Blog entries

Done Deal

Tom Stewart — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:29:32 +0100

How sad that Bruce Wasserstein died just as it appears that the M&A market is heating up again. I got to know Bruce when I was editing Harvard Business Review; with one of my colleagues, Gardiner Morse, I produced one of HBR’s trademark in-depth interviews, published in January 2008.

BrRead More...

Two Dragons Worth Slaying

Tom Stewart — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:00:11 +0100

Two dangerous ideas have been devouring capital and sucking the life-force from entrepreneurs. The first is the notion that you can build a viable Web business by relying on advertising alone - that if you attract enough eyeballs, enough ad revenue will follow to see you through to profitability. The second is the Long Tail hypothesis: the idea that, because “shelf space” on the Web is unlimited, it’s possible to build a business selling products on the “long tail&rdquRead More...

Swinging for the Fences

Julie Meyer — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:57:16 +0100

There's been a bit of "controversy" this past week in SpinVox world. Like some silly season feeding frenzy, egged on by a cheerleadership of malcontents, the hack pack descended on the pride of Marlow making outrageous claims about the Spinvox business, and SpinVox management. Unsurprisingly, the SpinVox team who, groaning under a slew of industry awards received in recent weeks, are rather busy managing the rapid growth of a profoundly successful business have had some unwelcome extra work tRead More...

Five Questions for Copenhagen

Tom Stewart — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

For three days at the end of May — the 24th through the 26th — scores of world business leaders gathered in Copenhagen to discuss ideas and options leading up to the UN climate conference to be held in the same city in November, when a treaty to supplant and extend the Kyoto accords with the promulgated for ratification by the nations of the world, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Finally, it appears, the deniers are moving to the edge of the debate. Slowly the delayers — the oRead More...

Pyramid Schemes

Tom Stewart — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve been playing with population pyramids. These are graphical depictions of a country’s population showing the number of women and men in five-year age bands. They’re called pyramids because, historically, humankind has lots more infants than school children, more schoolchildren than lovers, more lovers than.... as time takes it toll on each of the seven ages of man.