Henry Phish

Unfortunately It’s taking me a while to put together my A Change In the Process articles. As it goes, I’ve gotten busy with job searching these days, so the site has fallen a little by the wayside, but expect a new article by the middle of next week. I’ll keep you posted.

Also, of interest on this Hallows Eve. Honda has a interesting ad campaign running right now for the Honda Fit. There’s online ads, television commercials, a video game, and the site. Kind of fun. Check it out:

Honda Fuelivores Campaign Official Site
Television Commercials

An interesting video piece on the impact of the recession on a per state basis. Interestingly enough, the midwest, including Minnesota, has been less impacted by recession than states on the coasts. Also note New Hampshire…why New Hampshire? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to find out.

Recession map: Which states have been hit the hardest?

During times of economic hardship, companies tend to take a look at themselves and begin to reassess. Most try to cut costs, reduce labor, and many try to realign their corporate ideals, thinking, and processes. From this reassessment comes the promise of success, since once the company has realigned, and the economy has righted itself, it should be in a better position to take advantage of the market.

That said, I’ve been watching a lot of process evolution in the last few months, and have come across a few key areas that are having a big impact on business and the marketplace at large. Similar to the technology revolution of the eighties and nineties, these changes in thinking and process are leading to some drastic evolutions in technology…so much so that we could be looking at a whole new technological revolution within the next five to ten years.

Over the next few posts, I’ll be talking about specific case examples, including the evolution of the internet with the adoption of cloud computing, the evolution of green technology with advancements in solar cells, the evolution of the automobiles with the creation of the GM Volt, and the current trend in separation between design and manufacturing using AMD and Apple as examples.

Hopefully over the course of these articles, we’ll stumble upon some emerging ideas and get a better grasp of the overarching themes heading into the next generation of business.

With people desperate for cash these days, identity theft is a growing concern. I had it happen to me just last week.

According to the article:
High-tech crooks have begun stealing account numbers and PINs from drivers who pay at automated gas pumps. It’s part of a national crime trend that probably originated on the West Coast this year and recently appeared locally.

But new matchbox-size versions of the gadgets fit onto gas pump card readers without being noticeable and copy the numbers without compromising the transaction. New skimmers sometimes even contain tiny cameras that record drivers entering personal identification numbers.

I don’t really use my cash card much except to get money and an occasional gas fill up. Luckily I caught it early and was able to get my card canceled. It’s good to take precautions, especially as crooks are finding new and creative ways of getting your information. Also, in times like these you really don’t want people messing with your money.

People do get smart when their desperate.

So about a month or so ago I ordered the IBM Global CEO Study from IBM. It’s an easy, and fairly casual read of 76 pages, but it’s got a lot of good informative studies, and you get a good feel for what CEO’s at the top and bottom of their respective fields are facing in the business world today.

Among the topics covered are:

Hungry For Change

Financial outperformers are making bolder plays. These companies anticipate more change, and manage it better. They are also more global in their business designs, partner more extensively and choose more disruptive forms of business model innovation.

Overall, it’s an interesting report, especially for people in companies going through transition, since it gives a good overview of how companies of various sizes have learned to grow and react to change. It’s also a good reference for this site, since it touches on many of the topics I’ve covered in the past six months, as well as many of the articles I continue to write about on a daily basis. I would encourage you to check it out.

IBM Global CEO Study: The Enterprise of the Future

Here’s an article that talks about plug-in electric vehicles, including the Camry Hybrid, Volt, and Tesla. While Chevy looks good in specs, the article brings up a lot of good points about adoption of these vehicles. At an entry level price of $30,000, these vehicles aren’t cheap, and I’m suspecting that fuel efficient combustion engines will continue to be the norm for the next five to ten years.

Still, looking back at history, once these trends happen, they happen quickly. The age old Intel axiom that the number of transistors able to be fit on a chip doubles every two years, thus increasing the speed of the computer processor exponentially is a good example. As technology changes and is adopted in other parts of the industry, this technology will gain a wider acceptance and will more than likely have a stronger adoption rate by both consumers and corporations alike.

All things considered, with a shake up in the economy like we’re having right now, there are going to be a lot of changes in processes happening in the corporate workplace. Down turns in the economy always means big changes for corporations, and as technology adapts, we’re going to be seeing a lot of changes happening there as well. It may be that this is the beginning of a new technology boom, and while I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow, there are some big things happening right now that make this look like a possibility. Stay tuned and I’ll see what I can dig up.

Power Outage

This is just pretty and disturbing and kind of odd, but it gets the point across. Reminds me of the Last Tree in a Museum commercial I saw growing up. I’m not really sure what Quercus is, but it sounds like some kind of environmental organization and typing their name into a web browser comes up with this. If this is at all related to JJ Abrahms, please let me know.

Quercus Global Warming Video

Kind of an interesting article, and something that kind of lends itself to marketing. I know businesses change quite a bit when catering to differing cultural demographics such as stores and businesses in states with high Mexican-American influences such as California, but I wonder how much this is reflected in state by state demographics? If you believe this article, it would make some amount of sense to market differently to these groups.

Regional Personality Traits Differ by State

I saw an article this morning about GM’s suspension of employee stock purchases in their 401k programs. It seems that with the recent dip in the stock price and the renewed excitement about the companies future, a higher number of employees than usual have been enrolling to buy stock from the plan and have bought up all the shares.

It’s really telling of how high expectations at this company are for the future of GM, and it’s also telling of their management. Your workforce generally knows before everyone else what the general disposition of the company is by how much they respect their managements decision making, and while it isn’t always always a good indicator of the overall success of the company, in this case, I think they have a lot to be excited about.

With changes to their product line such as upgrading the Malibu, the Chevy Volt, Cruze, and overseas investments, this company is starting to see signs of life that it hasn’t seen in years.

According to the article, management cannot buy or dispose of any GM equity securities that were acquired in connection with their employment. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act generally prohibits directors and officers from trading in their company’s stock when most participants in the company’s stock plans are not able to purchase or sell stock.

It looks like they’re in this for the long haul.

GM suspends stock purchases in employee plans

I caught a video on Yahoo! Finance that talks about our current financial crisis in relation to world trends over the past few years. They mention how a large percentage of the population has been making more money (in some cases billions of dollars), and they also talk a little bit about the stock drop a couple of days ago (Sept 29, 2008)…the one in which 499 of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500 fell except for Campbell Soup. They also break apart the economy a little bit and compare our current situation with historical events such as the great depression, an era in which the government was required to step in and mandate regulations on the economy…namely Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Some background on the great depression helps a little to get the full effect:
…the New Deal merely introduced types of social and economic reform familiar to many Europeans for more than a generation. Moreover, the New Deal represented the culmination of a long-range trend toward abandonment of “laissez-faire” capitalism, going back to the regulation of the railroads in the 1880s, and the flood of state and national reform legislation…

What was truly novel about the New Deal, however, was the speed with which it accomplished what previously had taken generations. In fact, many of the reforms were hastily drawn and weakly administered; some actually contradicted others. And during the entire New Deal era, public criticism and debate were never interrupted or suspended; in fact, the New Deal brought to the individual citizen a sharp revival of interest in government.

When Roosevelt took the presidential oath, the banking and credit system of the nation was in a state of paralysis. With astonishing rapidity the nation’s banks were first closed — and then reopened only if they were solvent. The administration adopted a policy of moderate currency inflation to start an upward movement in commodity prices and to afford some relief to debtors. New governmental agencies brought generous credit facilities to industry and agriculture. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured savings-bank deposits up to $5,000, and severe regulations were imposed upon the sale of securities on the stock exchange.

It’s interesting to note that Campbells soup is the only stock to go up on Monday, and it seems to indicate that people are moving their money to safer ground. Staple goods always tend to do well even in a bad economy, since everyone needs to eat.

Goodbye $1 Billion Salary, Hello Campbell Soup

Bailout, Take II: What the Feds Do Next