Corporate
Innovating Coffee in a weakening economy
Aug 3rd
With soaring fuel prices, the $4 cuppa is probably unattractive as ‘everyday coffee‘. Starbucks plans to close 600 stores laying off 12000 employees. Downsizing and cost-cutting are popular moves exercised by Top Management to control costs in a receding economy. In most cases, the innovation function is also hurt badly owing to budget cuts and lay-offs, making way for quick and easy solutions that apparently, improve the upcoming quarter’s bottomline. But, in a weakening economy, should innovation really stall?
A while ago I wrote a piece about innovating around cost that is certainly one approach to the problem. Indeed this is a good time for More >
Changes
Aug 3rd
Changes; the world around us is changing. It always did, but it seems, that in the 21st century, the frequency of these changes is getting higher and higher. This fact is true looking at the world in general, and true in organizations, specifically.
Organizations change for several reasons: First of all, the business environment outside the organization is changing. The life cycle of products is shrinking. It is true that products can be designed and manufactured, so they last much longer, but people want to renew. They want to renew because they get tired from the existing; they want to renew More >
Corporate Social Responsibility
Jul 2nd
‘Corporate’ – its origin is from a 16th century Latin word ‘corporare’ – to form into one body. On its formation, it starts thriving as a microcosm in the overall societal body mass – the macrocosm. Its production units wherever located draw natural resources from the ecosystems there, while simultaneously introducing certain foreign elements/ new chemicals into them, that are not necessarily beneficial. If it doesn’t behave responsibly, in due course, soil gets degraded, water turns toxic, and air becomes polluted. Its combined effect increases the cost-to-yield ratio of the primary sector activities, which in turn affects the economic conditions of More >