Economic issues in Europe have dominated the news over the last few days. Greece is in real danger of going bust; years of corruption, government overspending, and tax avoidance are coming home to roost.
Will the EU — Germany and France in part…
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We are now no more than 4 months away from a general election in the UK; it must be held by June 3rd, although under our system the government can choose the specific date within this timeframe. The strong favorite is May 6th, which would mean combi…
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Over the last several weeks we blogged on running phone surveys with InstantLoop, and doing basic research on consumer-purchase behavior with Bundle. This week we’ll look at a low-tech option for simple reverse eAuctions.
– Ryder Daniels, Capsaicin…
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According to a recent piece over on Supply Chain Digest that chronicled the Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010, this will be the year of CUTS: Consolidation, Uncertainty, Training, and Specialization. In other words, the year will be pretty bleak. We’re already at the point where, with the exception of BIQ’s inclusion of a new Computed Measures Language as part of their spend/data analysis package , I haven’t seen anything truly innovative on the technology side in over a year. I’ve seen lots of great stuff, but …
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Spend Matters believes that in 2010 transparency — not simply compliance management or supplier on-boarding — will begin to rule the supplier management focus. In recent years, many organizations have begun their supplier information management jou…
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A recent article in Logistics Management titled 2010: Loads of Innovation chronicled some of the new lift truck product introductions on the slate for 2010. Now, lift trucks might seem like a pretty boring topic, but they are the little workhorses of your physical supply chains, and if any of the improvements can improve efficiency, then they’re worthwhile. So what improvements are coming? Better Information Management More monitoring devices tied to better fleet management systems that track numerous metrics on lift truck utilization that can be used to create better fleet allocations. …
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A recent article over on Chief Executive on the 7 mistakes people make that kill their business made some great points, but when I saw the title, all I could think was only seven?The article pointed out these 7 classic mistakes that so many business owners make that often result in the demise of their business: Doing Too Much Yourself As the article notes, this will bog you down in day-to-day issues and fire-fighting and take you away from managing the core business and long term strategy. And considering you will not be well …
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I’ve been following the rather hostile takeover of Cadbury by Kraft for months now, just waiting for the hammer to fall. And this week it did. 400 Cadbury’s workers sacked after Kraft confirms factory will close just ONE WEEK after U.S. firm promised to keep it open. I guess that says it all. For a history of the takeover (bid), here are direct links to some of the more relevant articles over the past few months: …
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The MIT Technology Review just published a great post on the physics arXiv blog that covered some recent research from Maksim Kitsak et. al. that found that the best connected individuals are NOT the most influential spreaders in social networks. In a social network, most of the nodes (people) are not linked to each other, but most can still be reached by a small number of steps, according to the small worlds network theory. (In fact, recent research indicates that the average separation is now less than 5, and not 6.) In these networks, some nodes are …
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Last Saturday, I pointed out a recent article on how students [are] failing because of Twitter, texting, covered in this CNet video which asks does Twitter make you stoopid?. The article pointed out that, at the world renowned University of Waterloo, thirty percent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level, a failure rate that has increased five percentage points in the past few years. The cause, according to experts in the field, is “cellphone texting and social networking”, which are collectively degrading writing skills. And as we all know, Twitter combines …
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