask shoppers what they want. Its faith is in its design gurus

BusinessWeek, November 5, 2007 — Torsten Valeur, one of Bang & Olufsen's top designers, sits in a windowless room in Gumi, South Korea, staring dumbfounded at a group of Samsung Electronics engineers and thinks, "Oh, s---." Valeur is designing a new high-end cell phone for B&O, the Danish company known for its cutting-edge consumer electronics, and Samsung, a partner providing mobile-phone technology. Valeur, here for a routine three-day product-update meeting, has just received terrible news. Without telling him, the Samsung engineers changed the screen on his phone from 2.1 inches to 2 in. Why? Because 2-in. screens are standard, and that's what is in stock. Worse, they've gone ahead and ordered thousands

Is Avon's Latest Scent Sweet Smell of Success?†

Bold Moves, High-Touch-Meets-High-Tech Business Model Help CEO Andrea Jung Boost Sales of Sluggish Company

Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2007 — Two years ago, Avon chief Andrea Jung faced some tough decisions. Growth was slowing in the company's most important global markets, its stock plunging. Famed for its door-to-door sales, Avon found itself with the venerable business model faltering in the U.S. even as it prospered in developing markets. And the company was saddled with a crowded stable of products and far too many managers.

In November 2005, Ms. Jung told investors she was willing to make bold changes. She announced plans to spend $500 million over several years restructuring. Since then, Avon has cut employee ranks by 10% and management by nearly 30%. She cut back on the number of products Avon catalogs offer, devoting more space to the most successful products and eliminating the rest.... continue reading

Caterpillar: Big trucks, big sales, big attitude

Big Yellow is thriving. But there are big headaches too, and competition is getting tougher. So Caterpillar is revamping its operations. The big risk: Will the wheels fall off?

FORTUNE, August 13, 2007 — Bugs. From the rim of the vast open pit, the trucks, bulldozers and road scrapers far below look like scuttling yellow insects. Descend the dirt ramps that spiral a third of a mile down to the floor of the pit, though, and those bugs are transformed into Caterpillars - as in the ubiquitous machines that are as much a feature of the mining landscape as muck.

Can the Washington Post survive?

Newspapers are dying. At the Washington Post Co., CEO Donald Graham is banking on the Internet to save serious journalism. If he can't figure this out, nobody can.

FORTUNE, August 6, 2007 — Barry Svrluga, a 36-year-old baseball writer for The Washington Post, was on his way to the barber when an e-mail pinged his BlackBerry telling him that the Washington Nationals had sent two struggling pitchers to the minor leagues. Svrluga detoured to Starbucks, wrote a 572-word commentary on his laptop and posted it to his blog, Nationals Journal at washingtonpost.com. After his haircut he swung by the Post's newsroom to do a live question-and-answer session online with fans. That night, after filing a story for the newspaper, which he calls the "$0.35 edition" in his blog, Svrluga recorded a ten-minute podcast for the Web site, with sound bites from team officials and players.

Like most reporters at the Post, Svrluga has become platform-agnostic,... continue reading