Fifty Essential Topics on Economics

from Lifehack.org

Economic is an essential topic for life. If you are working, understanding economics will help you understanding how are the products and services of your company relate to the markets and consumers. Why some products can mark the price so high and still there are demands on purchase? How services and products decrease its value? All of those questions can be answered by basic economics knowledge.

Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Those 50 pages provide an overview on the best economics that you should learn about. If you don’t have time to read all of them right now, I recommend to select some sections from microeconomics and learn about it:

Growth Theory

• Growth Across Time
• Growth in Different Countries
• An Economic Calculation: Should You Buy a Vacation Timeshare?
• Capital and Rental Cost
• Opportunity Cost, Profit, and Comparative Advantage
• Scale and Substitution
• The Production Function and Aggregation
• Accounting for Growth
• Success and Failure of Social Systems
• Mathematical Growth Models
• The Rich and the Poor
• Practice Questions on Capital, Comparative Advantage, Scale, and Substitution
• Practice Questions on the Production Function, Growth Facts, and Growth Accounting
• Practice Questions on Growth and Social Systems, Mathematical Growth Models, and Wealth and Poverty

Saving, Finance, and Social Security

• The Real Interest Rate and Annuities
• Pensions and Social Security
• The Economics of Social Security
• Basic Financial Calculations
• Efficient Markets and the Portfolio Theorem
• Futures and Options
• Personal Finance
• Corporate Finance

Markets (Microeconomics)

• Introduction to Markets
• Consumers and Utility
• Relative Prices, Demand Elasticity, and Leisure
• Borrowing, Lending, and Human Capital
• Producers and Profit Maximization
• Efficiency, Supply and Demand, and Market Clearing
• The Gains from Trade
• Tariffs and Quotas
• The Problem of Monopoly
• Public Goods
• Some Classic Policy Issues
• Money Vs. Barter

Macroeconomics

• Introduction to Macroeconomics
• A Basic Macroeconomic Equation System
• Fiscal Policy
• Investment as an Endogenous Variable
• The Trade Balance as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Exchange Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Interest Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• Inflation as an Endogenous Variable
• Employment and Unemployment
• Macroeconomic Policy Challenges
• Theoretical Controversies

Information Economics

• Moore’s Law
• Moore’s Law and Economic Growth
• Asymptotically Free Goods
• Network Effects
• Asymmetric Information

CRM Done Right

From Havard Business

The Idea in Brief

Frustrated by high costs and dubious payoffs, managers that used the first customer-relationship management (CRM) systems came to view them as overhyped IT investments. Accordingly, CRM spending plummeted between 2001 and 2003. But now CRM system sales are soaring, as executives from a wide variety of industries tout CRM's value.

What's changed? Rather than trying to transform entire businesses through full-scale CRM implementations, companies are applying CRM in disciplined, focused ways--and getting more from it. How to realize the same benefits from your CRM initiatives? Use CRM to solve highly specific customer-relationship challenges--such as accurately diagnosing call center customers' problems. Invest in real-time information--the holy grail of CRM--only where it's needed. For example, a hotel manager requires real-time data on room availability, not on customers' opinions about room decor. Equally crucial, use what you learn from successful smaller CRM projects to tackle larger problems.

By knowing where in your business to deploy CRM, and how, you stand to score impressive revenue gains--as companies like Kimberly-Clark, Ingersoll-Rand, and Brother have done.

The Idea in Practice

To decide where and how to use CRM technology, ask four questions:

Is It Strategic?

Before spending a dime on CRM, identify the processes that most support your company's strategy. Target them for improvement through CRM.

Aircraft-parts distributor Aviall Inc. needed a well-trained sales force to achieve its strategic objective: becoming the premier industry provider of supply-chain management services. The company installed only those CRM elements required to enhance sales-force and order-entry productivity.

Sales representatives now had instant access to customers' credit history, a streamlined order-processing system, and the ability to deliver firm quotes immediately. They tripled their daily number of sales calls and expanded their customer base by one-third. The number of orders handled daily more than doubled--with no staff increase. And Aviall won an unprecedented ten-year, $3 billion supply contract with engine maker Rolls-Royce

Where Does It Hurt?

Where in your customer-relationship cycle do performance-sapping problems arise? Is it when you're seeking to stimulate initial purchases? provide after-sale service? retain customers? Focus CRM efforts on your pain points.

Consumer-goods giant Kimberly-Clark's pain point lay in its retailer promotions. Running thousands of promotions annually, it couldn't discern which promotions strengthened retailer loyalty and sales. It installed a modest CRM system that enabled managers to track the return on investments in individual promotions. In the initiative's first year, Kimberly-Clark streamlined budgets and increased profits by redirecting $20 million in promotion spending.

Do We Need Perfect Data?

Accessing and responding to real-time information requires expensive, complex systems. Distinguish between activities that truly demand perfect data and those that don't.

Japanese equipment maker Brother International's U.S. arm faced high product-return rates stemming from customers' dissatisfaction with call-center service. The company launched a new CRM system that enabled service reps to identify customers when they called, quickly locate their purchase records, and provide codified responses to common questions. Call times shrank by 43 seconds, saving $855,000 annually. Product returns fell by one-third over three years.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Don't rest on your CRM laurels. Rigorously analyze system-generated data to pinpoint new, well-defined opportunities to extend CRM's power.

Diversified manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand recognized that customers who purchased its golf carts might like to buy other divisions' products, such as Bobcat mini-excavators and loaders. The company spurred cross-selling by expanding its golf-course division's CRM order-taking function to include other divisions. The initiative generated additional orders of $6.2 million in its first few months.

Copyright 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

• Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article here.
• Visit Harvard Business Online.
• See more on Strategy and Execution at Harvard Business Online.

Further Reading

Articles

Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?

Harvard Business Review

February 2001

by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf

The authors offer additional guidelines for applying CRM in a disciplined, focused way. For example, before implementing a CRM effort, assess your company's readiness. Using responses to questionnaires filled out by managers, employees, and customers, discern whether your company is prepared to: 1) identify end-user customers' habits and preferences, 2) differentiate customers based on their value to you, 3) interact with customers through affordable channels that yield additional information about their value and needs, and 4) customize products and services based on what you've learned.

They Bought In. Now They Want to Bail Out

Harvard Business Review

December 2003

by Eric McNulty

This article provides experts' commentary on a fictional case study of one company that failed to use a focused approach to implementing CRM. Menswear chain Mathews & Co.'s Chief Technology Officer Barry Golding is angling for funding to implement CRM software. He has championed the effort for months, touting CRM's huge potential to department heads. But during the latest planning meeting, the executives express disappointment when they see that the initiative won't give them everything on their wish lists. Barry has fallen victim to the "blue sky paradox" that can derail CRM efforts: To "sell" the project, you have to get people to dream big. You encourage expectations so high that they can't be met--setting people up for disappointment. Top CRM experts provide advice for saving Barry's CRM project.

Book

Building Business Benefits from CRM: How to Design the Strategy, Process, and Architecture to Succeed

Gartner Research Report

May 2003

Gartner, Inc.

This guide provides additional insights to help you get the most from your CRM initiatives. The volume presents valuable findings from research--including technology trends. It provides suggestions for creating an integrated CRM strategy, fashioning optimal CRM business processes for automation, rescuing failed CRM initiatives, and preventing future disasters. The book also explains how to evaluate and select vendors, and it contains case studies of successful CRM initiatives and best practices.

About the Authors

Darrell K. Rigby is a partner with Bain & Company and directs the firm's Global Retail practice.

Dianne Ledingham is a partner and leader in the company's Technology and Performance Improvement practices. Both are based in Boston.

Communicating well

To communicate well really means to communicate so that other people understand what you are saying. You are able to communicate well when you can convey your thoughts and others can, in turn, understand them. Not an easy task. It does require substantial effort, but once you are willing to put in the effort, it will pay large dividends.

In order to convey your thoughts and ideas to others, you must simply communicate clearly. Many of the suggestions given in this article may seem simplistic, but communicating well is nothing more than a simple conveying of one idea from your mind to the recipient's mind. It may seem simplistic, but is well worth a look because your thoughts and ideas and delivery of what you wish to impart to your audience will improve if you follow these simple suggestions.

---

Examine your efforts. For writing, one way that you can know if you have communicated well is to read something that you have written in the past—maybe material from several years ago if you have those documents. Do you understand what you had written? Do you clearly know what your take-home message(s) is/are?

If you don't have any of your past documents, you can just try it now. Write something and then read it a few weeks later (or if you can't wait that long, sooner). See if you understand what you have written. If even you yourself did not understand perfectly what you wrote, it means that the passage was not clear enough. In that case, you should rewrite it so that you understand it. On the other hand, if you understand exactly what you have written, congratulations! In either of these two cases, you can now proceed to the next step. Ask someone to read what you wrote. Have them explain exactly what you meant. If it is not what you had wanted to communicate, it either means that that person cannot communicate his thoughts well himself, or he misunderstood something that you wrote.

For giving speeches, the easiest thing to do is to stand in front of a mirror to give a talk. It may be necessary to up it one notch by using a camcorder to tape-record yourself and then watch it later. Alternatively, you could use a tape recorder and then play it back just to listen to your voice. One of the biggest problems of speakers is to speak too fast. Speak at a well-defined, moderate pace filled with pauses so that people can take in the information.

Organize the information well. Perhaps one of the most effective ways to have others digest your information is to organize it well. So frequently, however, people organize their reports, essays, or speeches, in such a horrendous way that it makes it extremely difficult for the audience to digest the content. It certainly is possible to digest it, but it requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader or listener. It is almost as if the writer or speaker is asking the audience's mind to organize their article or speech for them.

When you organize your report for them, it allows them to concentrate on the content so that they can take home the message more. Good organization means that you do not overwhelm the reader with unrelated facts, but instead group items into broad categories so that they can take in the information more easily. You effortlessly flow through one related topic after another. Use smooth transitions while in the process.

How do you organize your reports and speeches? You must have central themes. One central theme should be the general purpose of the article, which should run throughout the article. More minor themes should be present within each section of your report or speech.

mpart a point to each message. You should have a general point for people to take home. Make it very clear what that point is. For each subtopic, you should also have a point. Hint at it or discuss it at the beginning of the subtopic. Throughout your presentation, gradually make point after point. The flow of the presentation should make sense as you traverse your way through a progression of ideas—one after the other, the ideas should progress as if you were walking down some steps on a stairway. Repeat what a point is when you finish the subtopic. Therefore, even if the audience has drowsed somewhere within your report or speech, they will once again become engaged as you make the final point clear to them before proceeding with the next topic. In doing this, your work will also be much more organized.

Make people laugh, if possible. Humor is always an effective way to grab someone's attention. When people laugh, it makes them more receptive to what you say next. It also makes them happier and more relaxed, which further facilitates their intake of additional information. This is not to say that you should blatantly tell a joke, but the humor should merge seamlessly into your document.
Not everyone knows how to use humor, however, but you may want to study it from professionals. Be careful not to be offensive. If you do not feel comfortable using humor, though, you may want to refrain from applying it.

Be concise, clear, and specific. Communicating in generalities is one of the common plagues that infest most people's writing or speaking. Say your point loudly and clearly, but at the same time, not vaguely. Long sentences or phrases are also become quite confusing, so it is best to avoid them. State your thought concisely, clearly, and specifically. You will be able to impart your message much more readily that way.

Bla bla......Forget about the long winded speech.

HERE is the summaries :

To communicate effectively you should try to:

A. Examine your efforts.

B. Organize your information.

C. Impart a point to each message.

D. Make people laugh

E. Be concise, clear, and specific.

These are also really useful in a presentation!

Business Startup planning

This is a good presentation from a previous business consultant ,Tim Berry, founder and President of Palo Alto Software, speaks about business planning for ongoing businesses in this webcast for Peachtree.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Lynda Gratton, Tamara J. Erickson

The Idea in Brief

To execute major initiatives in your organization--integrating a newly acquired firm, overhauling an IT system--you need complex teams. Such teams' defining characteristics--large, virtual, diverse, and specialized--are crucial for handling daunting projects. Yet these very characteristics can also destroy team members' ability to work together, say Gratton and Erickson. For instance, as team size grows, collaboration diminishes.

To maximize your complex teams' effectiveness, construct a basis for collaboration in your company. Eight practices hinging on relationship building and cultural change can help. For example, create a strong sense of community by sponsoring events and activities that bring people together and help them get to know one another. And use informal mentoring and coaching to encourage employees to view interaction with leaders and colleagues as valuable.

When executives, HR professionals, and team leaders all pitch in to apply these practices, complex teams hit the ground running--the day they're formed.

The Idea in Practice

The authors recommend these practices for encouraging collaboration in complex teams:

What Executives Can Do

Invest in building and maintaining social relationships throughout your organization. Royal Bank of Scotland's CEO commissioned new headquarters built around an indoor atrium and featuring a "Main Street" with shops, picnic spaces, and a leisure club. The design encourages employees to rub shoulders daily, which fuels collaboration in RBS's complex teams.

Model collaborative behavior. At Standard Chartered Bank, top executives frequently fill in for one another, whether leading regional celebrations, representing SCB at key external events, or initiating internal dialogues with employees. They make their collaborative behavior visible through extensive travel and photos of leaders from varied sites working together.

Use coaching to reinforce a collaborative culture. At Nokia, each new hire's manager lists everyone in the organization the newcomer should meet, suggests topics he or she should discuss with each person on the list, and explains why establishing each of these relationships is important.

What HR Can Do

Train employees in the specific skills required for collaboration: appreciating others, engaging in purposeful conversation, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and managing programs.

Support a sense of community by sponsoring events and activities such as networking groups, cooking weekends, or tennis coaching. Spontaneous, unannounced activities can further foster community spirit.

Marriott has recognized the anniversary of the company's first hotel opening by rolling back the cafeteria to the 1950s and sponsoring a team twist dance contest.

What Team Leaders Can Do

Ensure that at least 20%-40% of a new team's members already know one another. When Nokia needs to transfer skills across business functions or units, it moves entire small teams intact instead of reshuffling individual people into new positions.

Change your leadership style as your team develops. At early stages in the project, be task-oriented: articulate the team's goal and accountabilities. As inevitable conflicts start emerging, switch to relationship building.

Assign distinct roles so team members can do their work independently. They'll spend less time negotiating responsibilities or protecting turf. But leave the path to achieving the team's goal somewhat ambiguous. Lacking well-defined tasks, members are more likely to invest time and energy collaborating.

CEO,CFO,COO,How about CCO (Chief Culture Officer)

from cnet news

There's no question that Google is a trendsetter. The company made Web search sexy, and lucrative. It established the foundation for an ecosystem that allows any old little Web site to make money off advertising.

With its lava lamps, simple doodle design, pampered employees and millionaires in its rank and file, it has become a cultural icon and an emblem of the gold-rush promise of the Web.

Google was ranked by Fortune magazine as the best place in the U.S. to work, and it has reached another zenith by becoming the most popular Web site. It's even become a verb in the dictionary.

And it may even have started a new trend by creating a job that carries the title "chief culture officer." Stacy Savides Sullivan is that person at Google. (Editors' note: Google doesn't seem to be unique with that title, rare though it is. A quick Google search--what else?--turns up a handful of institutions that have, or once had, a chief culture officer, including IT services company Kanbay International and AegisLiving, an assisted-living program in Redmond, Wash.)

Sullivan's mission is simple: retain the company's unique culture and keep the Googlers happy. In an exclusive interview, she tells CNET News.com how she does just that.

Q: How long have you had that title?
Sullivan: I've had that role since last summer, and in addition to being chief culture officer I'm also director of human resources.

What do you do as chief culture officer?
Sullivan: I work with employees around the world to figure out ways to maintain and enhance and develop our culture and how to keep the core values we had in the very beginning--a flat organization, a lack of hierarchy, a collaborative environment--to keep these as we continue to grow and spread them and filtrate them into our new offices around the world.

We want all of our employees to play a part in being involved in keeping our culture the way it is today but also growing and developing it. So some of it is coming up with different programs or processes, and just being there to talk with people when they have issues, setting up Web sites where people can report bugs in their culture and ideas on how to improve it, and those types of thing.

It's hard to imagine how you can keep a flat organization with 12,000 employees. But what are the characteristics of the Google culture in general?
Sullivan: I would characterize the culture as one that is team-oriented, very collaborative and encouraging people to think nontraditionally, different from where they ever worked before--working with integrity and for the good of the company and for the good of the world, which is tied to our overall mission of making information accessible to the world.

When I'm doing the interview myself I always start by telling them that we will try to assess how successful they are going to be at the company and how much they are going to enjoy it and how much they are going to thrive.

Who came up with the idea of having a Google chief culture officer?
Sullivan: It was something that (Google co-founders) Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with last summer.

Do you know of any other chief culture officers?
Sullivan: No.

What are some of the challenges you are finding in your role, maybe related to the hyper growth of the company?
Sullivan: I think one of the hardest things to do is ensure that we are hiring people who possess the kind of traits that we're looking for in a Google-y employee. Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done.

So, we put a lot of focus in our hiring processes when we are interviewing to try to determine first and foremost does the person have the skill set and experience potential to do the job from a background standpoint in addition to academics and credentials. But also are they going to be good culture or team fits.

Can you give me an example of a question that might be posed to someone during an interview to determine whether they are Google-y enough?
Sullivan: You know, there are no standard questions that I know of. But we might ask a question. This is just hypothetical, but it could be "How many bread boxes could you fit in an airplane?" or something like that. That's certainly not going to show if somebody is adaptable or flexible, but it's certainly going to show someone's thought process and reasoning, the way they can rationalize a true answer to something. Obviously, there's no right answer, but we're just trying to figure out how people think and the kind of the steps that they take.

When I'm doing the interview myself I always start by telling them that we will try to assess how successful they are going to be at the company and how much they are going to enjoy it and how much they are going to thrive. We know that they're qualified, that they're likely capable to do the job because they've gone through screening processes, but there are other questions we're trying to ask people around preferences, past experiences and areas they've really excelled in.

I've heard about a happiness survey at Google. Can you tell me more about that?
Sullivan: The last few years we've been doing a happiness survey as part of our annual global company survey. Four or five years ago, Larry and Sergey wanted to find out how happy people are and what it's going to take to keep them working at the company.

We're trying to figure out how committed people are to the company, what's causing that commitment level to be high or low, what makes a difference to them and their management and direct managers. The results ended up being centered a lot on career development and growth. So career development is more of a focus than giving more stock options or increasing salaries.

What do you think is the most appreciated perk? What do you get the most positive feedback on?
Sullivan: It would have to be the food. We have some type of lunch in every field office right now, every Google office. In places where we have room to have a cafeteria, we have our own and we hire our own chefs. But in many of those places we just bring in catered food. Here in Mountain View, we started having the cafes back in '99. And the reason why it is such an incredible perk is it keeps people on campus, it's all organic, it's healthy. At the headquarters we have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

How are you dealing with the possibility that there will be an exodus of people leaving when their options fully vest after four years?
Sullivan: Well, we have people now that are hitting their fourth year, actually, last year and this year. So, we are tracking it and watching for when different people are coming up each month and we're starting to touch base with them, asking: how are you doing? Are you working on something interesting? Do you like what you're doing? If not, what is one or two things that would make your life better here or increase your commitment level?

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So we're trying the personal touch approach right now because for many of these people providing more money or stock isn't really going to be the key driver to keeping them at Google. So to answer your question, yes, we're definitely concerned about it and we will continue to be concerned about it, probably forever.

So how is the transferable stock-option program going (which lets employees sell their vested options in an online auction and make money now rather than risk making less if the stock price falls)?
Sullivan: It's too early to comment. People are excited that we're trying it, though, and the idea has been well-received.

What's the most fun or crazy part of your job?
Sullivan: I think planning the ski trips over the years has been crazy. We've done Google-wide ski trips since 1999. Different groups go up and we spend the night and there's a lot of team-building and bonding. Those have actually been the most memorable and actually the most fun (events).

What have we not covered that you think is germane to what you do at Google?
Sullivan: I think for any company that is growing as quickly as we are the work-life balance component is actually quite high. We don't typically have early-morning meetings or late-night meetings. And people are welcome to do things via conference call at home and we pay for people to connect from home. We have a good paternity-leave policy where the dads can take off a couple of weeks when their spouse has had a child and we pay for peoples' meals when they have new babies for the first few weeks.

We've all heard about the ability for people to bring their dogs to work. And you have such a litany of perks and benefits and things that would encourage people to stay or even join. And we have a benefit where we reimburse people up to $5,000 if they buy a hybrid or electric car. And we have shuttle service (for commuters) to and from San Francisco, the East Bay, Santa Cruz.

Youtube - Sucessful Internet related company story

YouTube is a free video-sharing website on which users can distribute their video clips – short films in video format primarily found on the Internet. The site was founded in February 2005 by American-born Chad Hurley, Taiwan-born Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, born in East Germany of Bangladeshi decent. All three were former employees of PayPal, the Internet payment-transfer company. A preview of the YouTube website was presented to the public in May 2005 and officially launched six month later with the initial headquarters in San Mateo, California.

The venture gains
YouTube was initially funded by a so-called angel investor, a wealthy individual who provides business start-up capital, usually with a share in ownership. In November 2005, Sequoia Capital, the venture capital company founded by Donald T. (Don) Valentine invested US$ 3.5 million in YouTube. Don had previously funded various other successful technology companies. Roelof Botha, a partner in Sequoia Capital and former PayPal financial director, joined the YouTube executive board. Following impressive growth within a few short months, Sequoia Capital invested a further US$ 8 million in YouTube

Protests provide impetus
YouTube’s rapid expansion quickly caught the attention of the traditional media. Despite official YouTube policy prohibiting uploading of copyrighted material and the company’s efforts to regularly remove uploaded content infringing copyright laws, a large amount of such content continues to be uploaded. In February 2006, NBC requested removal of its copyright content from the YouTube website. Although YouTube complied with NBC’s request, the incident hit the news and the increased publicity gave even more impetus to YouTube expansion.
NBC then realised the truth of the old saying “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” and in June 2006 announced a strategic partnership with YouTube. An official NBC channel would be set up on YouTube presenting promotional clips of the TV series ‘The Office’ and YouTube would also promote NBC’s videos on its website. CBS, which had previously also requested the removal of various video clips, followed suit in July 2006. Nevertheless, copyright lawsuits are likely to plague YouTube sooner or later.

Fast lane to fame
YouTube’s success has also catapulted a number of unknowns to Internet-celebrity status. One is Peter Oakley, known as geriatric1927, from Leicester in the UK. The widowed pensioner, born in 1927, gained instant popularity with a series of autobiographical videos entitled ‘Telling it All’, revealing various aspects of his life including his service in World War II. YouTube has also provided a launching pad for new bands and their music. OK Go, the rock band from Chicago and Washington DC, and Sick Puppies, the Indie rock band from Sydney, Australia both became famous almost overnight through YouTube.

Googled
In summer 2006, YouTube became one of the fastest growing websites in the world, rated as the fifth most popular website by Alexa, a company providing web-traffic statistics to other sites. Surveys conducted in July 2006 showed that 100 million clips were viewed daily on YouTube, 65,000 new clips were uploaded every 24 hours and the website was visited 20 million times each month.

In October 2006, it was announced that Google would acquire YouTube for US$ 1.65 billion. The company would continue operating independently and keep its co-founders and all employees. The deal went through on 13 November 2006, marking Google’s biggest purchase to date.