Monday, June 29, 2009

Scientific Publishers -- trouble on the horizon...

This topic hits pretty close to home for the 108Warren Commission family, as Mrs. 108Warren Commission works for a leading academic/scientific publisher...

Michael Nielsen in his blog posted an excellent piece on the nature of disruptive technologies and their impact. He starts with a discussion of why Industries fail -- and pointing out that while it is easy to claim that the leaders of those industries that are failing are either stupid or malevolent (his terminology), that is rarely the case. Instead, he points out that it is the development of a disruptive technology that opens new opportunities that successful firms are blind to, as a result of the nature of what has made them successful.

He follows this up with evidence that the same forces are now at play in the Scientific Publishing industry. He points to the development of successful science blogs in which serious levels of research are being discussed, and lists a number of additional examples.

I don't disagree with Mr. Nielsen's premise -- in fact, I think his point about the impact of disruptive technology and its role in the failure (past or impending) of leading companies and industries is perhaps one of the most important and under-reported issues in both traditional and new media today.

What is missing from his essay is any discussion of the atmosphere that drives the publication of scientific papers -- the publish or perish paradigm in higher education. While it may not eliminate the risk that Mr. Nielsen has sketched out, this significant externality will certainly play a role in how this industry copes with technological disruption.

Here is a simple link to Mr. Nielsen's article: http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=629.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Is the TV Business doomed...?

I'm a bit late in finding this, but this link: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-analysts-begin-to-realize-that-theres-no-way-to-save-television-2009-6 is to a provocative article whose premise is that the TV business as we know it is in roughly the same position that the newspaper business was in back around 2002. Take a quick look, I'll wait...

OK, now that you've read it, what do you think?

While it certainly makes for an interesting story, I am not sure that the analogy works. There are too many differences between TV and Newspapers.

Still, if I were Brian Roberts, or if I were working for him, I would be looking at alternative methods to monetize the delivery of unique content.

But the problem is not just theirs. The reality is that if people are not willing to pay for good content, then they will get exactly what they pay for... Tanstaafl --There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. While everyone bemoans the death of the newspapers, I wonder where the average reader expects to get his/her independently reported news once that happens. At current rates, the internet news economy is not generating enough income to pay dedicated reporters...

Food for thought...

Monday, June 22, 2009

A great post over at Entrepreneur in the Making...

Aspiring entrepreneurs should definitely take a quick look at this post over at Breaking the 9 to 5 Jail (Entrepreneur in the Making).

It is the story of the poster's first venture, and what he learned from its failure... It is part of a series, so I would expect other great posts to follow.

Aside from the lessons he lists, it is clear that he learned two additional lessons, and in my opinion they are the most important ones.

The first lesson he learned is that new businesses do fail -- even when they are based on really good ideas. The second lesson that he clearly learned was to keep on going.

The numbers are staggeringly ugly when considering starting a new business. The fact is, most new businesses fail. More interestingly, almost every successful business that started from scratch, was started by someone who had already failed once.

Here is the clear link: http://breakingthe9to5jail.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-failure-at-14-and-what-i

Enjoy.

UPDATED: Great minds apparently think alike -- clicked away from here and ran almost immediately into an ad for Honda entitled: Failure -- the Secret to Success. Here is a link to the video the ad leads to -- it is pretty short, and worth watching... http://dreams.honda.com/#/video_fa

Sunday, June 21, 2009

National Health Care, coming soon...?

In new poll numbers collected over the past week, the New York Times is showing that 72% of respondents are in favor of a government-run health care plan. Even more shocking -- 50% of Republicans were in favor of this.

See the original article here -- NYT Poll on Government Health Care.

This would have been astounding to me a few years back, but after wrestling with health care costs at my last company, and then shopping for private health care while starting my new business over the past 6 months, I am not that surprised.

Because I left my prior employer at the end of the year, and had to make the Cobra Election decision before the stimulus package was signed, I was not eligible for the low cost Cobra option in time to take advantage of it. Instead, I had the dubious pleasure of shopping for personal health insurance. In the end, it didn't take that long to find coverage, but the coverage options were terrible, and the costs were/are very high. I settled on a low end plan with very limited prescription coverage, and still spend almost $500/month to cover myself and a child.

I would imagine that challenges like that are behind the poll results that CBS news and the NYT found. It wasn't that much better when purchasing insurance in a small business -- there is only so long that companies can absorb 8-15% annual premium increases before even diehrd libertarians are willing to accept a government progam.

It will be very interesting to see if other polls find similar responses, and if so, where the debate goes from here...

Stay tuned...

Friday, June 19, 2009

The Law of Unintended Consequenses strikes again...

This link is to a great piece in Roll Call on June 15th about the impact of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), and the unintended consequences that this law has generated...

I have commented on this before a number of times -- the law is overreaching, under-informed, and will absolutely put a large number of small businesses out of business.

If you sell or make a product that could be marketed for use by children 12 and under, even if it is a reseller that is marketing to this group, this law applies. Not only that, but any violation is required to be reported within 24 hours, and may be criminal...

Worst of all, each state's Attorney General is now empowered to independently prosecute under this law.

Here is another link to the same piece in Roll Call...

And here is a link to another piece on CPSIA from CNN Money.

Lastly is a piece from Overlawyered.com -- a great site in general -- on the whole CPSIA debacle you can find here.

State Spending Transparency Hearing

State Spending Transparency Hearing

This is a great post from across the Delaware where they are debating a bill on making spending by the Commonwealth transparent to taxpayers...

I was particularly interested in the note from the testimony from the former Chief of Staff to the Governor of Missouri, who noted that their web portal had more than 20 Million hits, and that constituents had already identified savings for the state. All this, and according to him, the site was built with current staff and no additional funding.

In an era of fiscal distress, this would seem to be a natural way to improve government... and yet there is significant opposition. The more things change...

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Graphic view of the current bailout....

I ran across this post today, and was left with my jaw hanging open... Go ahead and take a look, I'll wait...

Back? Good. Now for those of you who didn't feel like clicking, it was a graphic representation of the costs of the programs enacted over the last 12 months to combat the financial crisis as compared with some of the largest single item expenditures in our country's history -- like the Apollo program, the Korean War, and the New Deal, to name a few...

He did adjust the numbers for inflation, but a quick review of the comments shows that there is some significant disagreement over whether to value "investment" activity, like TARP funds that will be repaid as sunk costs...

I won't debate that here, except to say, that not valuing them ignores the fact that they are being paid for with Debt, which will have to be paid back with interest...

The only quibble that I have with the graph is that the author has assigned a value to the New Deal that I don't think is completely accurate... In the comments, the author mentions opportunity costs as part of the justification of calculating the costs of the recent programs, but I am not sure that the same opportunity costs were used in calculating the historical costs. Social Security is an ever-growing expense that came out of the New Deal -- and I don't think that he is including the current and expected costs from this program.

That said, the dollar amounts are staggering... The government is/will be issuing tremendous amounts of debt to cover these costs, and that is not something to be taken lightly...

Have these programs kept the economy from getting even worse? Quite possibly...but the bigger question is whether the costs of these programs will cause more pain in the long haul then the immediate pain would have been had they not been enacted.

Chancevs

Gold for sale -- at what real cost....?

So apparently the Germans have a strong desire to buy gold, and an entrepreneur is looking to help them out by placing Gold-vending machines in train stations all over Germany...

If this is true - and this article is from the Financial Times -- then folks in the EU should be pretty nervous about the long term health of their economy.

Germany is the largest economy in the EU, and of course in the Euro zone. If German citizens are anxious enough to replace their individual currency holdings and Euro-denominated investments with personal holdings in gold that is a serious issue. Not only is this indicative of terrible consumer confidence, which would be an albatross around the neck of the economy, but it poses a risk to the value of the Euro, which would have an impact on the entire Euro zone.

Granted, one entrepreneur setting out to sell gold in small lots does not a crisis make, but if there is real market demand for this type of "investment" then I would add it to the list of reasons to be nervous about holding Euro-denominated investments.

Also -- wouldn't this be an invitation to petty larcenists of to camp out near the machines?

Here is a link to the article in the Financial Times: Link

Just thinking out loud...

ChanceVS