Business
I had an interesting revelation when I was a teen and working in the stock room at my local JC Penney. When inventory arrived, I was to put the price tags on the items. The sheet that I was given to derive the prices from also had the store’s own cost for those items. The…
When is our stuff actually, you know, our stuff? Recently a stir was caused when cell-phone unlocking—the practice of enabling your cellphone for use on any cell network with any SIM card—became illegal. Now, with legislation pending in Congress to re-legalize(?) the practice, Kyle Wiens writes that we need to focus on “unlocking” much more…
In an interview with Brian WIlliams, Apple CEO Tim Cook yesterday said: “We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States. Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States.” The article doesn’t say where in the US that Apple will begin their manufacturing.…
Recently, we’ve seen a report from RIPEC about the troubled EDC and how to improve it. Everyone wants to improve the business community, or at least they say they do, but as one of the points in the report, Rhode Island lacks a clear vision or path toward making any improvements. Reports like that can…
630AM/99.7FM WPRO has posted my appearance on the Dan Yorke show, Tuesday, in two segments. The first is the initial half hour introducing the research from the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity and touching on some conclusions. For the second hour, Economic Development Corp. board member and VIBCO President Karl Wadensten joined us in…
I’ve been following taxpayer migration data for years, but in a haphazard way. A new study that I’ve coauthored for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity finally gave me the opportunity to review all fifteen years of available data from the IRS. The picture — from the 2003 beginning of what can only be…
President Obama: [L]ook, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than…
Say you’ve got a company that has 5 products on the market, and plans to release a new one in the next year. Which products should existing teams and new hires be assigned to work on? Maybe your existing customer base is willing, in large numbers, to pay for a new release of one of…
There are about a half-a-dozen things I could comment on, in reaction to the announcement by Borders Books today that it is going all-the-way out of business. For now, following on from Justin’s post earlier today, I will simply note this passage from the Wall Street Journal story on the subject…Borders filed for bankruptcy-court protection…
Seth Godin has advice for the little guy. Like small business or even a small state. Economies of scale are well understood. Bigger factories are more efficient, bigger distribution networks are more efficient, bigger ad campaigns can be more efficient. It’s often hard to defeat a major competitor, particularly if the market is looking for…