Blue Plate iPad Special

At least once in every other entrepreneurship class I've taught, students present an idea for automating their food ordering experience in sit-down restaurants. Their arguments are for making (1) wait time for a table more productive, (2) orders more accurate and personalized, (3) menus more flexible and changeable, and (4) inventory and billing more accurate. The start-up costs of implementing such a technology are usually the biggest roadblock to making this idea a reality. Now, the iPad's wide level of adoption has finally made this service possible. As this CNN news report shows, two owners of an Atlanta restaurant have become one of the first to use iPads for orders.

Interestingly, the wait staff seems to spend as much time explaining the iPad concept as they might have spent describing the night's special and taking the order. Plus, does it seem to you like the patrons are a bit awestruck by the iPad and slower in deciding what they want? I imagine that restaurants and customers will begin to use social media with the iPads for Groupons, reviews, and promotions - maybe even a surveillance video of their food being prepared - and kill the social pleasures of dining with family and friends [Do not look for this to be adopted in the near future by any restaurant in Italy] How can you shape and reshape this idea to create value for the dining customer?

Feelings, oh whoa, feelings!

Emotion doesn't matter in the workplace, right? You don't get angry when an incompetent, yet politically-charged, peer gets promoted (and a raise) and you don't. What would happen to corporate ratings if an emotional metric were somehow deployed to evaluate them? Currently we have a "Top 100" employers to work for - but I'm not sure we can say systematically how to achieve a top rating in this category (aside from treating people like they are "people"). Paul Herr weighs in on this topic at:

http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/message-wall-street-its-all-about-feelings?utm_source=MIX+Fix&utm_campaign=ad1474b358-MIX_Fix_Aug20_2010&utm_medium=email

Reality fitness marketing

"Everyone has a big 'but,' Simone, let's talk about yours"
- PeeWee Herman in PeeWee's Big Adventure.

Nike attempts to reach a "larger" audience with its new promotions. If you haven't read "Just Do It," which I regard as one of the best marketing books ever, it's time to revisit. Meanwhile, check out this story on BusinessWeek.

Who's leading the hiring process? Small business

CareerBuilder's latest nationwide survey shows that small businesses – one of the major drivers for economic recovery and job growth – will be hiring in the second half of 2010.  Thirty-two percent of companies with 500 or fewer employees plan to add new employees in the months of July through December.  Twenty-one percent will hire full-time, 11 percent will hire part-time and 6 percent will hire contractors or temporary workers.  Of companies with 50 or fewer employees, 24 percent plan to hire in the second half of 2010.  The survey was completed in June 2010 and included more than 1,300 employers in businesses with 500 or fewer employees and more than 4,400 workers.

The article also lists the types of businesses entrepreneurs say they've started over the past year. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?

Read the full story on Yahoo! Finance here.

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Fast Company Most Creative People in Business

I'm late to reading this issue, but Fast Company has published its list of 100 most creative people in business. The link to the full list is here: Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business.

I was particularly struck by the convergence of art, programming, and humanity of Zachary Lieberman. Zachary Lieberman shows us how a person who considers himself an artist can enact changes in technology and peoples' lives.

"Dynamic capabilities" versus "satisficing" - Part II

Three weeks ago I posed a question: How do organizations really create new routines and capabilities? "Dynamic capabilities" allow organizations to develop new routines and capabilities to adapt to their competitive environment, whereas "satisficing" is a form of decision making under limited constraints that satisfies some desired goal, however imperfectly or sub-optimally. I gave current and former students the formal definitions of each concept and asked them to indicate by survey which concept they thought was appealing, interesting, and a more realistic depiction of what takes place in organizations. Here are the results.

"This concept is appealing to me" received much higher agreement with respondents for dynamic capabilities than satisficing.

Similarly, "this concept is interesting to me" received much higher agreement with respondents for dynamic capabilities than satisficing.

And yet respondents overwhelmingly indicated that they thought satisficing was a more realistic depiction of what takes place in organizations than they did dynamic capabilities.

Competing conclusions? (1) The satisficing literature failed to satisfy the explanatory requirements test for how organizations develop, recombine, and refine their routines and capabilities. (2) "Dynamic capabilities" sounds sexier than "satisficing." (3) The decision-making component in satisficing is important for "what really happens in organizations," but is less interesting or appealing than the theory that seemingly ignores managerial decision making. What do you think?

1,000 Pitches!

How do you come up with a really valuable and novel idea? One way is to start with 1,000 ideas (your own or those of others). The University of Michigan produced over 2,000 ideas in its "1,000 Pitches" site. Unlike business plan competitions, whose merits for students remain untested, pitching competitions allow a far greater range of participants, reduce the need for producing dressed-up pro forma financials, and can be far more engaging to a broader audience. What's your idea for a novel and valuable pitching competition?