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2014年5月31日 星期六

Business School, Disrupted哈佛商學院的競爭優勢在那兒? 網路教學如何模仿它的社會情境?名師何去何從?

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Credit Minh Uong/The New York Times

If any institution is equipped to handle questions of strategy, it is Harvard Business School, whose professors have coined so much of the strategic lexicon used in classrooms and boardrooms that it’s hard to discuss the topic without recourse to their concepts: Competitive advantage. Disruptive innovation. The value chain.
But when its dean, Nitin Nohria, faced the school’s biggest strategic decision since 1924 — the year it planned its campus and adopted the case-study method as its pedagogical cornerstone — he ran into an issue. Those professors, and those concepts, disagreed.
The question: Should Harvard Business School enter the business of online education, and, if so, how?
Universities across the country are wrestling with the same question — call it the educator’s quandary — of whether to plunge into the rapidly growing realm of online teaching, at the risk of devaluing the on-campus education for which students pay tens of thousands of dollars, or to stand pat at the risk of being left behind.
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Harvard Business School faced a choice between different models of online instruction. Prof. Michael Porter favored the development of online courses that would reflect the school’s existing strategy. Credit David De la Paz/European Press Photo Agency
At Harvard Business School, the pros and cons of the argument were personified by two of its most famous faculty members. For Michael Porter, widely considered the father of modern business strategy, the answer is yes — create online courses, but not in a way that undermines the school’s existing strategy. “A company must stay the course,” Professor Porter has written, “even in times of upheaval, while constantly improving and extending its distinctive positioning.”
For Clayton Christensen, whose 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” propelled him to academic stardom, the only way that market leaders like Harvard Business School survive “disruptive innovation” is by disrupting their existing businesses themselves. This is arguably what rival business schools like Stanford and the Wharton School have been doing by having professors stand in front of cameras and teach MOOCs, or massive open online courses, free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world. For a modest investment by the school — about $20,000 to $30,000 a course — a professor can reach a million students, says Karl Ulrich, vice dean for innovation at Wharton, part of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Do it cheap and simple,” Professor Christensen says. “Get it out there.”
But Harvard Business School’s online education program is not cheap, simple, or open. It could be said that the school opted for the Porter theory. Called HBX, the program will make its debut on June 11 and has its own admissions office. Instead of attacking the school’s traditional M.B.A. and executive education programs — which produced revenue of $108 million and $146 million in 2013 — it aims to create an entirely new segment of business education: the pre-M.B.A. “Instead of having two big product lines, we may be on the verge of inventing a third,” said Prof. Jay W. Lorsch, who has taught at Harvard Business School since 1964.
Starting last month, HBX has been quietly admitting several hundred students, mostly undergraduate sophomores, juniors and seniors, into a program called Credential of Readiness, or CORe. The program includes three online courses — accounting, analytics and economics for managers — that are intended to give liberal arts students fluency in what it calls “the language of business.” Students have nine weeks to complete all three courses, and tuition is $1,500. Only those with a high level of class participation will be invited to take a three-hour final exam at a testing center.
“We don’t want tourists,” said Jana Kierstead, executive director of HBX, alluding to the high dropout rates among MOOCs. “Our goal is to be very credible to employers.” To that end, graduates will receive a paper credential with a grade: high honors, honors, pass.
“Harvard is going to make a lot of money,” Mr. Ulrich predicted. “They will sell a lot of seats at those courses. But those seats are very carefully designed to be off to the side. It’s designed to be not at all threatening to what they’re doing at the core of the business school.”
Exactly, warned Professor Christensen, who said he was not consulted about the project. “What they’re doing is, in my language, a sustaining innovation,” akin to Kodak introducing better film, circa 2005. “It’s not truly disruptive.”
‘Very Different Places’
Professor Christensen did something “truly disruptive” in 2011, when he found himself in a room with a panoramic view of Boston Harbor. About to begin his lecture, he noticed something about the students before him. They were beautiful, he later recalled. Really beautiful.
“Oh, we’re not students,” one of them explained. “We’re models.”
They were there to look as if they were learning: to appear slightly puzzled when Professor Christensen introduced a complex concept, to nod when he clarified it, or to look fascinated if he grew a tad boring. The cameras in the classroom — actually, a rented space downtown — would capture it all for the real audience: roughly 130,000 business students at the University of Phoenix, which hired Professor Christensen to deliver lectures online.
Why had his boss, Mr. Nohria, given him permission to moonlight? “Because we didn’t have an alternative of our own” online, Mr. Nohria explained.
The dean had taken a wait-and-see approach — until 18 months ago, when his own university announced the formation of edX, an open-courseware platform that would hitch the overall university firmly to the MOOC bandwagon.
He said he remembered listening to an edX presentation at an all-university meeting. “I must confess I was unsure what we’d be really hoping to gain from it,” he said. “My own early imagination was: ‘This is for people who do lectures. We don’t do lectures, so this is not for us.’ ” In the case method, concepts aren’t taught directly, but induced through student discussion of real-world business problems that professors guide with carefully chosen questions.
“Nitin and I are close friends, and we’ve talked about this repeatedly,” Professor Porter said. “I think the big risk in any new technology is to believe the technology is the strategy. Just because 200,000 people sign up doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.” Though Professor Porter published “Strategy and the Internet” in the Harvard Business Review in 2001, before the advent of MOOCs, the article makes his sternest warning about the perils of online recklessness: “A destructive, zero-sum form of competition has been set in motion that confuses the acquisition of customers with the building of profitability.”
Mr. Nohria ultimately chose for the business school to opt out of edX. But this decision forced a question: What should the school do instead? “People came out in very different places,” Mr. Nohria said. “Very different places.”
One morning, he sat down for one of his regular breakfasts with students. “Three of them had just been in Clay’s course,” which had included a case study on the future of Harvard Business School, Mr. Nohria said. “So I asked them, ‘What was the debate like, and how would you think about this?’ They, too, split very deeply.”
Some took Professor Christensen’s view that the school was a potential Blockbuster Video: a high-cost incumbent — students put the total cost of the two-year M.B.A. at around $100,0000 — that would be upended by cheaper technology if it didn’t act quickly to make its own model obsolete. At least one suggested putting the entire first-year curriculum online.
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On the topic of online instruction, Prof. Clayton Christensen said: ‘Do it cheap and simple. Get it out there.” Credit Rick Friedman for The New York Times
Others weren’t so sure. “ ‘This disruption is going to happen,’ ” is how Mr. Nohria described their thinking, “ ‘but it’s going to happen to a very different segment of business education, not to us.’ ” The power of Harvard’s brand, networking opportunities and classroom experience would protect it from the fate of second- and third-tier schools, a view that even Professor Christensen endorses — up to a point.
“We’re at the very high end of the market, and disruption always hits the high end last,” said Professor Christensen, who recently predicted that half of the United States’ universities could face bankruptcy within 15 years.
Mr. Nohria states flatly, “I do not believe our M.B.A. program is at risk.” He concluded that disruption is not always “all or nothing,” and cited the businesses of music and retailing as examples. “In the music business, all record stores are gone,” he said, while in retailing, “it’s not like Amazon has eliminated everything; after those debates, my feeling was that we’re going to be more in that category.”
Still, Mr. Nohria said, he wanted some insurance. “Our beliefs can always turn out to be wrong,” he said. Harvard Business School could not afford to stand on the sidelines. So last summer, he said, he asked the business school’s administrative director, “What would you say if we started a little skunk works around this technology?”
‘Hollywood’ at Harvard
That skunk works, in a low-slung building 300 yards from campus, is not little. It buzzes with 35 full-time staff members — Wharton’s online efforts, by comparison, employ one-half of one staffer, Mr. Ulrich said — who are scrambling to complete a proprietary platform that, after this summer’s limited go-round, could support much larger enrollments.
“Here’s Hollywood,” Ms. Kierstead said on a recent tour, passing an array of video equipment that’s hauled around to film business case-study protagonists on location. Nearby, two digital animators worked on graphics for Professor Christensen’s forthcoming course. Another staff member handled financial aid.
To run HBX with Ms. Kierstead, Mr. Nohria tapped Bharat Anand, 48, a strategy professor who had been researching how traditional media companies have coped, or haven’t, with digital disruption. “I think about those cases a lot,” said Professor Anand, who is also Mr. Nohria’s brother-in-law.
The dean handed him a sheet of six guiding principles, including these: HBX should be economically self-sustaining. It should not substitute for the M.B.A. program. It should seek to replicate the Harvard Business School discussion-based style of learning. This was no easy assignment, Professor Anand conceded.
“What is competitive advantage?” he asked, invoking Professor Porter’s signature theory. “It comes from being fundamentally different. We teach this all the time. But saying it is one thing. Putting it into practice is hard. When everyone is going free, everyone is going with a similar type of platform, it takes courage to do your own thing.”
On campus, Harvard business students face one another in five horseshoe-shaped tiers with oversized name cards. They fight for “airtime” while the professor orchestrates discussion from a central “pit.”
“We don’t do lectures,” Mr. Nohria said. “Part of what had already convinced me that MOOCs are not for us is that for a hundred years our education has been social.”

The challenge was to invent a digital architecture that simulated the Harvard Business School classroom dynamic without looking like a classroom. In a demonstration of a course called economics for managers, the first thing the student sees is the name, background and location — represented by glowing dots on a map — of other students in the course.
A video clip begins. It’s Jim Holzman, chief executive of the ticket reseller Ace Ticket, estimating the supply of tickets for a New England Patriots playoff game: “Where I have a really hard time is trying to figure out what the demand is. We just don’t know how many people are on the sidelines saying, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about going.’ ”
It’s a complex situation meant to get students thinking about a key concept — “the distinction between willingness to pay and price,” Professor Anand said. “Just because something costs zero doesn’t mean people aren’t willing to pay something.” A second case study, on the pay model of The New York Times, drives the point home.
Then a box pops up on the screen with the words “Cold Call.” The student has 30 seconds to a few minutes to type a response to a question and is then prodded to assess comments made by other students. Eventually there is a multiple-choice quiz to gauge mastery of the concept. (This was surprisingly time-consuming to develop, Professor Anand said, because the business school does not give multiple-choice tests.)
At a faculty meeting in April, Professor Anand demonstrated the other two elements of HBX: continuing education for executives and a live forum. He unveiled the existence of a studio, built in collaboration with Boston’s public television station, that allows a professor to stand in a pit before a horseshoe of 60 digital “tiles,” or high-definition screens with the live images and voices of geographically dispersed participants. “I’m proud of our team, and how carefully they’ve thought about it even before they’ve done it,” Professor Porter said.
The Clashing Models
Not everyone was so impressed. Professor Christensen, for one, worried that Harvard was falling into the very trap he had laid out in “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” “I think that we’ve way overshot the needs of customers,” he said. “I worry that we’re a little too technologically ambitious.”
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The dean, Nitin Nohria, found that students were also divided on the issue of online instruction. Credit Rick Friedman for The New York Times
He also feared that HBX was tied too closely to the business school.
“There have been a few companies that have survived disruption, but in every case they set up an independent business unit that let people learn how to play ball in the new game,” he said. IBM survived the transition from mainframe computers to minicomputers, and then from minicomputers to personal computers, by setting up autonomous teams in Minnesota and then in Florida. “We haven’t got the separation required.”
Professor Porter has expressed the opposite view. Companies that set up stand-alone Internet units, he wrote in 2001, “fail to integrate the Internet into their proven strategies and thus never harness their most important advantages.” Barnes & Noble’s decision to set up a separate online unit is one of his cautionary tales. “It deterred the online store from capitalizing on the many advantages provided by the network of physical stores,” he said, “thus playing into the hands of Amazon.”

In the Christensen model, these very fortifications become a liability. In the steel industry, which was blindsided by new technology in smaller and cheaper minimills, heavily integrated companies couldn’t move quickly and ended up entombed inside their elaborately constructed defenses.
“If Clay and I differ, it’s that Clay sees disruption everywhere, in every business, whereas I see it as something that happens every once in a while,” Professor Porter said. “And what looks like disruption is in fact an incumbent firm not embracing innovation” at all.
In other words, it’s not that U.S. Steel was destined to be undone by minimills. It’s that its managers let it happen.
“The disrupter doesn’t always win,” argued Professor Porter, who nonetheless called Professor Christensen “phenomenal” and “one of the great management thinkers.”
Who will win the coming business school shakeout? Professor Porter acknowledged that it’s a multidimensional question.
Most schools offering MOOCs do so through outside distribution channels like Coursera, a for-profit company that has Duke, Wharton, Yale, the University of Michigan and several dozen other schools in its stable. EdX, of which Harvard was a co-founder with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, counts Dartmouth and Georgetown among its charter members.
“These will come to have considerable power,” predicted Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He pointed to the aircraft industry: “In order to get into China, Boeing transferred its technology to parts manufacturers there. Pretty soon there’s going to be Chinese firms building airplanes. Boeing created their own competition.” Business schools, he said, “are doing it again; we are creating our own demise.”

Professors as Online Stars
The worry is all the more acute at midtier schools, which fear that elite business schools will move to gobble up a larger share of a shrinking pie.
“Would you rather watch Kenneth Branagh do ‘Henry V,’ or see it at a community theater?” asked Mr. Ulrich at Wharton. “There are going to be some instructors who become more valuable in this new world because they master the new medium. We’d rather be those guys than the people left behind.”
This raises a still more radical case, in which the winners are not any institution, new or old, but a handful of star professors. One of Professor Porter’s generic observations — that the Internet increases the “bargaining power of suppliers” — suggests just that. “It’s potentially very divisive in a way,” he acknowledged. “We’re all partners; we all get paid roughly the same. Anything that starts to fracture the enterprise is a sobering prospect.”
François Ortalo-Magné, dean of the University of Wisconsin’s business school, says fissures have already appeared. Recently, a rival school offered one of his faculty members not just a job, but also shares in an online learning start-up created especially for him. “We’re talking about millions of dollars,” Mr. Ortalo-Magné said. “My best teachers are going to find platforms so they can teach to the world for free. The market is finding a way to unbundle us. My job is to hold this platform together.”
To that end, he has changed his school’s incentive structure, which, as in most of academia, was based primarily on the number of research articles published in elite journals. Now professors who can’t crack those journals but “have a gift for inspiring learning,” he said, in person or online, are being paid as top performers, too. “We are now rewarding people who have tenure to give up on research,” Mr. Ortalo-Magné said.
Mr. Ortalo-Magné spins out the possibilities of disruption even further. “How many calculus professors do we need in the world?” he asked. “Maybe it’s nine. My colleague says it’s four. One to teach in English, one in French, one in Chinese, and one in the farm system in case one dies.”
What is to stop a Coursera from poaching Harvard Business School faculty members directly? “Nothing,” Mr. Nohria said. “The decision people will have to make is whether being on the platform of Harvard Business School, or any great university, is more important than the opportunity to build a brand elsewhere.
“Does Clay Christensen become Clay Christensen just by himself? Or does Clay Christensen become Clay Christensen because he was at Harvard Business School? He’ll have to make that determination.”

appraisal rights; Fine Legal Point Poses Challenge to Appraisal Rights








Appraisal rights
A right of shareholders in a merger to demand the payment of a fair price for their shares, as determined independently.
Copyright © 2012, Campbell R. Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

Appraisal Right
In mergers and acquisitions, the right of shareholders who object to being acquired to demand a fair price for their shares, as determined by a court. In theory, this guarantees that shareholders are adequately compensated for being overridden on the merger or acquisition. These shareholders may elect to have their shares purchased by the acquiring corporation at the price set by the court. In the United States, most states grant appraisal rights in their regulatory statutes.
 
 
 

Fine Legal Point Poses Challenge to Appraisal Rights

Harry Campbell
The hedge fund Merion Capital might have hit a roadblock in its multimillion-dollar appraisal proceedings involving the $1.6 billion buyout of Ancestry.com. And it’s a roadblock that just might slow the trend toward exercising appraisal rights.
Appraisal rights allow shareholders in an acquisition to ask a court to assess the value of their shares. The idea is that if the buyer underpaid for the stock, shareholders have a remedy — namely going to court and having a judge determine the right price for the shares.
While appraisal seems like an effective remedy, shareholders have been reluctant to exercise this right because the process can take years, shareholders have to pay legal fees and many state courts, including Delaware’s, can actually award less than the amount paid in the merger.
Enter the hedge funds. Merion is the largest of a number of funds that are now exercising appraisal rights as a business strategy. Merion has reportedly raised more than $1 billion and to date has exercised appraisal rights in nine different actions, including takeovers involving Dole Foods, BMC Software and Airvana.
These funds have led to an upsurge in appraisal rights. According to a paper by two law professors, Minor Myers of Brooklyn Law School and Charles Korsmo of Case Western Reserve Law School, the value of appraisal claims was $1.5 billion last year, a tenfold increase from 2004.
In the case of Ancestry.com, which was bought by an investor group led by the European private equity firm Permira, Merion bought 1.225 million shares of its stock at the $32 cash buyout price, worth about $39 million.
Merion is pursuing appraisal rights to obtain a higher dollar figure. It seems to be a strategy perfect for a hedge fund that is run by experienced lawyers and is designed to take risks.
However, perfection may have run into reality in the Ancestry.com proceedings, which are taking place in a Delaware court. The combination of hedge funds and appraisal rights is new, and that means that the law governing it is still in flux.
Ancestry is opposing the appraisal rights petition, arguing that the price paid was fair value. Ordinarily this would lead to a trial where the court would determine who was correct. Courts have tended in the past to favor the party seeking appraisal, a fact that is underpinning Merion’s strategy.
But Ancestry filed a brief two weeks ago on a novel legal point that may wipe out Merion’s case not only in its proceeding but possibly in others as well.
The issue is that in order to exercise appraisal rights in Delaware, a stockholder must not have “voted in favor” of the transaction. This makes sense, because if you are asking the court to give you more money in a takeover, then you should at least show you opposed the deal at the price you think is too low.
It sounds like a simple rule, but it is complicated.
First, there is the issue that most shareholders don’t hold their shares directly in a company. They are merely beneficial owners. Actual record ownership of the shares is held through brokers and then through the share ownership company Cede & Company. Cede votes its shares as all the shareholders direct, but Cede votes these shares in the aggregate and does not allocate shares to each owner. Consequently, it is impossible for a beneficial owner to assert how their shares were voted and to know whether the appraisal requirement to not vote for the deal is met.
Second, for each shareholder vote there is a record date. The record date marks the date when shareholders are counted as eligible to vote. But shareholders can buy shares after that date and exercise appraisal rights. However, such a shareholder never votes on the transaction. Instead, the previous owners who held the shares on the record date may vote their shares for the deal. In this case, what happens if the previous owners voted for the transaction or their votes are unknown?
It is this second problem that Merion faces. Merion bought all of its shares after the record date for the shareholder vote on the transaction.
In depositions by Ancestry’s counsel, Samuel Johnson, a portfolio manager at Merion said that he did not know how Merion’s shares were voted because they were bought after the record date.
This would seem to doom Merion’s claim. But not entirely. In the case of Transkaryotic Therapies Inc., the court addressed the issue of whether a beneficial holder of shares who acquired shares after the record date was required to show that the previous owner did not vote for the transaction. In that case, the stockholders demanding appraisal had held their shares beneficially with Cede as the record-holder. The court held that in such a case, only the record-holder — Cede — had to show that there was not an affirmative vote. Because Cede had voted sufficient shares as record-holder against the transaction, the appraisal petition was sufficient.
This case made sense because the Delaware statute at the time permitted only a record-holder of stock to exercise appraisal rights. Cede also appears unable to retrace its shares and show how they were voted for its beneficial shareholders. If the court in Transkaryotic had required this, many shareholders would effectively lose their appraisal rights.
Merion will no doubt argue this case applies here because it held its shares beneficially and not as record owners.
In the wake of Transkaryotic, however, the Delaware appraisal statute was amended to allow shareholders who own stock beneficially to exercise appraisal rights.
Ancestry’s counsel is now arguing that this amendment requires that a beneficial owner show it did not vote in favor of the transaction. In its filing to the Delaware court, Ancestry stated that a “beneficial owner may now bring an appraisal action in its own name, without relying on Cede (or some other nominee) to vindicate its rights indirectly.” The beneficial holder thus now “assumes the statutory obligation to show that the shares it seeks to have appraised were not voted in favor of the merger.”
The case is not completely in favor of Ancestry, though. The section of the appraisal rights statute Ancestry is citing requires that the beneficial owner exercising appraisal rights set forth a statement of “the aggregate number of shares not voted in favor of the merger or consolidation.” But the amended statute does not state whether these shares are required to have not been voted for the transaction. Moreover, the statute itself when it refers to a shareholder defines it as a shareholder of record, meaning that the basis for Transkaryotic appears to remain despite this amendment.
In its petition seeking appraisal, Merion said it had not voted in favor of the transaction. When asked at deposition about this, Mr. Johnson said that it was “boilerplate” and that Merion did not know how its shares were voted. In other words, Merion is relying squarely on the Transkaryotic opinion to win.
The question now is whether court views on appraisal rights are changing now that their exercise is more frequent.
Even if Merion wins, it might only be kicking the can down the road. In the appraisal proceedings for Dole, another action Merion is participating in, more shares are exercising appraisal rights than those that voted against the deal or abstained. This means that there are definitely stockholders exercising appraisal rights who hold shares that voted yes.
It all means peril not just for hedge funds but for companies as they wait for the law to catch up and see whether their business strategies work. It’s a risky strategy, but then again that is what hedge funds specialize in.

Steven M. Davidoff, a professor at the Michael E. Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, is the author of “Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion.” E-mail: dealprof@nytimes.com | Twitter: @StevenDavidoff
 

談Google 公司 Motorola 德州廠開張1年即關閉

 2013年年初起,密切注意 Google 公司的Motorola事業部要在德州設廠。
 或來發現它不過是與新加坡某代工廠合作,在德州廠做末端的刻印、包裝等工作。
所以 Google 公司在數月之後,決定將Motorola 的主要產品和其生產作業等賣給中國公司時,就定案了。 Motorola在天津經營二十多年,小有名氣。中國電腦公司的營業有瓶頸,亟需智能手機來成長,加上Google 公司長期與中共失和,生意難作,所以賣Motorola 的非核心生產事業,至少兩全其美。



Google 德州廠1年關閉NEWS


ZDNet

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Latin Post
Google admits it's got work to do to achieve a diverse workforce
Computerworld - Google executives say they're not satisfied that the company's workforce is largely made up of white males. "We've always been ...
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Google Will Be Able To Watch You In Your Home With Its Next Purchase
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The West Australian
Google takes steps to comply with EU's 'right to be forgotten' ruling
(Reuters) - Google Inc has launched a service through which European citizens can request that links to what they deem as objectionable material be ...


2014年05月30日 06:19 AM

Lex專欄:誰為谷歌汽車買單?
 
馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg),一個對自己的“世界主宰”計劃很認真的小夥子,曾將Twitter形容為那輛跌入金礦的瘋狂小醜車(一款游戲的主角——譯者 註)。Twitter看起來總是馬上要改變世界的樣子,但直到最近,它一直沒有好好擴張所需的基礎設施。
谷歌(Google)的股東們,你們有好消息了。你們的錢現在資助著一輛無人駕駛汽車的樣車。它看起來真的很像一輛小醜車。它也真的將主宰世界。不 需要方向盤、踏板,事實上甚至不需要任何駕乘人員的汽車,有望解放數十億個小時的生產力。它們甚至可能推動產生有史以來全球最偉大的物流公司。然而,不管 怎樣,谷歌都需要一定規模的基礎設施。
這意味著資金。股東向谷歌提供資金而無權決定其如何使用。這在一家汽車公司是不會持續很久的。
首先是資本支出。谷歌建造新的數據中心(或購買地產以建造更多數據中心)的賬單,去年已達74億美元,是2012年這一數字的兩倍多。谷歌是否應當 將它對製造業的投資盡可能都轉移到汽車生產上去?當然。在這個行業進行轉型擴張的代價不菲。看看特斯拉汽車(Tesla Motors)的50億美元電池工廠Gigafactory,或者捷豹路虎(Jaguar Land Rover)嘗試在短短幾年內將產能擴大一倍的代價:每年50億美元的投資。
但 谷歌可能無論如何都得花上幾十億美元,僅僅是建造一個無人駕駛導航系統。例如,坐谷歌汽車到倫敦市中心一游,而路上其它車仍由焦躁不安的酒囊飯袋們開著, 這將需要處理海量的傳感器數據。由此帶來的基礎設施賬單將是巨額的。游說賬單也是。美國只有三個州允許進行無人駕駛汽車的測試。而且事故的賠償責任可能落 到谷歌(而不是車主)頭上。為了改變世界值得冒這個險?是,沒錯。但首先,股東們需要看到並且有權決定資本配置。

2014年5月28日 星期三

法國麥當勞MacDo每年50億進帳 In New French Ads for McDonalds, Big Macs Go Flat

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-27/in-new-french-ads-for-mcdonalds-big-macs-go-flat

Advertising

In New French Ads for McDonalds, Big Macs Go Flat


The world is going flat. Last summer, Jony Ive pared down Apple’s (AAPL) iOS to one-dimensional icons, eschewing drop shadows and textures. Now McDonald’s (MCD) plans to plaster Paris with minimalist renderings of its most recognizable menu items.
The campaign comes from TBWA\Paris, which previously launched a “no logo” campaign for the fast-food giant that featured close-up images of Mickey D’s “Big 6” staples, sans golden arches. This time, a small rendering of the mark appears beside pictograms of the same menu staples—Big Mac, fries, cheeseburger, sundae, McNuggets, and Filet-o-Fish.
Lee Clow, the agency’s global director and co-creator of Apple’s famous “Think Different” slogan, applauded the campaign in a hand-drawn note to his French cohorts: “So simple, so beautiful,” he writes. “Wish I did it!”
The print ads are scheduled to appear on more than 2,700 outdoor displays, starting on June 2. The TV ad follows a group of twentysomethings as they bike through city streets to post graffiti of the emblems on billboards.
Gone are the days, the campaign suggests, when such youths would have protested outside a MacDo, as the French call it. France has become the chain’s No. 2 market, after the U.S., with 1,300 outlets bringing in more than $5 billion in annual sales. Vive Le Big Mac!

待查: 余紀忠中國時報王國的起落

在facebook等,有中時退輔會等群組。


現在,我們不願意看"昨日"的書與新聞。
昨天讀施明德等人的「我們的呼籲」,想起倡中華邦聯的余紀忠先生。
余紀忠的論點,遠比當今的「我們的呼籲」深入多多;在實務上,他也曾和北京高層談數小時。這些,可以在余紀忠先生的傳計中找到,譬如說,張慧英寫的「提筆為時代:余紀忠」(台北:時報文化,2002)第3章:永遠的愛國者。
今天蘋果日報的" 蘋論:大一中架構關鍵在北京",大部分都可參考。

People 人物: 蘋論:大一中架構關鍵在北京、余紀忠、「我們的呼籲」施明德、程建人、蘇起、陳明通、洪奇昌、焦仁和、張五岳


 台灣的企業管理還是很落後的,譬如說余紀忠中國時報王國的起落,就還沒研究報告或專書。可能的原因之一是它除時報文化出版公司之外,都未上市,屬家族企業。
 余紀忠培養多少人才,至少捐出千萬美金成立基金......
 中國時報極盛時,發行量120萬份,最衰期,可能不到30萬份。
天下月刊等對台灣的媒體大王國的專題分析之後,情勢急轉直下。最後,聯合報和中國時報都必須將報紙降回每日10元,而蘋果日報逆勢從每份10元升為15元。
 我印象很深的是,余紀忠先生生前約2年,知道香港壹傳要來台營業,起而準備應戰。
 情勢丕變,可以對照整個業界的印報量急減,網路閱讀大興......

 Wikipedia

報社沿革


中國時報大樓
  • 1950年,余紀忠創辦《徵信新聞》,主要內容為物價指數
  • 1960年1月1日,《徵信新聞》改名為《徵信新聞報》,成為綜合性報紙。
  • 1968年3月29日開始彩色印刷,為亞洲第一份彩色報刊。
  • 1968年9月1日,《徵信新聞報》更名為《中國時報》。
  • 1986年8月18日,經美國發行稽查局(ABC)審核,《中國時報》發行量突破120萬份。
  • 1987年7月15日解嚴後,《中國時報》開始致力於台灣社會共識之建構。
  • 2002年,創辦人余紀忠逝世,報社第二代交接,由次子余建新接管並擔任第二任董事長,而長女余範英擔任副董事長
  • 2002年6月,中國時報系正式跨領域經營中天電視
  • 2007年3月2日,擔任中時董事長的余建新宣布正式成立「中時媒體集團」(China Times Media Group),確立了中國時報集團的官方名稱。同日,余建新擔任中時媒體集團董事長,周盛淵擔任中時媒體集團總管理處總經理兼《中國時報》發行人,李家德擔任《中國時報》副社長兼中時媒體集團總經理室主任,王順意擔任中時報系發行部總經理。
  • 2008年6月18日,中國時報社長林聖芬表示,因媒體環境改變,2008年6月18日晚間,中國時報開會決議,各部門需在2008年8月31日以前提出二分之一人力精簡計劃,從2008年9月1日起地方新聞停刊並將報紙張數縮減為10張。
  • 2008年11月,旺旺集團總裁蔡衍明以個人名義入主中國時報集團
  • 2009年,中時集團與旺旺集團正式整合為「旺旺中時媒體集團」,「中時媒體集團」自此改稱「旺旺中時媒體集團」。



概要


事件回顧

  • 1958年9月26日八二三砲戰期間,中國人民解放軍砲火擊沉中華民國海軍LVT,數名國際記者死亡,徵信新聞記者魏晉孚亦在殉職名單中。
  • 1989年六四天安門事件,中國時報記者徐宗懋在民運現場頭部遭到鈍器襲擊。
  • 1996年1月1日,因國際紙價上漲,《中國時報》零售價由新臺幣10元調漲到新臺幣15元[3]
  • 2003年5月2日,因台灣《蘋果日報》創刊,《中國時報》售價降為新臺幣10元。
  • 2005年12月24日,一個於香港註冊成立,由中國時報系控制的榮麗投資公司持有兩成權益的財團(另有一成由台灣電視公司及其四個日資股東共同持有,其餘由當中沒有台灣人的其他香港及海外投資者持有)收購了原由中國國民黨旗下中央投資公司擁有的中國電視公司、中國廣播公司中央電影公司(即「三中」),連同較早前由《中國時報》獨自收購的中天電視,成為同時擁有電影有線電視無線電視的跨媒體集團。但中國時報系於2006年已處分所持有的中廣與中影股份。
  • 2007年8月21日起進行改版,並將報頭《中國時報》四字由直排改為塊狀;而每一落的報眉也以不同顏色來區分,擴大國際新聞、增加圖片,且於每周一提供〈台灣希望〉專刊,探討當今臺灣政治及社會問題,報導正面新聞,各版標題字體亦不再使用黑體,版面也較為活潑,讓讀者能更輕鬆地閱讀,以吸引更多年輕讀者。
  • 2008年6月18日,中國時報社長林聖芬表示,因媒體環境改變,廣告市場衰退而影響經營,中國時報風格將轉型成「菁英報」,七月會公布裁員減張方案。有傳聞將裁員大約600人(原為1,200人),並將報報紙張數縮減至10張左右。[4]同日晚間,中國時報開會決議,各部門需在8月31日以前提出二分之一人力精簡計劃,從9月1日起地方新聞停刊並將報紙張數縮減為10張。[5](2012年起已恢復各縣市地方新聞版)
  • 2008年11月5日,《中國時報》刊登一則聲明:「中時媒體集團基於對社會的責任與使命,在經營環境日益艱困之際,為期永續經營發展,決定邀請 旺旺集團蔡衍明先生接棒經營。」早在9月份,坊間就傳出消息,中時集團因旗下《中國時報》虧損嚴重,董事長余建新有意將《中國時報》、中天電視等媒體,售予已成功在臺灣落腳的壹傳媒集團。此後,香港媒體紛紛援引未具名消息人士的話,稱黎智英與余建新的談判已接近最後階段,預計交易將在十一月披露。不料3日出現峰迴路轉變化,原本有意購買卻因故放棄的旺旺集團回頭和中時談判,提出較高的金額,並一次買下中時、中天、中視三媒體。旺旺集團老闆將以204億元新臺幣的金額,取得中時集團所有媒體的經營權。5日,《中國時報》刊登聲明,證實了該傳言。旺旺集團同日表示,任何對媒體的投資,純屬蔡衍明個人股東行為。[6]

Toyota to Refrain From Building New Plants

Toyota to Refrain From Building New Plants

Despite Robust Profits, Auto Maker Heeding Lessons of Financial Crisis

Updated May 27, 2014 7:58 a.m. ET
TOKYO—Even after becoming the first auto company to make more than 10 million cars in a single year, Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday that it would refrain from building any new plants for at least two more years.
Nobuyori Kodaira, executive vice president of Toyota, said that the company planned to heed the lessons it learned during the global financial crisis that began in 2007, when it struggled for several years with...

2014年5月27日 星期二

官員(含軍方/準官) 換位的吃相:政府捐助設立財團法人等之董事長、執行長、總經理、院長或秘書長等職



國民黨退休文官轉往官方基金會座領高薪,
退役將官轉往對岸當中共座上客,這群吃香喝辣的18%藍營高幹怎不知恥至此?
部分不滿民眾向議員車輛怒擲水瓶,整場示威抗爭起源於澳門政府本月12日向立法會提交《候任、現任及離任行政長官及主要官員的保障制度》法案,除給予卸高官豐厚補償且溯及既往,還讓特首可享受刑事豁免權~!
連澳門人都"抗議"特權了~
【大陸中心╱綜合外電報導】無恥的「高官自肥」法案,引發澳門回歸來最大規模的街頭示威!儘管澳門行政長官迫於民眾壓力,主動停止原訂昨進行的法案表...
appledaily.com.tw



立委李俊俋:
今年1月14日三讀通過的預算審查決議要求,「為杜政府捐助設立財團法人等之董事長、執行長、總經理、院長或秘書長等職,淪為主管機關官員或特定人士退休 或轉任時作為酬庸之用,更為避免官員於任職期間即不當行使職權企圖染指相關職位,爰要求行政院及所屬各部會針對各該財團法人之政府遴(核)派人員,其初任 年齡不得逾62歲,任期屆滿前年滿65歲者,應於3個月內更換之。」…
原來,罵學生「佔領」國會的馬江,是用「踐踏」回應國會…
民進黨籍立委李俊俋今天(28日)指出,政府所捐助59個財團法人之負責人年齡,其中最高齡為78歲,70歲以上有8人,政府捐助比例超過50%以上財團法人的負責人,超過62歲者比例高達60%,不但違反立法院…
peoplenews.tw

爐渣毒害農地 政府不管;各單位互推汙染皮球; 「廢清法」與「資再法」二法合一成「廢棄物減量及循環利用法」(林淑芬)









林淑芬新增了 3 張相片。






高雄旗山是個好地方,

卻有人先在農地盜採砂石,

然後把中鋼含有重金屬的轉爐石登記為產品,

就可以不受廢棄物清理法規管制,

傾倒於農地再於表層回填土方。
8公頃的農地填了數十萬噸含重金屬的轉爐石


農委會說已經確認這案認定汙染農地,

要移請內政部依違反農地農用處分。

所以與他無關。

經濟部工業局說,我們只認定轉爐石是產品,

至於他流向我們不管,請環保單位去管。

環保署說,他登記為產品所以不是廢清法管,

所以不關環保單位的事,無法可管。

問該地已經是水源保護區管制範圍,

水利署要出來管,他們說汙染與否要環保署認定。

這就是我們的官,

都不干他們的事

但當地居民都是喝地下水,

他們的命怎麼辦?

覆土後上面再耕種嗎?

農地汙染後沒人管?

這就是臺灣有問題的環保法令,

出了這麼多事,

環保署還不快點且要往正確的方向修好?

這就是我們正在努力的「廢清法」與「資再法」二法合一成「廢棄物減量及循環利用法」。

請大家多多關注。

照片來自地球公民協會















爐渣毒害農地 政府不管

鬼扯是中鋼「產品」不列廢棄物處罰

去年11月變藍池
黃姓業者去年以廢爐渣回填旗山大林里農地的水坑,後來水面竟呈現詭異的藍色,還冒泡沫。資料照片
【黃 揚明、陳宏瑞、周昭平╱連線報導】高雄市旗山區大林里是經濟部水利署公告的水質水量保護區,但綠委林淑芬與當地居民昨控訴,該里農地去年遭廢爐渣回填,池 水酸鹼值(pH值)超過十二,已達強鹼標準,居民四處陳情檢舉,中央與高雄市政府互推責任,認為廢爐渣是中鋼「產品」,不受《廢棄物清理法》規範。自救會 會長鄭妙珍批:「睜眼說瞎話!」專家指廢爐渣若掩埋在農地、水源地,政府應處罰並清除。
林淑芬指現行法令確有疏漏,廢爐渣只要經登記是公司產品,就不必依《廢棄物清理法》處理,立院正審查《廢棄物減量及循環利用法》草案,未來由環保署認定廢爐渣是否為廢棄物。

旗山尊懷文教基金會會長王中義手持廢爐渣,不滿農地被不肖業者污染。林啟弘攝

重金屬量超標十倍

但林淑芬強調,環保署二○一一年通令各機關,若不屬廢棄物的「產品」,使用不當造成環境污染,各機關應督導辦理,例如水利署就算不敢認定廢爐渣是廢棄物,至少該檢驗水質。水利署官員僅說,保護區內禁止堆置廢棄物,但廢爐渣是否是廢棄物及水質檢測結果,尊重地方權責。
旗山尊懷文教基金會會長王中義說,該里一塊農地自然形成水坑,去年起遭不肖業者以中鋼廢爐渣回填,導致水池變藍,還冒泡沫;居民檢測廢爐渣的汞等重金屬含量超標十倍,鉻、鉛、鎘、銅、鋅、鎳等重金屬都超標,「這樣的農田種出來的作物,有人敢吃嗎?」


現在農地毀
該片農地目前已回填成平地,還種植許多綠色植披,但因污染無法耕作。陳宏瑞攝

居民:要我們等死

鄭妙珍質疑,當地沒自來水,居民靠地下水維生,「水被污染要居民怎麼喝?把我們農民當什麼?要我們等死嗎!」地球公民基金會副執行長王敏玲說:「水源保護區的農地每一吋都是黃金,卻被傾倒工業廢棄物,欺人太甚!」
對 居民批評,高雄市環保局指去年十二月二十九日曾採當地廢爐渣樣品送驗,其酸鹼值、銅、鉛、鎘、總鉻等重金屬含量「尚於標準限值內」;去年十一月二十六日也 在回填區域周邊兩口井抽檢地下水,都符合管制標準;至於傾倒廢爐渣違反土地使用規定,已將相關人員移送高雄地檢署偵辦。
農委會企劃處副處長陳耀勳說,現場勘查發現酸鹼值確實達十二以上,且廢爐渣不能倒在農地,會請高雄市政府開罰。環保署廢管處簡任技正邱濟民說,廢爐渣若被許可登記為「產品」,確實無法以《廢棄物清理法》處置。

業者喊冤稱沒污染

曾揭露高雄大寮「戴奧辛鴨」污染事件的台南社大研究發展學會理事長黃煥彰昨說,廢爐渣一般回收用在工業區或停車場填地用材料,若掩埋在農地、水源地,可能污染飲用水、地下水,政府當然應比照廢棄物處罰並清除。
被控傾倒廢爐渣的黃姓業者昨喊冤,指回填廢爐渣都是中鋼合法產品,也委請成功大學水工所監測水質,都在標準值內。他說四年多前標得這塊約五點五公頃的農地,地上坑洞回填廢爐渣還填上沃土,未來將設置太陽能板。

【報你知】廢爐渣

廢 爐渣,是煉鋼廢棄物,又稱爐石。高雄市環保局指,廢爐渣大致分為高爐石、轉爐石及電爐石三種;其中高爐石及轉爐石,為煉鋼廠使用鐵礦石、焦炭及石灰石等礦 石材料煉鐵,在過程中產生的副產物,成分屬鈣鋁矽酸鹽;這些副產物以往多採海拋處理,近年來開發為資源回收運用,處理後可當作填築、整地及道路鋪面材料。

近年廢爐渣 污染案例

◆2014/1 宜蘭縣蘇澳鎮
宜蘭縣玄龍環保公司在蘇澳龍德工業區空地露天堆置廢爐渣,沉砂池水質酸鹼值高達11.52,已屬強鹼
◆2013/6 彰化縣伸港鄉
環團檢舉,彰濱工業區線西西3區填海造陸區域發現違法掩埋電爐渣,其重金屬總量超過管制值4倍
◆2009/11 台南縣後壁鄉
後壁鄉一處稻田遭超翔科技公司爐渣污水流入,土壤重金屬鉻濃度高達每公斤692毫克,為管制標準250毫克的近3倍
◆2009/11 高雄縣大寮鄉
環保署接獲檢舉,指高雄大寮鄉有7處非法棄置廢爐渣,並驗出當地養鴨場鴨肉戴奧辛超標2至6倍
註:高雄縣大寮鄉為今高雄市大寮區;台南縣後壁鄉為今台南市後壁區
資料來源:《蘋果》資料室

Strategic Leadership: How to Avoid the Most Common Error Leaders Make


Strategic Leadership: How to Avoid the Most Common Error Leaders Make
Paul M O'Connell—Getty Images/Flickr RM
In my interview with Harvard Business School professor Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, I asked him about the biggest mistake leaders make:
Gautam: Over time, it’s grandiosity.
Eric: Hubris?
Gautam: Yeah. You live in an environment where everybody constantly tells you how great you are, and you begin to believe it.
Eric: Yeah. Even Machiavelli said a leader needs people who are going to be honest with them, because everybody’s going to kiss their ass.
Gautam: Exactly… The CEO of a major corporation, how often does he or she hear the word “no”? How often does someone challenge their basic preconceptions about the world?
We constantly hear about the need for more information, but when it comes to strategic leadership that’s often not really the problem.
Leaders have information. But as former Harvard professor Richard Tedlow explains, they often just don’t want to hear it.
I have been teaching and writing about business history for four decades, and what is striking about the dozens of companies and CEOs I have studied is the large number of them who have made mistakes that could and should have been avoided, not just with the benefit of hindsight, but on the basis of information available to decision makers right then and there, in real time. These mistakes resulted from individuals denying reality.
How is this possible? If we just had the best information, wouldn’t making the right strategic leadership choices be easy?
Um, no.

Denial Is Human. And Sometimes Vital.

Denial is big. Hubris is huge. Egos expand faster than waistlines.
And if you don’t think this applies to you then this definitely applies to you.
Why do we experience denial at all? There are two theories:
  • As Robert Trivers discusses in his book Folly of Fools, our brains evolved the ability to deceive ourselves because that makes it easier to deceive others — and more successful liars thrive.
  • The other reason is much simpler: Denial makes us feel better.
In fact, sometimes denial is vital.
Knowing the statistics, what business leader would ever be an entrepreneur or attempt to turnaround a seemingly doomed company without a little denial?
Who would think they could succeed where all others failed without a little hubris?

But It Can Go Too Far.

When you start to think you have the midas touch, things get ugly in a hurry. It’s amazing how ego can get in the way.
Jeffrey Pfeffer at Stanford did a study where they told subjects (“leaders”) that feedback they’d given on an advertising campaign had been included in the final product to a greater or lesser degree.
In reality, all the final campaigns were the same. What happened?
People who thought their feedback was included liked the results twice as much, despite there being no real difference.
Supervisors in the third group, who believed that their comments influenced the final advertisement, rated identical product about twice as highly as the other supervisors who believed they had no influence, and gave similarly inflated ratings to their own ability as managers. The mere act of believing that they had engaged in supervision led them to believe that the final product was twice as wonderful (and they were twice as wonderful), even though their actions had no actual impact!
Do some people manage to avoid this trap? Yes.
For his book Good to Great, Jim Collins studied breakthrough companies and identified a hierarchy of strategic leadership.
The CEOs of top companies all had a similar style. Collins called them “Level 5″ leaders.
What sets Level 5 leaders apart?
Those leaders who can stop focusing on me me me and measure their self-worth by the health of the company avoid the hubris trap.
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
strategic-leadership
If right now you’re saying “I think I’m a Level 5 leader”, frankly, that’s probably the best sign of hubris I can think of.
But seriously, how can you tell if a company is full of denial?
Ask yourself: Are the conversations after a meeting a lot more honest than the ones in a meeting?
One quick test: are the private conversations that follow meetings usually more frank and honest than the public discussions in the meetings themselves? The energy level is often greater after a meeting than in it, notes Babson College management professor Allan Cohen. Why? Because “everybody talks about what didn’t get said.”
That is not good.
So how do you avoid denial and (maybe) work your way to Level 5?

3 Things You Need To Do

1) Don’t Believe Your Own Hype
The irony of leadership is you need to speak with certainty to be taken seriously. But if you take yourself too seriously, you end up in the hubris trap.
This duality must constantly be managed. And as Machiavelli warned, beware sycophants.
You need people who will be honest with you. Shoot the messenger and, in the long term, you shoot yourself.
2) Figure Out When, And How, To Get Out Of The Way
Don’t ask, “What can I do?” Ask, “Am I needed at all right now?”
The first step that effective leaders need to take is not to ask “What can I do?” Rather they should ask, “Am I needed at all? Will my actions, or even my presence, do more harm than good?” The best leaders know when and how to get out of the way.
This is summed up by a favorite quote of mine from Steven J. Ross: “Get the best people for the job and LET THEM DO IT.”
3) Build Systems And Processes
Leaders can only be hands-on when teams are small. Past that, their immediate effects are limited.
This is why good leaders build systems that make sure their way of doing things can be made clear even when they can’t be present.

The Battle Is Ongoing

Denial, ego and hubris are all parts of human nature.
They are like gravity. We don’t defeat them. To move forward we must actively resist them every day.
You will therefore never defeat denial, but you had better battle it. As James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
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