The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Salud / Avance de investigadores argentinos
Cáncer: revelan un mecanismo clave
Científicos del Instituto Leloir hallaron cómo una proteína defiende a las células de lesiones que pueden generarlo
La aparición de un tumor es el resultado del crecimiento descontrolado de una célula que acumuló mutaciones. Cada célula de nuestro organismo suma 10.000 lesiones por día sólo por efectos colaterales de su propio metabolismo. Si nos exponemos al sol, ese número sube a 100.000 por hora y por célula.
Sin embargo, la probabilidad de que esas lesiones se perpetúen en mutaciones es muy baja. Esto se debe a que un organismo sano toma decisiones "inteligentes" para lidiar con esos daños. En particular, la célula se defiende mediante tres grupos de mecanismos: trata de eliminar lesiones antes de que el ADN dañado sea usado como molde de copiado para la producción de proteínas vitales; intenta desacelerar el proceso de copiado de ADN dañado, creando una ventana de tiempo un poco mayor que favorece la reparación, o hace lo posible por utilizar el ADN dañado y copiarlo sin errores para producir proteínas que funcionen bien.
Ahora, investigadores de la Fundación Instituto Leloir identificaron el rol clave que desempeña una proteína en la protección de las células. Según informan, la llamada Chk1 despliega tres tipos de "artilugios" para proteger a las células de lesiones que podrían convertirse en mutaciones cancerígenas.
"Se trata de un mecanismo de respuesta conservado en todas las células de diferentes organismos, incluyendo a las personas, y el hallazgo podría inspirar el desarrollo de nuevos tratamientos", explica la doctora Vanesa Gottifredi, jefa del Laboratorio de Ciclo Celular y Estabilidad Genómica del Leloir y directora del equipo de investigación que publicó el trabajo en la revista Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Director de orquesta
Estas tres estrategias para proteger a la célula de mutaciones deben coordinarse, pero poco se sabe a ese respecto. "Nuestro reciente descubrimiento, realizado en células humanas expuestas a lesiones por rayos ultravioletas, nos permite entender, en parte, cómo se coordinan esos mecanismos", puntualiza Gottifredi.
La investigadora y su equipo encontraron que la molécula Chk1, que participa del segundo mecanismo mencionado, puede actuar como una especie de "director de orquesta" que coordina también a los otros dos mecanismos. Para la investigadora del Conicet, el hallazgo contribuye a entender cómo una célula puede proteger su sobrevida y reducir al mínimo la acumulación de errores.
Pero, además, Gottifredi cree que la información podría ser usada para perfeccionar la utilización de determinados blancos terapéuticos: si bien la proteína Chk1 despliega respuestas para evitar el desarrollo del cáncer y en general logra su cometido, una vez desarrollada la célula tumoral también la protegería. De esta manera, cuando los mecanismos de control fallan y una célula se rinde, la Chk1 seguirá protegiéndola sin importar si esa célula se convierte en un enemigo de nuestro organismo.
Así, si al tumor -como también sucedería con una célula sana- se le pudiera sacar, bloquear o anular la proteína Chk1, las células malignas se volverían más sensibles y morirían ante un tratamiento quimioterapéutico. Por eso, el objetivo sería atacar a la Chk1 con algún tipo de terapia selectiva que "conserve esa proteína vital en el tejido sano", destaca Gottifredi.
Aunque todavía faltan muchos años de experimentación, ya hay avances promisorios. "Por ejemplo, existen drogas que están siendo evaluadas y pueden inhibir parcialmente la actividad de Chk1, aunque es probable que se necesite también la combinación con otros fármacos o terapias genéticas combinadas", concluye Gottifredi.
EL HALLAZGO
La proteína Chk1 sería una especie de directora de orquesta que protege a las células de lesiones potencialmente cancerígenas, pero también protege a células tumorales.
. Si se la pudiera anular, las células malignas se volverían más sensibles y los tratamientos quimioterápicos podrían destruirlas.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Demystifying social media
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Demystifying social media
April 2012
Roxane Divol, David Edelman, and Hugo Sarrazin
As the marketing power of social media grows,it no longer makes sense to treat it as an
experiment. Here’s how senior leaders can harness social media to shape consumer decision making in predictable ways.
The problem
Companies invest millions of dollars in social media,
with little understanding of how it influences consumers
to favor their brands or buy their products.
Why it matters
Without knowing how social media affects consumer
behavior, companies run the risk of aiming it at the
wrong targets, wasting time and money on ineffective
efforts, and generally failing to harness its potential.
What to do about it
Understand social media’s core functions: to monitor,
respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior. Then
look for the best opportunities to carry out those
functions along the journey that consumers embark
upon when they make purchasing decisions.
Executives certainly know what social media is. After all,
if Facebook users constituted a country, it would be the world’s third
largest, behind China and India. Executives can even claim to
know what makes social media so potent: its ability to amplify wordof-
mouth effects. Yet the vast majority of executives have no idea
how to harness social media’s power. Companies diligently establish
Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep
understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers
to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability,
and engender loyalty.
We believe there are two interrelated reasons why social media remains
an enigma wrapped in a riddle for many executives, particularly
nonmarketers. The first is its seemingly nebulous nature. It’s no secret
that consumers increasingly go online to discuss products and
brands, seek advice, and offer guidance. Yet it’s often difficult to see
where and how to influence these conversations, which take place
across an ever-growing variety of platforms, among diverse and
dispersed communities, and may occur either with lightning speed or
over the course of months. Second, there’s no single measure of
social media’s financial impact, and many companies find that it’s
difficult to justify devoting significant resources—financial
or human—to an activity whose precise effect remains unclear.
What we hope to do here is to demystify social media. We have identified
its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead
consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake
when making purchasing decisions.
Being able to identify
exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumers helps
executives to craft marketing strategies that take advantage of social
media’s unique ability to engage with customers. It should also help
leaders develop, launch, and demonstrate the financial impact of socialmedia
campaigns (for insight into the world’s biggest social-media
market, see “Understanding social media in China,” forthcoming on
mckinseyquarterly.com).
In short, today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as
a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations.
It’s much more than simply another form of paid marketing, and
it demands more too: a clear framework to help CEOs and other top
executives evaluate investments in it, a plan for building support
infrastructure, and performance-management systems to help leaders
smartly scale their social presence. Companies that have these three
elements in place can create critical new brand assets (such as content
from customers or insights from their feedback), open up new
channels for interactions (Twitter-based customer service,
Facebook news feeds), and completely reposition a brand through the
way its employees interact with customers or other parties.
The social consumer decision journey
Companies have quickly learned that social media works: 39 percent of
companies we’ve surveyed already use social-media services as their
primary digital tool to reach customers, and that percentage is expected
to rise to 47 percent within the next four years.1 Fueling this growth
is a growing list of success stories from mainstream companies:
Creating buzz: Eighteen months before Ford reentered the US
subcompact-car market with its Fiesta model, it began a broad
marketing campaign called the Fiesta Movement. A major element
involved giving 100 social-media influencers a European model
of the car, having them complete “missions,” and asking them to document
their experiences on various social channels. Videos related to
the Fiesta campaign generated 6.5 million views on YouTube, and Ford
received 50,000 requests for information about the vehicle, primarily
from non-Ford drivers. When it finally became available to the public,
in late 2010, some 10,000 cars sold in the first six days.
Learning from customers: PepsiCo has used social networks
to gather customer insights via its DEWmocracy promotions, which have
led to the creation of new varieties of its Mountain Dew brand.
Since 2008, the company has sold more than 36 million cases of them.
Targeting customers: Levi Strauss has used social media to offer
location-specific deals. In one instance, direct interactions with
just 400 consumers led 1,600 people to turn up at the company’s stores—
an example of social media’s word-of-mouth effect.
Yet countless others have failed to match these successes: knowing
that something works and understanding how it works are very
different things. As the number of companies with Facebook pages,
Twitter feeds, or online communities continues to grow, we think
it’s time for leaders to remind themselves how social media connects
with an organization’s broader marketing mission.
1 See “What marketers say about working online: McKinsey Global Survey results,”
mckinseyquarterly.com, November 2011.
Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments, or
touch points, that influence their purchasing behavior. Almost three
years ago, our colleagues proposed a framework—the “consumer
decision journey”—for understanding how consumers interact with
companies during purchase decisions.2 Expressing consumer behavior
as a winding journey with multiple feedback loops, this new framework
was different from the traditional description of consumer
purchasing behavior as a linear march through a funnel. Social media
is a unique component of the consumer decision journey: it’s the only
form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every stage,
from when they’re pondering brands and products right through the
period after a purchase, as their experience influences the brands they
prefer and their potential advocacy influences others (Exhibit 1).
The fact that social media can influence customers at every stage
of the journey doesn’t mean that it should. Depending on the company
and industry, some touch points are more important to competitive
advantage than others.3 What’s more, our work with dozens of
companies adapting to the new marketing environment strongly
suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a
limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual
touch points along the consumer decision journey. Exhibit 2 depicts
the ten most important responses, range from providing customer
service to fostering online communities. One of those ten—monitoring
what people say about your brand—is so important that we see it
as a core function of social media, relevant across the entire consumer
decision journey. The remaining nine responses, organized in three
clusters in the exhibit, underpin efforts to use social media to respond
to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity,
and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers.
1. Monitor
Gatorade, a sports drink manufactured by PepsiCo, has been diligently
working toward its goal of becoming the “largest participatory
brand in the world.”4 It has created a Chicago-based “war room” within
its marketing department to monitor the brand in real time across
social media. There are seats where team members can track custombuilt
data visualizations and dashboards (including terms related
to the brand, sponsored athletes, and competitors) and run sentiment
analyses around product and campaign launches. Every day, all of
this feedback is integrated into products and marketing—for example,
by helping to optimize the landing page on the company’s Web site.
Since the war room’s creation, the average traffic to Gatorade’s online
properties, the length of visitor interactions, and viral sharing from
campaigns have all more than doubled.
Such brand monitoring—simply knowing what’s said online about
your products and services—should be a default social-media function,
taking place constantly. Even without engaging consumers directly,
companies can glean insights from an effective monitoring program that
informs everything from product design to marketing and provides
advance warning of potentially negative publicity. It’s also critical to
communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever
is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches
relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing,
public relations, or risk.
3 Readers interested in a detailed approach for understanding which touch points matter—based on research techniques that reveal what consumers are seeing, saying, and doing—should read David Edelman, “Branding in the digital age: You’re spending your money in all the wrong places,” Harvard Business Review, December 2010, Volume 88, Number 12, pp. 62–69.
4 Comment by Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s senior marketing director, consumer and shopper
engagement. For more, see Adam Ostrow, “Inside Gatorade’s social media command center,”
mashable.com, June 15, 2010.
2. Respond
Valuable though it is to learn how you are doing and what to improve,
broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations
for responding at a personal level is another form of social-media
engagement. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done
to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often,
though, responding is a part of crisis management.
Last year, for example, a hoax photograph posted online claimed that
McDonald’s was charging African-Americans an additional service
fee. The hoax first appeared on Twitter, where the image rapidly went
viral just before the weekend as was retweeted with the hashtag
#seriouslymcdonalds. It turned out to be a working weekend for the
McDonald’s social-media team. On Saturday, the company’s director
of social media released a statement through Twitter declaring the
photograph to be a hoax and asking key influencers to “please let your
followers know.” The company continued to reinforce that message
throughout the weekend, even responding personally to concerned
Tweeters. By Sunday, the number of people who believed the image
to be authentic had dwindled, and McDonald’s stock price rose 5 percent
the following day.
Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce
positive ones will only increase in importance. The responsibility for
taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the
message will differ depending on the situation. No response can be
quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant,
proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too. By responding
rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively
influence consumer sentiment and behavior.
3. Amplify
“Amplification” involves designing your marketing activities to have an
inherently social motivator that spurs broader engagement and sharing.
This approach means more than merely reaching the end of planning
a marketing campaign and then thinking that “we should do something
social”—say, uploading a television commercial to YouTube. It means
that the core concepts for campaigns must invite customers into an
experience that they can choose to extend by joining a conversation
with the brand, product, fellow users, and other enthusiasts. It means
having ongoing programs that share new content with customers and
provide opportunities for sharing back. It means offering experiences
that customers will feel great about sharing, because they gain a
badge of honor by publicizing content that piques the interest of others.
In the initial phases of the consumer decision journey, when consumers
sift through brands and products to determine their preferred options,
referrals and recommendations are powerful social-media tools. A
simple example is the way online deal sites such as Groupon and Gilt
Groupe provide consumers with credit for each first-time purchaser
they refer. Our research shows that such direct recommendations from
peers generate engagement rates some 30 times higher than traditional
online advertising does.
Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a
purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement
and foster loyalty. When Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its
brand, for example, it launched a competition challenging users to
be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters
that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners
with a $20 gift card. This social-media brand advocacy effort
delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget.
Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching
with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”
Marketers also can foster communities around their brands and
products, both to reinforce the belief of consumers that they made a
smart decision and to provide guidance for getting the most from
a purchase. Software company Intuit, for example, launched customer
service forums for its Quicken and QuickBooks personal-finance
software so users could help one another with product issues. The result?
Users rather than Intuit employees answer about 80 percent of
the questions, and the company has employed user comments to make
dozens of significant changes to its software.
4. Lead
Social media can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward
long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer
decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving
Web traffic to content about existing products and services. When
grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man
character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010
Super Bowl, for example, the company’s ambition was to increase its
reach and relevance to both men and women. The commercial became
a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more
than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the
company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product
launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United
States. For example, social media played an integral role in the success
of “Small Business Saturday,” the US shopping promotion created
by American Express for the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving
(for American Express CMO John Hayes’s perspective on
that launch, see “How we see it: Three senior executives on the future
of marketing,” on mckinseyquarterly.com). In addition, when
consumers are ready to buy, companies can promote time-sensitive
targeted deals and offers through social media to generate traffic and
sales. Online menswear company Bonobos, for example, provided
an incentive for its Twitter followers by unlocking a discount code after
its messages were resent a certain number of times. As a result of
5 See Claire Cain Miller, “New Starbucks ads seek to recruit online fans,” nytimes.com,
May 18, 2009.
this effort, almost 100 consumers bought products from the site
for the first time. The campaign delivered a 1,200 percent return on
investment in just 24 hours.
Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase.
This ability to gain product-development insights from customers in a
relatively inexpensive way is emerging as one of social media’s most
significant advantages. Intuit, for example, has its community forums.
Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’
views about improving the company’s products and services and then
aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a
dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and
involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under
consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.
Converting knowledge to action
Despite offering numerous opportunities to inf luence consumers,
social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average
marketing budget, in our experience. Many chief marketing officers
say that they want to increase that share to 5 percent. One problem
is that a lot of senior executives know little about social media. But the
main obstacle is the perception that the return on investment (ROI)
from such initiatives is uncertain.
Without a clear sense of the value social media creates, it’s perhaps
not surprising that so many CEOs and other senior executives don’t
feel comfortable when their companies go beyond mere “experiments”
with social-media strategy. Yet we can measure the impact of social
media well beyond straight volume and consumer-sentiment metrics;
in fact, we can precisely determine the buzz surrounding a product
or brand and then calculate how social media drives purchasing
behavior. To do so—and then ensure that social media complements
broader marketing strategies—companies must obviously coordinate
data, tools, technology, and talent across multiple functions. In
many cases, senior business leaders must open up their agendas and
recognize the importance of supporting and even undertaking
initiatives that may traditionally have been left to the chief marketing
officer. As our colleagues noted last year, “we’re all marketers now.”
6 See Tom French, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill, “We’re all marketers now,”
mckinseyquarterly.com, July 2011.
Consider the experience of a telecommunications company that proactively
adopted social media but had no idea if its efforts were
working. The company had launched Twitter-based customer service
capabilities, several promotional campaigns built around social
contests, a fan page with discounts and tech tips, and an active response
program to engage with people speaking about the brand. In socialmedia
terms, the investment was relatively large, and the company’s
senior executives wanted more than anecdotal evidence that the
strategy was paying off. As a starting point, to ensure that the company
was doing a quality job designing and executing its social presence,
it benchmarked its efforts against approaches used by other companies
known to be successful in social media. It then advanced the
following hypotheses:
• If all of these social-media activities improve general service perceptions
about the brand, that improvement should be reflected in a
higher volume of positive online posts.7
• If social sharing is effective, added clicks and traffic should result
in higher search placements.
• If both of these assumptions hold true, social-media activity should
help drive sales—ideally, at a rate even higher than the company
could achieve with its average gross rating point (GRP) of advertising
expenditures.
The company then tested its options. At various times, it spent less
money on conventional advertising, especially as social-media activity
ramped up, and it modeled the rising positive sentiment and higher
search positions just as it would using traditional metrics. The company
concluded that social-media activity not only boosted sales but also
had higher ROIs than traditional marketing did. Thus, while the company
took a risk by shifting emphasis toward social-media efforts before it
had data confirming that this was the correct course, the bet paid off.
What’s more, the analytic baseline now in place has given the company
confidence to continue exploring a growing role for social media.
In other cases, social media may have a more specific role, such as
helping to launch a new product or to mitigate negative word of mouth.
Similar types of analyses can focus on mixing the impact of buzz,
search, and traffic; correlating that with sales or renewals (or whatever
7 There’s no shortage of methods purporting to measure social media’s presence and impact.
The company in this example used BuzzMetrics, a suite of tools developed by NM Incite
(a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey).
8 Gross rating points measure the size of the audience a specific media vehicle reaches. To calculate them, multiply the percentage of the target audience an advertisement reaches by the number of times it airs.
the key metric may be); and then gauging the result against total
costs. This approach can give executives the confidence and focus they
need to invest more money, time, and resources in social media.
As these social-media activities gain scale, the challenges center less
around justifying funding and more around organizational issues
such as developing the right processes and governance structure, identifying
clear roles—for all involved in social-media strategy, from
marketing to customer service to product development—and bolstering
the talent base, and improving performance standards. New
capabilities abound, and social-media best practices are barely starting
to emerge. We do know this: because social-media influences every
element of the consumer decision journey, communication must take
place between as well as within functions. That complicates lines
of reporting and decision-making authority.
If insights from monitoring social media are relevant to nonmarketing
functions such as product development, for instance, how will you
identify and disseminate that information efficiently and effectively—
and then ensure that it gets used? If you spot an opportunity to have
a meaningful conversation with a key influencer, how will you quickly
engage the right senior executive to follow through? If you recognize
a fast-moving service concern, how will you respond rapidly and
openly—and when should you do so outside the traditional service
organization? Senior executives across the company must recognize
and begin to answer such questions.
Social media is extending the disruptive impact of the digital era
across a broad range of functions. Meanwhile, the perceived lack of
metrics, the fear, and the limited sense of what’s possible are
eroding. Executives can identify the functions, touch points, and goals
of social-media activities, as well as craft approaches to measure
their impact and manage their risks. The time is ripe for executivesuite
discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your
company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sirish
Chandrasekaran, Dianne Esber, Rebecca Millman, and Dan Singer to the
development of this article.
Roxane Divol is a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office,
David Edelman is a principal in the Boston office, and Hugo Sarrazin is
a director in the Silicon Valley office.
Source: www.mckinseyquarterly.com
Demystifying social media
April 2012
Roxane Divol, David Edelman, and Hugo Sarrazin
As the marketing power of social media grows,it no longer makes sense to treat it as an
experiment. Here’s how senior leaders can harness social media to shape consumer decision making in predictable ways.
The problem
Companies invest millions of dollars in social media,
with little understanding of how it influences consumers
to favor their brands or buy their products.
Why it matters
Without knowing how social media affects consumer
behavior, companies run the risk of aiming it at the
wrong targets, wasting time and money on ineffective
efforts, and generally failing to harness its potential.
What to do about it
Understand social media’s core functions: to monitor,
respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior. Then
look for the best opportunities to carry out those
functions along the journey that consumers embark
upon when they make purchasing decisions.
Executives certainly know what social media is. After all,
if Facebook users constituted a country, it would be the world’s third
largest, behind China and India. Executives can even claim to
know what makes social media so potent: its ability to amplify wordof-
mouth effects. Yet the vast majority of executives have no idea
how to harness social media’s power. Companies diligently establish
Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep
understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers
to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability,
and engender loyalty.
We believe there are two interrelated reasons why social media remains
an enigma wrapped in a riddle for many executives, particularly
nonmarketers. The first is its seemingly nebulous nature. It’s no secret
that consumers increasingly go online to discuss products and
brands, seek advice, and offer guidance. Yet it’s often difficult to see
where and how to influence these conversations, which take place
across an ever-growing variety of platforms, among diverse and
dispersed communities, and may occur either with lightning speed or
over the course of months. Second, there’s no single measure of
social media’s financial impact, and many companies find that it’s
difficult to justify devoting significant resources—financial
or human—to an activity whose precise effect remains unclear.
What we hope to do here is to demystify social media. We have identified
its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead
consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake
when making purchasing decisions.
Being able to identify
exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumers helps
executives to craft marketing strategies that take advantage of social
media’s unique ability to engage with customers. It should also help
leaders develop, launch, and demonstrate the financial impact of socialmedia
campaigns (for insight into the world’s biggest social-media
market, see “Understanding social media in China,” forthcoming on
mckinseyquarterly.com).
In short, today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as
a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations.
It’s much more than simply another form of paid marketing, and
it demands more too: a clear framework to help CEOs and other top
executives evaluate investments in it, a plan for building support
infrastructure, and performance-management systems to help leaders
smartly scale their social presence. Companies that have these three
elements in place can create critical new brand assets (such as content
from customers or insights from their feedback), open up new
channels for interactions (Twitter-based customer service,
Facebook news feeds), and completely reposition a brand through the
way its employees interact with customers or other parties.
The social consumer decision journey
Companies have quickly learned that social media works: 39 percent of
companies we’ve surveyed already use social-media services as their
primary digital tool to reach customers, and that percentage is expected
to rise to 47 percent within the next four years.1 Fueling this growth
is a growing list of success stories from mainstream companies:
Creating buzz: Eighteen months before Ford reentered the US
subcompact-car market with its Fiesta model, it began a broad
marketing campaign called the Fiesta Movement. A major element
involved giving 100 social-media influencers a European model
of the car, having them complete “missions,” and asking them to document
their experiences on various social channels. Videos related to
the Fiesta campaign generated 6.5 million views on YouTube, and Ford
received 50,000 requests for information about the vehicle, primarily
from non-Ford drivers. When it finally became available to the public,
in late 2010, some 10,000 cars sold in the first six days.
Learning from customers: PepsiCo has used social networks
to gather customer insights via its DEWmocracy promotions, which have
led to the creation of new varieties of its Mountain Dew brand.
Since 2008, the company has sold more than 36 million cases of them.
Targeting customers: Levi Strauss has used social media to offer
location-specific deals. In one instance, direct interactions with
just 400 consumers led 1,600 people to turn up at the company’s stores—
an example of social media’s word-of-mouth effect.
Yet countless others have failed to match these successes: knowing
that something works and understanding how it works are very
different things. As the number of companies with Facebook pages,
Twitter feeds, or online communities continues to grow, we think
it’s time for leaders to remind themselves how social media connects
with an organization’s broader marketing mission.
1 See “What marketers say about working online: McKinsey Global Survey results,”
mckinseyquarterly.com, November 2011.
Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments, or
touch points, that influence their purchasing behavior. Almost three
years ago, our colleagues proposed a framework—the “consumer
decision journey”—for understanding how consumers interact with
companies during purchase decisions.2 Expressing consumer behavior
as a winding journey with multiple feedback loops, this new framework
was different from the traditional description of consumer
purchasing behavior as a linear march through a funnel. Social media
is a unique component of the consumer decision journey: it’s the only
form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every stage,
from when they’re pondering brands and products right through the
period after a purchase, as their experience influences the brands they
prefer and their potential advocacy influences others (Exhibit 1).
The fact that social media can influence customers at every stage
of the journey doesn’t mean that it should. Depending on the company
and industry, some touch points are more important to competitive
advantage than others.3 What’s more, our work with dozens of
companies adapting to the new marketing environment strongly
suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a
limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual
touch points along the consumer decision journey. Exhibit 2 depicts
the ten most important responses, range from providing customer
service to fostering online communities. One of those ten—monitoring
what people say about your brand—is so important that we see it
as a core function of social media, relevant across the entire consumer
decision journey. The remaining nine responses, organized in three
clusters in the exhibit, underpin efforts to use social media to respond
to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity,
and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers.
1. Monitor
Gatorade, a sports drink manufactured by PepsiCo, has been diligently
working toward its goal of becoming the “largest participatory
brand in the world.”4 It has created a Chicago-based “war room” within
its marketing department to monitor the brand in real time across
social media. There are seats where team members can track custombuilt
data visualizations and dashboards (including terms related
to the brand, sponsored athletes, and competitors) and run sentiment
analyses around product and campaign launches. Every day, all of
this feedback is integrated into products and marketing—for example,
by helping to optimize the landing page on the company’s Web site.
Since the war room’s creation, the average traffic to Gatorade’s online
properties, the length of visitor interactions, and viral sharing from
campaigns have all more than doubled.
Such brand monitoring—simply knowing what’s said online about
your products and services—should be a default social-media function,
taking place constantly. Even without engaging consumers directly,
companies can glean insights from an effective monitoring program that
informs everything from product design to marketing and provides
advance warning of potentially negative publicity. It’s also critical to
communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever
is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches
relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing,
public relations, or risk.
3 Readers interested in a detailed approach for understanding which touch points matter—based on research techniques that reveal what consumers are seeing, saying, and doing—should read David Edelman, “Branding in the digital age: You’re spending your money in all the wrong places,” Harvard Business Review, December 2010, Volume 88, Number 12, pp. 62–69.
4 Comment by Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s senior marketing director, consumer and shopper
engagement. For more, see Adam Ostrow, “Inside Gatorade’s social media command center,”
mashable.com, June 15, 2010.
2. Respond
Valuable though it is to learn how you are doing and what to improve,
broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations
for responding at a personal level is another form of social-media
engagement. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done
to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often,
though, responding is a part of crisis management.
Last year, for example, a hoax photograph posted online claimed that
McDonald’s was charging African-Americans an additional service
fee. The hoax first appeared on Twitter, where the image rapidly went
viral just before the weekend as was retweeted with the hashtag
#seriouslymcdonalds. It turned out to be a working weekend for the
McDonald’s social-media team. On Saturday, the company’s director
of social media released a statement through Twitter declaring the
photograph to be a hoax and asking key influencers to “please let your
followers know.” The company continued to reinforce that message
throughout the weekend, even responding personally to concerned
Tweeters. By Sunday, the number of people who believed the image
to be authentic had dwindled, and McDonald’s stock price rose 5 percent
the following day.
Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce
positive ones will only increase in importance. The responsibility for
taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the
message will differ depending on the situation. No response can be
quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant,
proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too. By responding
rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively
influence consumer sentiment and behavior.
3. Amplify
“Amplification” involves designing your marketing activities to have an
inherently social motivator that spurs broader engagement and sharing.
This approach means more than merely reaching the end of planning
a marketing campaign and then thinking that “we should do something
social”—say, uploading a television commercial to YouTube. It means
that the core concepts for campaigns must invite customers into an
experience that they can choose to extend by joining a conversation
with the brand, product, fellow users, and other enthusiasts. It means
having ongoing programs that share new content with customers and
provide opportunities for sharing back. It means offering experiences
that customers will feel great about sharing, because they gain a
badge of honor by publicizing content that piques the interest of others.
In the initial phases of the consumer decision journey, when consumers
sift through brands and products to determine their preferred options,
referrals and recommendations are powerful social-media tools. A
simple example is the way online deal sites such as Groupon and Gilt
Groupe provide consumers with credit for each first-time purchaser
they refer. Our research shows that such direct recommendations from
peers generate engagement rates some 30 times higher than traditional
online advertising does.
Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a
purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement
and foster loyalty. When Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its
brand, for example, it launched a competition challenging users to
be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters
that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners
with a $20 gift card. This social-media brand advocacy effort
delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget.
Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching
with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”
Marketers also can foster communities around their brands and
products, both to reinforce the belief of consumers that they made a
smart decision and to provide guidance for getting the most from
a purchase. Software company Intuit, for example, launched customer
service forums for its Quicken and QuickBooks personal-finance
software so users could help one another with product issues. The result?
Users rather than Intuit employees answer about 80 percent of
the questions, and the company has employed user comments to make
dozens of significant changes to its software.
4. Lead
Social media can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward
long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer
decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving
Web traffic to content about existing products and services. When
grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man
character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010
Super Bowl, for example, the company’s ambition was to increase its
reach and relevance to both men and women. The commercial became
a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more
than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the
company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product
launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United
States. For example, social media played an integral role in the success
of “Small Business Saturday,” the US shopping promotion created
by American Express for the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving
(for American Express CMO John Hayes’s perspective on
that launch, see “How we see it: Three senior executives on the future
of marketing,” on mckinseyquarterly.com). In addition, when
consumers are ready to buy, companies can promote time-sensitive
targeted deals and offers through social media to generate traffic and
sales. Online menswear company Bonobos, for example, provided
an incentive for its Twitter followers by unlocking a discount code after
its messages were resent a certain number of times. As a result of
5 See Claire Cain Miller, “New Starbucks ads seek to recruit online fans,” nytimes.com,
May 18, 2009.
this effort, almost 100 consumers bought products from the site
for the first time. The campaign delivered a 1,200 percent return on
investment in just 24 hours.
Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase.
This ability to gain product-development insights from customers in a
relatively inexpensive way is emerging as one of social media’s most
significant advantages. Intuit, for example, has its community forums.
Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’
views about improving the company’s products and services and then
aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a
dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and
involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under
consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.
Converting knowledge to action
Despite offering numerous opportunities to inf luence consumers,
social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average
marketing budget, in our experience. Many chief marketing officers
say that they want to increase that share to 5 percent. One problem
is that a lot of senior executives know little about social media. But the
main obstacle is the perception that the return on investment (ROI)
from such initiatives is uncertain.
Without a clear sense of the value social media creates, it’s perhaps
not surprising that so many CEOs and other senior executives don’t
feel comfortable when their companies go beyond mere “experiments”
with social-media strategy. Yet we can measure the impact of social
media well beyond straight volume and consumer-sentiment metrics;
in fact, we can precisely determine the buzz surrounding a product
or brand and then calculate how social media drives purchasing
behavior. To do so—and then ensure that social media complements
broader marketing strategies—companies must obviously coordinate
data, tools, technology, and talent across multiple functions. In
many cases, senior business leaders must open up their agendas and
recognize the importance of supporting and even undertaking
initiatives that may traditionally have been left to the chief marketing
officer. As our colleagues noted last year, “we’re all marketers now.”
6 See Tom French, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill, “We’re all marketers now,”
mckinseyquarterly.com, July 2011.
Consider the experience of a telecommunications company that proactively
adopted social media but had no idea if its efforts were
working. The company had launched Twitter-based customer service
capabilities, several promotional campaigns built around social
contests, a fan page with discounts and tech tips, and an active response
program to engage with people speaking about the brand. In socialmedia
terms, the investment was relatively large, and the company’s
senior executives wanted more than anecdotal evidence that the
strategy was paying off. As a starting point, to ensure that the company
was doing a quality job designing and executing its social presence,
it benchmarked its efforts against approaches used by other companies
known to be successful in social media. It then advanced the
following hypotheses:
• If all of these social-media activities improve general service perceptions
about the brand, that improvement should be reflected in a
higher volume of positive online posts.7
• If social sharing is effective, added clicks and traffic should result
in higher search placements.
• If both of these assumptions hold true, social-media activity should
help drive sales—ideally, at a rate even higher than the company
could achieve with its average gross rating point (GRP) of advertising
expenditures.
The company then tested its options. At various times, it spent less
money on conventional advertising, especially as social-media activity
ramped up, and it modeled the rising positive sentiment and higher
search positions just as it would using traditional metrics. The company
concluded that social-media activity not only boosted sales but also
had higher ROIs than traditional marketing did. Thus, while the company
took a risk by shifting emphasis toward social-media efforts before it
had data confirming that this was the correct course, the bet paid off.
What’s more, the analytic baseline now in place has given the company
confidence to continue exploring a growing role for social media.
In other cases, social media may have a more specific role, such as
helping to launch a new product or to mitigate negative word of mouth.
Similar types of analyses can focus on mixing the impact of buzz,
search, and traffic; correlating that with sales or renewals (or whatever
7 There’s no shortage of methods purporting to measure social media’s presence and impact.
The company in this example used BuzzMetrics, a suite of tools developed by NM Incite
(a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey).
8 Gross rating points measure the size of the audience a specific media vehicle reaches. To calculate them, multiply the percentage of the target audience an advertisement reaches by the number of times it airs.
the key metric may be); and then gauging the result against total
costs. This approach can give executives the confidence and focus they
need to invest more money, time, and resources in social media.
As these social-media activities gain scale, the challenges center less
around justifying funding and more around organizational issues
such as developing the right processes and governance structure, identifying
clear roles—for all involved in social-media strategy, from
marketing to customer service to product development—and bolstering
the talent base, and improving performance standards. New
capabilities abound, and social-media best practices are barely starting
to emerge. We do know this: because social-media influences every
element of the consumer decision journey, communication must take
place between as well as within functions. That complicates lines
of reporting and decision-making authority.
If insights from monitoring social media are relevant to nonmarketing
functions such as product development, for instance, how will you
identify and disseminate that information efficiently and effectively—
and then ensure that it gets used? If you spot an opportunity to have
a meaningful conversation with a key influencer, how will you quickly
engage the right senior executive to follow through? If you recognize
a fast-moving service concern, how will you respond rapidly and
openly—and when should you do so outside the traditional service
organization? Senior executives across the company must recognize
and begin to answer such questions.
Social media is extending the disruptive impact of the digital era
across a broad range of functions. Meanwhile, the perceived lack of
metrics, the fear, and the limited sense of what’s possible are
eroding. Executives can identify the functions, touch points, and goals
of social-media activities, as well as craft approaches to measure
their impact and manage their risks. The time is ripe for executivesuite
discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your
company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sirish
Chandrasekaran, Dianne Esber, Rebecca Millman, and Dan Singer to the
development of this article.
Roxane Divol is a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office,
David Edelman is a principal in the Boston office, and Hugo Sarrazin is
a director in the Silicon Valley office.
Source: www.mckinseyquarterly.com
Carta Abierta-La presidenta que podría ser
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
La presidenta que podría ser
Por Marcos Aguinis | LA NACION
Usted es una de las figuras políticas nacionales con mayor potencia interna en el mundo, sólo superada por los dictadores. Es cierto que aún no se le puede endilgar la ofensa de dictadora, pese a su temperamento autoritario: las instituciones republicanas siguen respirando, aunque muy debilitadas. Tampoco se le puede quitar legitimidad a su puesto. Es casi omnipotente. Habla como los dioses. Sus discursos podrían ser material de aprendizaje para los maestros de oratoria. Alterna informaciones eruditas con bromas y preguntas. Puede mantener la atención de su audiencia por varias horas. Es mujer. Es bonita. No es genio pero sí muy inteligente. Está provista de una larga y envidiable experiencia como legisladora. Cursó Derecho. Conoce a fondo una de las provincias más periféricas del país y conoce a fondo el poder central. Tiene mayoría absoluta en ambas cámaras del Congreso. Los gobernadores -sin excepción- se inclinan respetuosos y casi mudos. El Poder Judicial tiembla ante su humor. Hasta los intendentes sembrados desde La Quiaca hasta Ushuaia quieren recibir su ternura. Controla al partido político mayoritario con simples ademanes. Los empresarios se le arrodillan. Los gremialistas le tienen miedo. La prensa independiente u "opositora" mide sus palabras y busca equilibrios para no excederse.
Y paro aquí.
Llenaría este artículo con la pormenorizada descripción de sus cualidades y sus recursos. Pero mi propósito es otro. Explicarle la frustración que sentimos la mitad de los argentinos -cada día somos más- por no desempeñarse usted como la presidenta que podría ser.
No estimo que necesite datos. Puede convocar a quienes desee -pero que no se limiten a regalarle mentirosos elogios- para que le expongan verdades sobre la situación a la que nos arrastra su política. Está mal asesorada, señora. Está mal asesorada por personas que considera leales y visionarias. Pero no tienen las luces de una buena memoria que les recuerde algo simple: sus medidas ya fueron usadas y, tarde o temprano, acaban en el desastre.
Peronistas y antiperonistas elogian el segundo y muy breve gobierno de Juan Perón. Están equivocados. Deberían aprender del último tramo del primer gobierno. En el año 1950 -que recordamos como el Año del Libertador San Martín-, empezó a mostrar fallas el modelo que se había puesto en vigor y que usted ahora conduce. El exceso de controles, la represión a la prensa, el desprecio a la oposición, dividir el pueblo entre leales y contreras, el clientelismo impúdico, la manipulación de los sindicatos, el despilfarro de las reservas y las estatizaciones (que aumentan la burocracia, la ineficiencia y el déficit) nublaron las grandes realizaciones del Perón y Evita de los primeros años. Ese presidente Perón, antes de su caída, comprendió parte de sus errores y volvió a mejorar la situación económica. Lo comprendió mejor al regresar de España, es cierto. Pero sería justo recordar que su mente ágil y pícara supo que debía hacer un giro importante ya antes de 1955. Por eso disminuyó los controles y permitió que los líderes opositores tuvieran acceso a los medios masivos de comunicación. Le reportó extendida gratitud que por primera vez en muchos años hablasen por la cadena nacional políticos como Arturo Frondizi y Solano Lima. Pero más notable fue otra decisión. Se pretende borrarla porque choca con el patrioterismo infantil que intoxica las neuronas argentinas. El presidente Perón negoció nuestro petróleo con la California Petroleum Co. Sabía que necesitaba una caudalosa inversión extranjera. No alcanzaban los vacuos gritos de soberanía ni en su boca. Perón, que había sido proclamado en la casa histórica de Tucumán como Libertador económico de la Argentina, no era un vendepatria. Ese proyecto fue llevado a cabo más adelante por Arturo Frondizi.
Frondizi fue un estadista ejemplar. Tuvo el coraje de poner a un lado concepciones arcaicas y subirse a un genuino tren progresista. Es decir, un progresismo que trae progreso de verdad, no sólo discursos. En brevísimo tiempo consiguió el autoabastecimiento. En otras palabras, consiguió una soberanía económica que no se basaba en agresiones estériles, expropiaciones ni aumento de la desconfianza internacional. Otra de sus medidas estratégicas fue la libertad de enseñanza, que los "progresistas" de entonces condenaron. Estimuló una industrialización acelerada con medidas que daban vértigo, pero que estaban respaldadas por la majestad e independencia del Poder Judicial. La Argentina volvió a recuperar un dinamismo olvidado y convertirse de nuevo en un país relevante y esperanzador.
Usted, señora Presidenta, puede hacer lo mismo e incluso más. Bastaría repasar sus éxitos y fracasos que sólo los ciegos no ven. Le diría que debe comenzar con las tres medidas que tomó el mismo Perón antes de su exilio. Pero puede -y debería- añadir otras. La Argentina que ahora gobierna con todas las plenipotencias no es la de 1955. Desde esa época hasta hoy la decadencia ha sido permanente. Hemos disfrutado breves momentos de recuperación, es cierto, pero no alcanzan. Las toxinas patrioteras, falsamente progresistas, que nunca pueden terminar con la pobreza y embriagan mediante consignas estériles, deben ser atacadas a fondo. Usted lo puede hacer.
Es un buen ejercicio comparar la sociedad con el cuerpo humano. Incluso con la supervivencia de todos los seres vivos. Nos sostiene un equilibrio misterioso. En su caso, señora, es obvio que debe reemplazar la ausencia de tiroides con una medicación. Pero no se podría vivir bien con una pastilla para despertar y otra para dormir, una para tener hambre y otra para estar saciado, una para ingerir líquidos y otra para dejar de beber, una para estar alegre y otra para estar sereno, una para acelerar la actividad hepática y otra para disminuirla. Y así sucesivamente en todos los órdenes de la existencia. Sería peor que la más asfixiante de las prisiones. Sin embargo, es lo que su gobierno pretende hacer con la nación argentina. Control sobre todo, todos y todas. Prisión con guardianes sádicos. Igual que los fascismos clásicos de derecha o izquierda (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro). Guillermo Moreno fue elogiado por usted como el mejor de sus funcionarios porque es un obsesivo del control. Un control que recuerda a los fanáticos de la Inquisición o de la Sharia. ¿No se dio cuenta de que es el hombre más detestado del país, e incluso fuera del país?
También usted anhela controlar los pocos medios de comunicación independientes que aún funcionan pese a la discriminación de la pauta oficial. ¿Para qué? ¿No ganó las elecciones con el 54% de los sufragios pese a esos medios? ¿En qué le han disminuido su poder? Un análisis objetivo -los análisis objetivos son dolorosos- diagnosticaría que la rápida pérdida que ahora sufre su imagen se debe a sus propias acciones, no a los medios de comunicación.
Fíjese, por favor. Las impugnaciones a su enriquecimiento ya quedaron en el pasado. Puede estar tranquila con la fortuna acumulada. ¡Entonces no permita más corrupción! Haga como Dilma Rousseff, que echó a cinco ministros y con esa medida ejemplar puso límites a toda la suciedad que enloda la entera pirámide del Estado. Deje que la Justicia sea independiente. ¡Independiente de verdad! Que juzgue como es debido a Boudou, a Schoklender, a la Fundación de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a legisladores, gobernadores, intendentes, legisladores y demás funcionarios que confunden los votos obtenidos con garantías a su impunidad. Que la Corte Suprema deje de parecer un gnomo golpeado, porque ni siquiera ha conseguido reponer el fiscal de Santa Cruz.
¿Le parece que una democracia respetable puede aceptar que grupos de matones enmascarados se vuelquen a la calle, agredan embajadas y hasta hieran a las fuerzas de seguridad? ¿No deberían ser arrestados, desenmascarados y sancionados? ¿Desde cuándo en una democracia se tolera el encubrimiento de la identidad?
¿Le parece que los piquetes tienen derecho a continuar con su diaria diversión de bloquear las rutas para destruir la jornada laboral de centenares de miles de argentinos? ¿No es hora en que su poder, señora Presidenta, hiciera saber que usted gobierna para todos, no para transgresores de pacotilla?
¿No le preocupa el aumento del enojo social? Ha comenzado una guerra de pobres contra pobres. Basta registrar lo que sucede en los medios de transporte. Esto es como un volcán que despierta. ¡Cuidado por ahí!
Sabe mejor que nadie cuántos chanchullos se han cocinado en la privatización y ahora en la nacionalización de YPF. Sabe que el objetivo de su última medida es de corto plazo, para mejorar su imagen mediante las hogueras del patrioterismo y engordar la debilitada caja (si la engorda). Sabe que su gesto se parece al de Galtieri invadiendo las Malvinas y Rodríguez Saá proclamando el default . Ambos fueron aplaudidos. Pero después nadie aceptó haberlos apoyado. ¿Qué espera en el futuro?
Observe cómo se procede en países como Australia o Canadá. Allí no hay Morenos ni Quebrachos ni piquetes ni corruptos en cargos públicos ni subsidios clientelares ni locas medidas de corto plazo. Piénselo. No se recluya en el falso argumento "destituyente". Por ahora la oposición no le hace sombra. Si usted se convirtiera en la presidenta que podría ser, tiene la oportunidad de pasar a la historia como alguien que hizo mucho más que llevarnos al abismo.
Marcos Aguinis: Perfil
Escribió artículos sobre una amplia gama de temas en diarios y revistas de América latina, Estados Unidos y Europa. Dictó centenares de conferencias y cursos en instituciones educativas, artísticas, científicas y políticas en Alemania, España, Estados Unidos, Francia, Israel, Rusia, Italia y casi todos los países latinoamericanos.
En diciembre de 1983, el escritor fue designado subsecretario y luego secretario de Cultura de la Nación; impulsó la famosa “primavera cultural” que animó el país. Creó el PRONDEC (Programa Nacional de Democratización de la Cultura), que obtuvo el apoyo de la UNESCO y de las Naciones Unidas, y puso en marcha intensas actividades participativas para concientizar a los individuos sobre los derechos, deberes y potencialidades que se cultivan en una real democracia. Por su obra fue nominado al Premio Educación para la Paz de la UNESCO.
En el campo de los derechos humanos enfrentó temas polémicos que pusieron en riesgo su vida. Durante la última dictadura fue limitada la circulación de sus libros y algunos salían del país en forma clandestina.
Marcos Aguinis recibió, entre otros, el Premio Planeta (España), la Faja de Honor de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores, el Premio Reforma Universitaria (Universidad de La Plata), el Premio Fernando Jeno (México), Premio Benemérito de la Cultura de la Academia de Artes y Ciencias de la Comunicación, Premio Nacional de Sociología, Premio Lobo de Mar, Premio Swami Pranavananda, la Plaqueta de Plata Anual de la Agencia EFE por su contribución al fortalecimiento de la lengua y la cultura iberoamericanas y fue designado por Francia Caballero de las Letras y las Artes. Le otorgaron el título de Doctor Honoris Causa la Tel Aviv University (2002) y la Universidad de San Luis (2000). En 1995 la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores le confirió el Gran Premio de Honor por la totalidad de su obra.
Nació en Córdoba, en 1935.
© La Nacion.
La presidenta que podría ser
Por Marcos Aguinis | LA NACION
Usted es una de las figuras políticas nacionales con mayor potencia interna en el mundo, sólo superada por los dictadores. Es cierto que aún no se le puede endilgar la ofensa de dictadora, pese a su temperamento autoritario: las instituciones republicanas siguen respirando, aunque muy debilitadas. Tampoco se le puede quitar legitimidad a su puesto. Es casi omnipotente. Habla como los dioses. Sus discursos podrían ser material de aprendizaje para los maestros de oratoria. Alterna informaciones eruditas con bromas y preguntas. Puede mantener la atención de su audiencia por varias horas. Es mujer. Es bonita. No es genio pero sí muy inteligente. Está provista de una larga y envidiable experiencia como legisladora. Cursó Derecho. Conoce a fondo una de las provincias más periféricas del país y conoce a fondo el poder central. Tiene mayoría absoluta en ambas cámaras del Congreso. Los gobernadores -sin excepción- se inclinan respetuosos y casi mudos. El Poder Judicial tiembla ante su humor. Hasta los intendentes sembrados desde La Quiaca hasta Ushuaia quieren recibir su ternura. Controla al partido político mayoritario con simples ademanes. Los empresarios se le arrodillan. Los gremialistas le tienen miedo. La prensa independiente u "opositora" mide sus palabras y busca equilibrios para no excederse.
Y paro aquí.
Llenaría este artículo con la pormenorizada descripción de sus cualidades y sus recursos. Pero mi propósito es otro. Explicarle la frustración que sentimos la mitad de los argentinos -cada día somos más- por no desempeñarse usted como la presidenta que podría ser.
No estimo que necesite datos. Puede convocar a quienes desee -pero que no se limiten a regalarle mentirosos elogios- para que le expongan verdades sobre la situación a la que nos arrastra su política. Está mal asesorada, señora. Está mal asesorada por personas que considera leales y visionarias. Pero no tienen las luces de una buena memoria que les recuerde algo simple: sus medidas ya fueron usadas y, tarde o temprano, acaban en el desastre.
Peronistas y antiperonistas elogian el segundo y muy breve gobierno de Juan Perón. Están equivocados. Deberían aprender del último tramo del primer gobierno. En el año 1950 -que recordamos como el Año del Libertador San Martín-, empezó a mostrar fallas el modelo que se había puesto en vigor y que usted ahora conduce. El exceso de controles, la represión a la prensa, el desprecio a la oposición, dividir el pueblo entre leales y contreras, el clientelismo impúdico, la manipulación de los sindicatos, el despilfarro de las reservas y las estatizaciones (que aumentan la burocracia, la ineficiencia y el déficit) nublaron las grandes realizaciones del Perón y Evita de los primeros años. Ese presidente Perón, antes de su caída, comprendió parte de sus errores y volvió a mejorar la situación económica. Lo comprendió mejor al regresar de España, es cierto. Pero sería justo recordar que su mente ágil y pícara supo que debía hacer un giro importante ya antes de 1955. Por eso disminuyó los controles y permitió que los líderes opositores tuvieran acceso a los medios masivos de comunicación. Le reportó extendida gratitud que por primera vez en muchos años hablasen por la cadena nacional políticos como Arturo Frondizi y Solano Lima. Pero más notable fue otra decisión. Se pretende borrarla porque choca con el patrioterismo infantil que intoxica las neuronas argentinas. El presidente Perón negoció nuestro petróleo con la California Petroleum Co. Sabía que necesitaba una caudalosa inversión extranjera. No alcanzaban los vacuos gritos de soberanía ni en su boca. Perón, que había sido proclamado en la casa histórica de Tucumán como Libertador económico de la Argentina, no era un vendepatria. Ese proyecto fue llevado a cabo más adelante por Arturo Frondizi.
Frondizi fue un estadista ejemplar. Tuvo el coraje de poner a un lado concepciones arcaicas y subirse a un genuino tren progresista. Es decir, un progresismo que trae progreso de verdad, no sólo discursos. En brevísimo tiempo consiguió el autoabastecimiento. En otras palabras, consiguió una soberanía económica que no se basaba en agresiones estériles, expropiaciones ni aumento de la desconfianza internacional. Otra de sus medidas estratégicas fue la libertad de enseñanza, que los "progresistas" de entonces condenaron. Estimuló una industrialización acelerada con medidas que daban vértigo, pero que estaban respaldadas por la majestad e independencia del Poder Judicial. La Argentina volvió a recuperar un dinamismo olvidado y convertirse de nuevo en un país relevante y esperanzador.
Usted, señora Presidenta, puede hacer lo mismo e incluso más. Bastaría repasar sus éxitos y fracasos que sólo los ciegos no ven. Le diría que debe comenzar con las tres medidas que tomó el mismo Perón antes de su exilio. Pero puede -y debería- añadir otras. La Argentina que ahora gobierna con todas las plenipotencias no es la de 1955. Desde esa época hasta hoy la decadencia ha sido permanente. Hemos disfrutado breves momentos de recuperación, es cierto, pero no alcanzan. Las toxinas patrioteras, falsamente progresistas, que nunca pueden terminar con la pobreza y embriagan mediante consignas estériles, deben ser atacadas a fondo. Usted lo puede hacer.
Es un buen ejercicio comparar la sociedad con el cuerpo humano. Incluso con la supervivencia de todos los seres vivos. Nos sostiene un equilibrio misterioso. En su caso, señora, es obvio que debe reemplazar la ausencia de tiroides con una medicación. Pero no se podría vivir bien con una pastilla para despertar y otra para dormir, una para tener hambre y otra para estar saciado, una para ingerir líquidos y otra para dejar de beber, una para estar alegre y otra para estar sereno, una para acelerar la actividad hepática y otra para disminuirla. Y así sucesivamente en todos los órdenes de la existencia. Sería peor que la más asfixiante de las prisiones. Sin embargo, es lo que su gobierno pretende hacer con la nación argentina. Control sobre todo, todos y todas. Prisión con guardianes sádicos. Igual que los fascismos clásicos de derecha o izquierda (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro). Guillermo Moreno fue elogiado por usted como el mejor de sus funcionarios porque es un obsesivo del control. Un control que recuerda a los fanáticos de la Inquisición o de la Sharia. ¿No se dio cuenta de que es el hombre más detestado del país, e incluso fuera del país?
También usted anhela controlar los pocos medios de comunicación independientes que aún funcionan pese a la discriminación de la pauta oficial. ¿Para qué? ¿No ganó las elecciones con el 54% de los sufragios pese a esos medios? ¿En qué le han disminuido su poder? Un análisis objetivo -los análisis objetivos son dolorosos- diagnosticaría que la rápida pérdida que ahora sufre su imagen se debe a sus propias acciones, no a los medios de comunicación.
Fíjese, por favor. Las impugnaciones a su enriquecimiento ya quedaron en el pasado. Puede estar tranquila con la fortuna acumulada. ¡Entonces no permita más corrupción! Haga como Dilma Rousseff, que echó a cinco ministros y con esa medida ejemplar puso límites a toda la suciedad que enloda la entera pirámide del Estado. Deje que la Justicia sea independiente. ¡Independiente de verdad! Que juzgue como es debido a Boudou, a Schoklender, a la Fundación de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a legisladores, gobernadores, intendentes, legisladores y demás funcionarios que confunden los votos obtenidos con garantías a su impunidad. Que la Corte Suprema deje de parecer un gnomo golpeado, porque ni siquiera ha conseguido reponer el fiscal de Santa Cruz.
¿Le parece que una democracia respetable puede aceptar que grupos de matones enmascarados se vuelquen a la calle, agredan embajadas y hasta hieran a las fuerzas de seguridad? ¿No deberían ser arrestados, desenmascarados y sancionados? ¿Desde cuándo en una democracia se tolera el encubrimiento de la identidad?
¿Le parece que los piquetes tienen derecho a continuar con su diaria diversión de bloquear las rutas para destruir la jornada laboral de centenares de miles de argentinos? ¿No es hora en que su poder, señora Presidenta, hiciera saber que usted gobierna para todos, no para transgresores de pacotilla?
¿No le preocupa el aumento del enojo social? Ha comenzado una guerra de pobres contra pobres. Basta registrar lo que sucede en los medios de transporte. Esto es como un volcán que despierta. ¡Cuidado por ahí!
Sabe mejor que nadie cuántos chanchullos se han cocinado en la privatización y ahora en la nacionalización de YPF. Sabe que el objetivo de su última medida es de corto plazo, para mejorar su imagen mediante las hogueras del patrioterismo y engordar la debilitada caja (si la engorda). Sabe que su gesto se parece al de Galtieri invadiendo las Malvinas y Rodríguez Saá proclamando el default . Ambos fueron aplaudidos. Pero después nadie aceptó haberlos apoyado. ¿Qué espera en el futuro?
Observe cómo se procede en países como Australia o Canadá. Allí no hay Morenos ni Quebrachos ni piquetes ni corruptos en cargos públicos ni subsidios clientelares ni locas medidas de corto plazo. Piénselo. No se recluya en el falso argumento "destituyente". Por ahora la oposición no le hace sombra. Si usted se convirtiera en la presidenta que podría ser, tiene la oportunidad de pasar a la historia como alguien que hizo mucho más que llevarnos al abismo.
Marcos Aguinis: Perfil
Escribió artículos sobre una amplia gama de temas en diarios y revistas de América latina, Estados Unidos y Europa. Dictó centenares de conferencias y cursos en instituciones educativas, artísticas, científicas y políticas en Alemania, España, Estados Unidos, Francia, Israel, Rusia, Italia y casi todos los países latinoamericanos.
En diciembre de 1983, el escritor fue designado subsecretario y luego secretario de Cultura de la Nación; impulsó la famosa “primavera cultural” que animó el país. Creó el PRONDEC (Programa Nacional de Democratización de la Cultura), que obtuvo el apoyo de la UNESCO y de las Naciones Unidas, y puso en marcha intensas actividades participativas para concientizar a los individuos sobre los derechos, deberes y potencialidades que se cultivan en una real democracia. Por su obra fue nominado al Premio Educación para la Paz de la UNESCO.
En el campo de los derechos humanos enfrentó temas polémicos que pusieron en riesgo su vida. Durante la última dictadura fue limitada la circulación de sus libros y algunos salían del país en forma clandestina.
Marcos Aguinis recibió, entre otros, el Premio Planeta (España), la Faja de Honor de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores, el Premio Reforma Universitaria (Universidad de La Plata), el Premio Fernando Jeno (México), Premio Benemérito de la Cultura de la Academia de Artes y Ciencias de la Comunicación, Premio Nacional de Sociología, Premio Lobo de Mar, Premio Swami Pranavananda, la Plaqueta de Plata Anual de la Agencia EFE por su contribución al fortalecimiento de la lengua y la cultura iberoamericanas y fue designado por Francia Caballero de las Letras y las Artes. Le otorgaron el título de Doctor Honoris Causa la Tel Aviv University (2002) y la Universidad de San Luis (2000). En 1995 la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores le confirió el Gran Premio de Honor por la totalidad de su obra.
Nació en Córdoba, en 1935.
© La Nacion.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Bill Gates: "El mundo se está haciendo mucho más equitativo"
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Bill Gates: "El mundo se está haciendo mucho más equitativo"
Fundó Microsoft, popularizó la informática y desde hace cuatro años se dedica día y noche a la filantropía. La importancia de ayudar a los países más pobres, los impuestos a los ricos y la vacuna contra el sida, según el segundo hombre más rico del planeta
Por Berna González Harbour y L. Aguirre | El País
Foto: Countour / Gettyimageslatam.com
Preparar una entrevista con Bill Gates es una de las tareas más estimulantes que puede abordar un periodista. Obliga a romper los habituales compartimentos estancos y a saber de millonarios, de Microsoft, de impuestos, de Gobiernos y de recesión, pero también de polio, de malaria y de buscadores de Internet. La segunda persona más rica del mundo 2012, según Forbes (perdió el podio a manos del empresario en telecomunicaciones mexicano Carlos Slim, tras las cuantiosas donaciones que dirige con criterios de eficiencia empresarial), el hombre que más impactó en nuestras vidas al hacer posible la revolución de la computadora personal, preside la Fundación que lleva su nombre, con 33.000 millones de dólares puestos de su propio bolsillo, y pide a la comunidad internacional que mantenga el nivel de ayuda a los países más pobres, a pesar de las crisis.
-¿Usted teme un gran paso atrás en este terreno?
-La generosidad continúa en general en alza y eso marca una gran diferencia, porque significa más vacunas para más niños, menos gente muriendo y nuevas semillas, pero aún hay mil millones de personas viviendo en tales condiciones de dureza que, si las tuviéramos cerca, no podríamos más que ayudarlas. El gran desafío es que esos pobres no queden olvidados por las dificultades financieras. El dinero que les permite vivir es menos del 1% de nuestros presupuestos. Y el peligro es que sea recortado aún más que otras partidas. Eso supone literalmente menos vacunas, menos semillas o menos medicinas contra el sida, y todo ello para equilibrar el presupuesto de los países más ricos. Para que el dinero sea destinado adecuadamente y tenga un impacto real en la gente debe ir a aquellos que más lo necesitan. Debemos asegurarnos de que vaya a los países pobres, donde puede tener un efecto contundente, y no a los de ingresos medios. Hay mucho que hacer para que la gente se sienta reconocida por la ayuda que concede, que sepan lo importante que es mantenerla.
-Habla de los países más necesitados. ¿Considera que América latina no debería ser el objetivo prioritario?
-Cuando ayudas a países como Perú, un país de ingresos medios, con 10.000 dólares de renta per cápita, mientras hay niños muriendo de malaria y gente que no consigue medicinas para el sida, el resultado es bastante diferente. Entonces debes preguntarte por qué lo ayudas. Lo importante es que todas las vidas tienen igual valor y que podemos cambiar muchas más cosas en países pobres que cuando ayudas a un país como Perú, con ingresos medios, que tiene sus recursos que explotar y que podría ser tan rico como un país europeo. Marruecos tiene minerales y mucho dinero si lo comparas con Chad, Mozambique, Sudán o Etiopía. Lo que puedes conseguir es muy diferente. Históricamente la ayuda estaba mezclada con la amistad. Estados Unidos ayudaba a países que podían malgastarla, pero si era un amigo no había problema. Afortunadamente con el fin de la Guerra Fría ese tipo de ayuda se acabó y ahora se puede decir que cada dólar que gastamos tiene un impacto humanitario.
-Hay un debate sobre la efectividad de la ayuda. ¿Cómo se gasta mejor este dinero?
-Si tomas un país que tiene grandes necesidades críticas en salud, agua, agricultura y medicinas, puedes tener un impacto muy radical haciendo llegar las vacunas a los niños, las medicinas contra el sida a los adultos, las redes antimosquito o enseñando a los granjeros a usar unas semillas nuevas que van a funcionar incluso cuando hay sequía para ser así más productivo. Me siento muy satisfecho con los resultados de los miles de millones que he puesto en todo esto. Yo puedo visitar estos lugares, contratar a los mejores científicos y veo los resultados. Sí, estamos mejorando la vida en estos países muy rápidamente, y si los ciudadanos y los políticos pudieran viajar y comprobar lo que está pasando en Chad, Kenia y Tanzania, verían que son lugares donde las cosas han cambiado mucho, donde han descendido las muertes por malaria de forma espectacular, y donde los padres no mueren de sida dejando huérfanos y más inestabilidad. Esta es una historia muy positiva y no se puede hacer ayudando a países de ingresos medios, pero sí a los que más lo necesitan.
-¿Cuándo cree que podremos ver la vacuna contra el sida?
-Ese campo de la investigación científica tiene grandes problemas de financiación. Esperamos tener una vacuna contra la malaria dentro de unos años. Una vacuna contra el sida va a tardar entre seis y diez años en llegar, nuestra Fundación es un gran patrocinador.
-¿Es el impuesto a las transacciones financieras una solución para obtener fondos para ayuda al desarrollo?
-Está claro que algún tipo de impuesto sobre las transacciones financieras podría ayudar en parte a bajar los déficits, y si una parte fuera dedicado a mantener el apoyo a los más pobres, eso sería algo de agradecer. Hay un tipo de impuesto sobre las transacciones financieras, que en el Reino Unido llaman de otra forma, el Settlement Tax, que grava fuertemente la compraventa de acciones. Así que hay muchas posibilidades, pero lo que no quieres hacer es distorsionar excesivamente el mercado. Y una vez puestas las tasas la pregunta es: ¿a qué destinar este dinero? Son fondos gubernamentales. Se puede usar para pagar la deuda, estimular la economía doméstica o para mantener ese 1% que impide que la gente muera porque has dejado de comprarles una red antimosquito.
-El modelo europeo contra la crisis pasa por la austeridad y el control del déficit. El de Estados Unidos apuesta por políticas de crecimiento. Como empresario, ¿cree que Europa será capaz de superar la crisis con este modelo?
-Es una situación compleja y ojalá los economistas entendieran mejor su asignatura. Cómo tener las deudas bajo control, bancos solventes y aun así lograr que crezca la economía es una especie de fórmula mágica que busca la gente, hasta ahora sin mucho éxito. Está claro que las políticas de crecimiento son deseables, pero ¿cómo encaja eso con una eventual eliminación de la deuda? Los políticos y economistas deben trabajar en esto, que no es fácil de resolver.
-¿Qué opina de los tecnócratas, los nuevos gobernantes en países como Italia o Grecia?
-Yo voto por los tecnócratas siempre que puedo. Cuando las cosas son muy complicadas -y la situación que mejor conozco es la de Estados Unidos- ves que hay muchas prácticas regulatorias que han estado muy protegidas y que hacen que la economía sea menos eficiente, por ejemplo para médicos, fármacos y muchos servicios, y esas ineficiencias nunca se resuelven en el ámbito puramente político porque esa gente guarda con especial celo su estatus especial. Pero un tecnócrata llega y puede hacer una serie de cosas que benefician a la economía, tomar decisiones difíciles. Hay muchos temas de regulación en los mercados laboral y de servicios que cuando se resuelven son muy importantes para crear oportunidades de crecimiento. ¿Pero cuánto de esto podrá aprovechar un país europeo en concreto? Por ejemplo, un país como Irlanda nunca ha tenido tantos problemas en la regulación de los mercados y tuvo un desastre extremo en su sector bancario. ¿Por qué se los considera más creíbles? Probablemente porque sus mercados están menos sobreregulados que los de otras zonas de Europa, y eso es lo que hace que, entre todos los países endeudados, se les vea como los que tienen el camino más fácil para volver a la normalidad.
-Lo que sí ve la gente es que los ricos son cada vez más ricos y los pobres más pobres...
-El mundo es muy grande y se está haciendo mucho más equitativo porque los países pobres se están haciendo más ricos más rápidamente que lo que progresan los países ricos. La mejora de la calidad de vida en grandes poblaciones como India y China refleja que la igualdad en los ingresos desde un punto de vista global es mucho mejor hoy que en cualquier otro momento de la historia y conforme pasa el tiempo se llega a una situación más equitativa. Eso es algo bueno. Las ventajas de la innovación están más extendidas, y cuando tienes a más gente inventando productos nuevos como fármacos para el cáncer o software, esto es un beneficio global, y no tiene por qué venir acompañado de una alta tasa de paro. En lo referente al paro, es un tema estructural. Hay trabajos de sobra, en la enseñanza, el turismo, la ciencia o la asistencia a los ancianos. Sobra trabajo, pero es una cuestión de estructurarlo de forma correcta.
-¿Qué le parece la propuesta del millonario Warren Buffett para subir los impuestos a los ricos?
-Los impuestos varían mucho de país a país. En Estados Unidos son algo regresivos, porque el porcentaje que pagan los ricos es menor que el de quienes no lo son. Eso es un sistema atípico y es porque los impuestos sobre dividendos son más bajos que sobre los sueldos. Podrías dejar los dos tipos en el mismo nivel, y sería menos regresivo. La propuesta de Buffett, que me parece bien, dice que los más ricos deberían pagar un 30%. Eso no sería suficiente para equilibrar el presupuesto estadounidense. Hay que hacer algo más que perseguir a los muy ricos. Tienes que abrir el abanico de los que pagan impuestos para equilibrar las cosas. Pero la regla Buffett es un paso positivo. Lo ideal sería conseguir que todo el mundo hiciera el sacrificio a la vez, no introducir la regla Buffet de forma aislada, sino hacerlo al mismo tiempo que se subieran también los impuestos de forma moderada para la clase media y media-alta.
ELEMENTAL
William Henry Gates III nació el 28 de octubre de 1955 en Seattle, Washington. Viene de una familia de abogados y banqueros.
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En la secundaria Lakeside conoció a Paul Allen, con quien fundaría Microsoft. Estudió dos años en la Universidad de Harvard.
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Creó Microsoft en 1975 junto a Allen; unos años más tarde se sumó Steve Ballmer, ex compañero de Harvard de Gates. Desde el nacimiento de la PC en 1981 la compañía fue sinónimo de la computación personal.
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Fue la persona más rica del mundo entre 1995 y 2009 (salvo 2008) según el ranking de la revista Forbes. Hoy está segundo detrás de Carlos Slim, el mexicano dueño de Claro.
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En 2000 creó la Fundación Bill & Melinda Gates para hacer obras de beneficencia, y desde 2008 abandonó sus tareas en Microsoft, aunque es el presidente no ejecutivo de su directorio y es el mayor accionista de la empresa.
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SU GRAN INFLUENCIA TECNO, EN CUATRO PASOS
1. La PC en todos lados: comprendió desde el principio que popularizar la informática era vital. No fue el primero, pero sí el que instrumentó un modelo exitoso, con un sistema operativo (DOS y Windows) disponible para múltiples dispositivos apoyados en una plataforma estándar (la PC creada por IBM) orientado al usuario común. El 90% de las PC del mundo llevan Windows.
2. Internet como elemento central de nuestra vida: en 1995 escribió un memo a sus empleados en el que describía a Internet como una marejada, o un tsunami, que barrería con todo lo anterior. Su apuesta por complementar Windows con el acceso a la red de redes y la inclusión de un navegador en cada PC, en un momento en el que las ventas de la computadora personal crecían muchísimo, fue fundamental para la difusión y naturalización de la Web.
3. Creo la industria del software: fue el primero en entender lo mucho que el software (el sistema operativo, las aplicaciones) influía sobre un equipo, y que hacerlo abierto -es decir, que otros pudieran escribir programas para ese sistema operativo- era fundamental para su difusión y para hacerlo masivo. Su foco en los desarrolladores de aplicaciones y en proveerles las herramientas para lograrlo fueron claves. Entre sus primeros clientes estaba Apple, su principal competidor; el Word, por ejemplo, apareció primero para Apple y luego en la PC. Con ese impulso y la difusión de la informática personal fue clave para crear una industria que en 2011 facturó 220.000 millones de dólares sólo en Estados Unidos.
4. Tabletas: hoy todos hablamos de la iPad, pero el que lanzó la idea de una computadora de mano con pantalla táctil que no fuera de bolsillo (es decir, que no fuera un celular o una palmtop) fue Bill Gates en 2001. El concepto nunca se transformó en algo masivo, en parte porque la tecnología todavía no era lo suficientemente avanzada como para ofrecer un dispositivo liviano y de uso sencillo. Apple había incursionado antes en las pantallas táctiles con la Newton (un equipo más de bolsillo), pero Gates transformó el concepto en algo popular.
JOBS & GATES: SOCIOS, RIVALES Y AMIGOS
Microsoft nació en 1975, Apple en 1976. Microsoft era una empresa de software; Apple, una de hardware. Bill Gates y Steve Jobs (ambos nacidos en 1955) se conocieron en los albores de la informática personal y se trenzaron en un combate comercial que creó una de las antinomias más fuertes de la informática.
Fueron socios en su inicio, ya que Microsoft creó una versión del lenguaje de programación Basic para Apple. El conflicto vino después.
En 1981 nació la PC, que llevaba un sistema operativo de Microsoft. Para ese entonces Apple tenía equipos propios en el mercado y era, en rigor, una compañía más grande.
En 1983 Gates partició en la presentación de los productos de Apple. En 1984 Apple presentó la Macintosh (con una interfaz gráfica con ventanas e iconos, que usaba un mouse); ese mismo año Microsoft presentó Windows 1.0, que llevaba el mismo concepto a la PC. Jobs acusó a Gates de robarle la idea; en rigor, ambos se inspiraron en un desarrollo previo hecho en Xerox. Esto terminó en un duelo legal en 1988, mientras Microsoft crecía siguiendo la explosión de la PC y Apple perdía popularidad.
Desde entonces, y hasta fin de siglo, se los vio como enemigos, aunque en privado tenían una relación cordial. Públicamente sus compañías eran competidores a muerte, y su relación personal quedó asociada a ese combate.
En 1996 Jobs dijo públicamente que creía que Bill Gates y sus empleados eran gente sin gusto alguno; que a Gates le hubiera venido bien drogarse de joven. Al fundador de Microsoft no le cayó bien la afirmación, pero esto no impidió que en 1997 su compañía invirtiera 150 millones de dólares en una Apple que estaba en serios problemas financieros, y que apuntalara el regreso triunfal de Jobs a la compañía que había fundado. Gates, por así decirlo, mantuvo con vida a su peor enemigo, aunque por ese entonces Microsoft ya dominaba por completo el mercado de la computación personal.
A partir de entonces la relación cambió en lo público y volvieron a mostrarse como socios, más allá de que siguieran compitiendo en varios terrenos. En 2007 aparecieron juntos en la conferencia AllThingsD para recordar sus 30 años en la industria, y los caminos diferentes que tomaron para llegar a una visión similar de una computación ubicua. Gates alabó de Jobs su sentido de la elegancia y el estilo; Jobs, que Gates era imbatible para llevar una misma visión a múltiples socios.
La temprana muerte de Jobs el año último, en un momento en que su compañía cosechaba récord tras récord de crecimiento, opacó la figura de Gates, que ya había abandonado sus tareas diarias en Microsoft. Este recordó luego que le escribió una carta a Steve Jobs al enterarse de su enfermedad, que el otro mantuvo junto a su cama hasta su muerte.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
Bill Gates: "El mundo se está haciendo mucho más equitativo"
Fundó Microsoft, popularizó la informática y desde hace cuatro años se dedica día y noche a la filantropía. La importancia de ayudar a los países más pobres, los impuestos a los ricos y la vacuna contra el sida, según el segundo hombre más rico del planeta
Por Berna González Harbour y L. Aguirre | El País
Foto: Countour / Gettyimageslatam.com
Preparar una entrevista con Bill Gates es una de las tareas más estimulantes que puede abordar un periodista. Obliga a romper los habituales compartimentos estancos y a saber de millonarios, de Microsoft, de impuestos, de Gobiernos y de recesión, pero también de polio, de malaria y de buscadores de Internet. La segunda persona más rica del mundo 2012, según Forbes (perdió el podio a manos del empresario en telecomunicaciones mexicano Carlos Slim, tras las cuantiosas donaciones que dirige con criterios de eficiencia empresarial), el hombre que más impactó en nuestras vidas al hacer posible la revolución de la computadora personal, preside la Fundación que lleva su nombre, con 33.000 millones de dólares puestos de su propio bolsillo, y pide a la comunidad internacional que mantenga el nivel de ayuda a los países más pobres, a pesar de las crisis.
-¿Usted teme un gran paso atrás en este terreno?
-La generosidad continúa en general en alza y eso marca una gran diferencia, porque significa más vacunas para más niños, menos gente muriendo y nuevas semillas, pero aún hay mil millones de personas viviendo en tales condiciones de dureza que, si las tuviéramos cerca, no podríamos más que ayudarlas. El gran desafío es que esos pobres no queden olvidados por las dificultades financieras. El dinero que les permite vivir es menos del 1% de nuestros presupuestos. Y el peligro es que sea recortado aún más que otras partidas. Eso supone literalmente menos vacunas, menos semillas o menos medicinas contra el sida, y todo ello para equilibrar el presupuesto de los países más ricos. Para que el dinero sea destinado adecuadamente y tenga un impacto real en la gente debe ir a aquellos que más lo necesitan. Debemos asegurarnos de que vaya a los países pobres, donde puede tener un efecto contundente, y no a los de ingresos medios. Hay mucho que hacer para que la gente se sienta reconocida por la ayuda que concede, que sepan lo importante que es mantenerla.
-Habla de los países más necesitados. ¿Considera que América latina no debería ser el objetivo prioritario?
-Cuando ayudas a países como Perú, un país de ingresos medios, con 10.000 dólares de renta per cápita, mientras hay niños muriendo de malaria y gente que no consigue medicinas para el sida, el resultado es bastante diferente. Entonces debes preguntarte por qué lo ayudas. Lo importante es que todas las vidas tienen igual valor y que podemos cambiar muchas más cosas en países pobres que cuando ayudas a un país como Perú, con ingresos medios, que tiene sus recursos que explotar y que podría ser tan rico como un país europeo. Marruecos tiene minerales y mucho dinero si lo comparas con Chad, Mozambique, Sudán o Etiopía. Lo que puedes conseguir es muy diferente. Históricamente la ayuda estaba mezclada con la amistad. Estados Unidos ayudaba a países que podían malgastarla, pero si era un amigo no había problema. Afortunadamente con el fin de la Guerra Fría ese tipo de ayuda se acabó y ahora se puede decir que cada dólar que gastamos tiene un impacto humanitario.
-Hay un debate sobre la efectividad de la ayuda. ¿Cómo se gasta mejor este dinero?
-Si tomas un país que tiene grandes necesidades críticas en salud, agua, agricultura y medicinas, puedes tener un impacto muy radical haciendo llegar las vacunas a los niños, las medicinas contra el sida a los adultos, las redes antimosquito o enseñando a los granjeros a usar unas semillas nuevas que van a funcionar incluso cuando hay sequía para ser así más productivo. Me siento muy satisfecho con los resultados de los miles de millones que he puesto en todo esto. Yo puedo visitar estos lugares, contratar a los mejores científicos y veo los resultados. Sí, estamos mejorando la vida en estos países muy rápidamente, y si los ciudadanos y los políticos pudieran viajar y comprobar lo que está pasando en Chad, Kenia y Tanzania, verían que son lugares donde las cosas han cambiado mucho, donde han descendido las muertes por malaria de forma espectacular, y donde los padres no mueren de sida dejando huérfanos y más inestabilidad. Esta es una historia muy positiva y no se puede hacer ayudando a países de ingresos medios, pero sí a los que más lo necesitan.
-¿Cuándo cree que podremos ver la vacuna contra el sida?
-Ese campo de la investigación científica tiene grandes problemas de financiación. Esperamos tener una vacuna contra la malaria dentro de unos años. Una vacuna contra el sida va a tardar entre seis y diez años en llegar, nuestra Fundación es un gran patrocinador.
-¿Es el impuesto a las transacciones financieras una solución para obtener fondos para ayuda al desarrollo?
-Está claro que algún tipo de impuesto sobre las transacciones financieras podría ayudar en parte a bajar los déficits, y si una parte fuera dedicado a mantener el apoyo a los más pobres, eso sería algo de agradecer. Hay un tipo de impuesto sobre las transacciones financieras, que en el Reino Unido llaman de otra forma, el Settlement Tax, que grava fuertemente la compraventa de acciones. Así que hay muchas posibilidades, pero lo que no quieres hacer es distorsionar excesivamente el mercado. Y una vez puestas las tasas la pregunta es: ¿a qué destinar este dinero? Son fondos gubernamentales. Se puede usar para pagar la deuda, estimular la economía doméstica o para mantener ese 1% que impide que la gente muera porque has dejado de comprarles una red antimosquito.
-El modelo europeo contra la crisis pasa por la austeridad y el control del déficit. El de Estados Unidos apuesta por políticas de crecimiento. Como empresario, ¿cree que Europa será capaz de superar la crisis con este modelo?
-Es una situación compleja y ojalá los economistas entendieran mejor su asignatura. Cómo tener las deudas bajo control, bancos solventes y aun así lograr que crezca la economía es una especie de fórmula mágica que busca la gente, hasta ahora sin mucho éxito. Está claro que las políticas de crecimiento son deseables, pero ¿cómo encaja eso con una eventual eliminación de la deuda? Los políticos y economistas deben trabajar en esto, que no es fácil de resolver.
-¿Qué opina de los tecnócratas, los nuevos gobernantes en países como Italia o Grecia?
-Yo voto por los tecnócratas siempre que puedo. Cuando las cosas son muy complicadas -y la situación que mejor conozco es la de Estados Unidos- ves que hay muchas prácticas regulatorias que han estado muy protegidas y que hacen que la economía sea menos eficiente, por ejemplo para médicos, fármacos y muchos servicios, y esas ineficiencias nunca se resuelven en el ámbito puramente político porque esa gente guarda con especial celo su estatus especial. Pero un tecnócrata llega y puede hacer una serie de cosas que benefician a la economía, tomar decisiones difíciles. Hay muchos temas de regulación en los mercados laboral y de servicios que cuando se resuelven son muy importantes para crear oportunidades de crecimiento. ¿Pero cuánto de esto podrá aprovechar un país europeo en concreto? Por ejemplo, un país como Irlanda nunca ha tenido tantos problemas en la regulación de los mercados y tuvo un desastre extremo en su sector bancario. ¿Por qué se los considera más creíbles? Probablemente porque sus mercados están menos sobreregulados que los de otras zonas de Europa, y eso es lo que hace que, entre todos los países endeudados, se les vea como los que tienen el camino más fácil para volver a la normalidad.
-Lo que sí ve la gente es que los ricos son cada vez más ricos y los pobres más pobres...
-El mundo es muy grande y se está haciendo mucho más equitativo porque los países pobres se están haciendo más ricos más rápidamente que lo que progresan los países ricos. La mejora de la calidad de vida en grandes poblaciones como India y China refleja que la igualdad en los ingresos desde un punto de vista global es mucho mejor hoy que en cualquier otro momento de la historia y conforme pasa el tiempo se llega a una situación más equitativa. Eso es algo bueno. Las ventajas de la innovación están más extendidas, y cuando tienes a más gente inventando productos nuevos como fármacos para el cáncer o software, esto es un beneficio global, y no tiene por qué venir acompañado de una alta tasa de paro. En lo referente al paro, es un tema estructural. Hay trabajos de sobra, en la enseñanza, el turismo, la ciencia o la asistencia a los ancianos. Sobra trabajo, pero es una cuestión de estructurarlo de forma correcta.
-¿Qué le parece la propuesta del millonario Warren Buffett para subir los impuestos a los ricos?
-Los impuestos varían mucho de país a país. En Estados Unidos son algo regresivos, porque el porcentaje que pagan los ricos es menor que el de quienes no lo son. Eso es un sistema atípico y es porque los impuestos sobre dividendos son más bajos que sobre los sueldos. Podrías dejar los dos tipos en el mismo nivel, y sería menos regresivo. La propuesta de Buffett, que me parece bien, dice que los más ricos deberían pagar un 30%. Eso no sería suficiente para equilibrar el presupuesto estadounidense. Hay que hacer algo más que perseguir a los muy ricos. Tienes que abrir el abanico de los que pagan impuestos para equilibrar las cosas. Pero la regla Buffett es un paso positivo. Lo ideal sería conseguir que todo el mundo hiciera el sacrificio a la vez, no introducir la regla Buffet de forma aislada, sino hacerlo al mismo tiempo que se subieran también los impuestos de forma moderada para la clase media y media-alta.
ELEMENTAL
William Henry Gates III nació el 28 de octubre de 1955 en Seattle, Washington. Viene de una familia de abogados y banqueros.
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En la secundaria Lakeside conoció a Paul Allen, con quien fundaría Microsoft. Estudió dos años en la Universidad de Harvard.
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Creó Microsoft en 1975 junto a Allen; unos años más tarde se sumó Steve Ballmer, ex compañero de Harvard de Gates. Desde el nacimiento de la PC en 1981 la compañía fue sinónimo de la computación personal.
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Fue la persona más rica del mundo entre 1995 y 2009 (salvo 2008) según el ranking de la revista Forbes. Hoy está segundo detrás de Carlos Slim, el mexicano dueño de Claro.
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En 2000 creó la Fundación Bill & Melinda Gates para hacer obras de beneficencia, y desde 2008 abandonó sus tareas en Microsoft, aunque es el presidente no ejecutivo de su directorio y es el mayor accionista de la empresa.
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SU GRAN INFLUENCIA TECNO, EN CUATRO PASOS
1. La PC en todos lados: comprendió desde el principio que popularizar la informática era vital. No fue el primero, pero sí el que instrumentó un modelo exitoso, con un sistema operativo (DOS y Windows) disponible para múltiples dispositivos apoyados en una plataforma estándar (la PC creada por IBM) orientado al usuario común. El 90% de las PC del mundo llevan Windows.
2. Internet como elemento central de nuestra vida: en 1995 escribió un memo a sus empleados en el que describía a Internet como una marejada, o un tsunami, que barrería con todo lo anterior. Su apuesta por complementar Windows con el acceso a la red de redes y la inclusión de un navegador en cada PC, en un momento en el que las ventas de la computadora personal crecían muchísimo, fue fundamental para la difusión y naturalización de la Web.
3. Creo la industria del software: fue el primero en entender lo mucho que el software (el sistema operativo, las aplicaciones) influía sobre un equipo, y que hacerlo abierto -es decir, que otros pudieran escribir programas para ese sistema operativo- era fundamental para su difusión y para hacerlo masivo. Su foco en los desarrolladores de aplicaciones y en proveerles las herramientas para lograrlo fueron claves. Entre sus primeros clientes estaba Apple, su principal competidor; el Word, por ejemplo, apareció primero para Apple y luego en la PC. Con ese impulso y la difusión de la informática personal fue clave para crear una industria que en 2011 facturó 220.000 millones de dólares sólo en Estados Unidos.
4. Tabletas: hoy todos hablamos de la iPad, pero el que lanzó la idea de una computadora de mano con pantalla táctil que no fuera de bolsillo (es decir, que no fuera un celular o una palmtop) fue Bill Gates en 2001. El concepto nunca se transformó en algo masivo, en parte porque la tecnología todavía no era lo suficientemente avanzada como para ofrecer un dispositivo liviano y de uso sencillo. Apple había incursionado antes en las pantallas táctiles con la Newton (un equipo más de bolsillo), pero Gates transformó el concepto en algo popular.
JOBS & GATES: SOCIOS, RIVALES Y AMIGOS
Microsoft nació en 1975, Apple en 1976. Microsoft era una empresa de software; Apple, una de hardware. Bill Gates y Steve Jobs (ambos nacidos en 1955) se conocieron en los albores de la informática personal y se trenzaron en un combate comercial que creó una de las antinomias más fuertes de la informática.
Fueron socios en su inicio, ya que Microsoft creó una versión del lenguaje de programación Basic para Apple. El conflicto vino después.
En 1981 nació la PC, que llevaba un sistema operativo de Microsoft. Para ese entonces Apple tenía equipos propios en el mercado y era, en rigor, una compañía más grande.
En 1983 Gates partició en la presentación de los productos de Apple. En 1984 Apple presentó la Macintosh (con una interfaz gráfica con ventanas e iconos, que usaba un mouse); ese mismo año Microsoft presentó Windows 1.0, que llevaba el mismo concepto a la PC. Jobs acusó a Gates de robarle la idea; en rigor, ambos se inspiraron en un desarrollo previo hecho en Xerox. Esto terminó en un duelo legal en 1988, mientras Microsoft crecía siguiendo la explosión de la PC y Apple perdía popularidad.
Desde entonces, y hasta fin de siglo, se los vio como enemigos, aunque en privado tenían una relación cordial. Públicamente sus compañías eran competidores a muerte, y su relación personal quedó asociada a ese combate.
En 1996 Jobs dijo públicamente que creía que Bill Gates y sus empleados eran gente sin gusto alguno; que a Gates le hubiera venido bien drogarse de joven. Al fundador de Microsoft no le cayó bien la afirmación, pero esto no impidió que en 1997 su compañía invirtiera 150 millones de dólares en una Apple que estaba en serios problemas financieros, y que apuntalara el regreso triunfal de Jobs a la compañía que había fundado. Gates, por así decirlo, mantuvo con vida a su peor enemigo, aunque por ese entonces Microsoft ya dominaba por completo el mercado de la computación personal.
A partir de entonces la relación cambió en lo público y volvieron a mostrarse como socios, más allá de que siguieran compitiendo en varios terrenos. En 2007 aparecieron juntos en la conferencia AllThingsD para recordar sus 30 años en la industria, y los caminos diferentes que tomaron para llegar a una visión similar de una computación ubicua. Gates alabó de Jobs su sentido de la elegancia y el estilo; Jobs, que Gates era imbatible para llevar una misma visión a múltiples socios.
La temprana muerte de Jobs el año último, en un momento en que su compañía cosechaba récord tras récord de crecimiento, opacó la figura de Gates, que ya había abandonado sus tareas diarias en Microsoft. Este recordó luego que le escribió una carta a Steve Jobs al enterarse de su enfermedad, que el otro mantuvo junto a su cama hasta su muerte.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
22 de Abril-Día de la Tierra
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Día de la Tierra
El 22 de Abril se festeja desde 1970, a nuestro planeta, para conservar la atmósfera, la biodiversidad y pensar el problema de la superpoblación.
Una lámpara LED de bajo consumo, gasta 10W y dura 20 años
Una lámpara LED de bajo consumo fabricada por el gigante Philips, con una vida útil estimada en 20 años, salió a la venta este domingo en internet y en tiendas de Estados Unidos coincidiendo con el Día de la Tierra.
Con un precio inicial de 60 dólares, la lámpara de bajo consumo, que ganó en 2011 el premio "Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize" otorgado por el Departamento de Energía estadounidense, estaba disponible en las tiendas a 50 dólares.
Philips anunció que busca reducir los costos para obtener un precio final de entre 25 y 30 dólares.
Según su fabricante, la lámpara de bajo consumo de 10W logra iluminar tanto como una tradicional de 60W y afirma que un uso de sólo tres horas diarias podría alargar su vida útil a 27,4 años.
"Dado que la nueva lámpara es 83% más eficiente que la tradicional bombilla de 60 Watts, los consumidores pueden ahora realizar un ahorro adicional", declaró Ed Crawford, gerente para Norteamérica de Philips durante una promoción de lanzamiento.
Fuente: http://noticias.latam.msn.com/ar
Día de la Tierra
El 22 de Abril se festeja desde 1970, a nuestro planeta, para conservar la atmósfera, la biodiversidad y pensar el problema de la superpoblación.
Una lámpara LED de bajo consumo, gasta 10W y dura 20 años
Una lámpara LED de bajo consumo fabricada por el gigante Philips, con una vida útil estimada en 20 años, salió a la venta este domingo en internet y en tiendas de Estados Unidos coincidiendo con el Día de la Tierra.
Con un precio inicial de 60 dólares, la lámpara de bajo consumo, que ganó en 2011 el premio "Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize" otorgado por el Departamento de Energía estadounidense, estaba disponible en las tiendas a 50 dólares.
Philips anunció que busca reducir los costos para obtener un precio final de entre 25 y 30 dólares.
Según su fabricante, la lámpara de bajo consumo de 10W logra iluminar tanto como una tradicional de 60W y afirma que un uso de sólo tres horas diarias podría alargar su vida útil a 27,4 años.
"Dado que la nueva lámpara es 83% más eficiente que la tradicional bombilla de 60 Watts, los consumidores pueden ahora realizar un ahorro adicional", declaró Ed Crawford, gerente para Norteamérica de Philips durante una promoción de lanzamiento.
Fuente: http://noticias.latam.msn.com/ar
Friday, April 20, 2012
HHRR-Three Types of People to Fire Immediately
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The Innovation Engine
November 08, 2011
Three Types of People to Fire Immediately
Want a more innovative company? Get rid of these folks. Today
By G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón
“I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people.”
—A very successful CEO (who asked not to be named)
We (your authors) teach our children to work hard and never, ever give up. We teach them to be grateful, to be full of wonder, to expect good things to happen, and to search for literal and figurative treasure on every beach, in every room, and in every person.
But some day, when the treasure hunt is over, we’ll also teach them to fire people. Why? After working with the most inventive people in the world for two decades, we’ve discovered the value of a certain item in the leadership toolbox: the pink slip.
Show of hands: How many of you out there in Innovationland have gotten the “what took you so long?” question from your staff when you finally said goodbye to a teammate who was seemingly always part of problems instead of solutions?
We imagine a whole bunch of hands. (Yep, ours went up, too.)
These people—and we’re going to talk about three specific types in a minute—passive-aggressively block innovation from happening and will suck the energy out of any organization.
When confronted with any of the following three people—and you have found it impossible to change their ways, say goodbye.
1. The Victims
“Can you believe what they want us to do now? And of course we have no time to do it. I don’t get paid enough for this. The boss is clueless.”
Victims are people who see problems as occasions for persecution rather than challenges to overcome. We all play the role of victim occasionally, but for some, it has turned into a way of life. These people feel persecuted by humans, processes, and inanimate objects with equal ease—they almost seem to enjoy it. They are often angry, usually annoyed, and almost always complaining. Just when you think everything is humming along perfectly, they find something, anything, to complain about. At Halloween parties, they’re Eeyore, the gloomy, pessimistic donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories—regardless of the costume they choose.
Victims aren’t looking for opportunities; they are looking for problems. Victims can’t innovate.
So if you want an innovative team, you simply can’t include victims. Fire the victims. (Note to the HR department: Victims are also the most likely to feel the company has maliciously terminated them regardless of cause. They will often go looking for someone—anyone—who will agree that you have treated them unjustly. Lawyers are often left to play this role. So have your documentation in order before you let victims go, because chances are you will hear from their attorneys.
2. The Nonbelievers
“Why should we work so hard on this? Even if we come up with a good idea, the boss will probably kill it. If she doesn’t, the market will. I’ve seen this a hundred times before.”
We love the Henry Ford quote: “If you think you can or think you cannot, you are correct.” The difference between the winning team that makes industry-changing innovation happen and the losing one that comes up short is a lack of willpower. Said differently, the winners really believed they could do it, while the losers doubted it was possible.
In our experience, we’ve found the link between believing and succeeding incredibly powerful and real. Great leaders understand this. They find and promote believers within their organizations. They also understand the cancerous effect that nonbelievers have on a team and will cut them out of the organization quickly and without regret.
If you are a leader who says your mission is to innovate, but you have a staff that houses nonbelievers, you are either a lousy leader or in denial. Which is it? You deserve the staff you get. Terminate the nonbelievers.
3. The Know-It-Alls
“You people obviously don’t understand the business we are in. The regulations will not allow an idea like this, and our stakeholders won’t embrace it. Don’t even get me started on our IT infrastructure’s inability to support it. And then there is the problem of ….”
The best innovators are learners, not knowers. The same can be said about innovative cultures; they are learning cultures. The leaders who have built these cultures, either through intuition or experience, know that in order to discover, they must eagerly seek out things they don’t understand and jump right into the deep end of the pool. They must fail fearlessly and quickly and then learn and share their lessons with the team. When they behave this way, they empower others around them to follow suit—and presto, a culture of discovery is born and nurtured.
In school, the one who knows the most gets the best grades, goes to the best college, and gets the best salary. On the job, the person who can figure things out the quickest is often celebrated. And unfortunately, it is often this smartest, most-seasoned employee who eventually becomes expert in using his or her knowledge to explain why things are impossible rather than possible.
This employee should be challenged, retrained, and compensated for failing forward. But if this person’s habits are too deeply ingrained to change, you must let him or her go. Otherwise, this individual will unwittingly keep your team from seeing opportunity right under your noses. The folks at Blockbuster didn’t see Netflix (NFLX)‘s ascendancy. The encyclopedia companies didn’t see Google (GOOG) coming. But the problem of expert blindness existed well before the Internet.
Two of our favorites from rinkworks.com: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” —Western Union internal memo, 1876.
And “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” —David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
At one point in his career, Thomas A. Edison had dozens of inventors working for him at the same time. He charged each with the task of failing forward and sharing the learning from each discovery. All of them needed to believe that they were part of something big. You want the same sort of people.
You don’t want the victims, nonbelievers, or know-it-alls. It is up to you to make sure they take their anti-innovative outlooks elsewhere.
Maddock is chief executive, and Vitón is president, of Maddock Douglas, an innovation consultancy that specializes in inventing and launching new products, services, and businesses. Maddock and Viton are the authors of Free the Idea Monkey (ISB Publishing, 2012), and Maddock is the author of Brand New: Solving the Innovation Paradox—How Great Brands Invent and Launch New Products, Services, and Business Models (Wiley, 2011).
Source: www.businessweek.com
The Innovation Engine
November 08, 2011
Three Types of People to Fire Immediately
Want a more innovative company? Get rid of these folks. Today
By G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón
“I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people.”
—A very successful CEO (who asked not to be named)
We (your authors) teach our children to work hard and never, ever give up. We teach them to be grateful, to be full of wonder, to expect good things to happen, and to search for literal and figurative treasure on every beach, in every room, and in every person.
But some day, when the treasure hunt is over, we’ll also teach them to fire people. Why? After working with the most inventive people in the world for two decades, we’ve discovered the value of a certain item in the leadership toolbox: the pink slip.
Show of hands: How many of you out there in Innovationland have gotten the “what took you so long?” question from your staff when you finally said goodbye to a teammate who was seemingly always part of problems instead of solutions?
We imagine a whole bunch of hands. (Yep, ours went up, too.)
These people—and we’re going to talk about three specific types in a minute—passive-aggressively block innovation from happening and will suck the energy out of any organization.
When confronted with any of the following three people—and you have found it impossible to change their ways, say goodbye.
1. The Victims
“Can you believe what they want us to do now? And of course we have no time to do it. I don’t get paid enough for this. The boss is clueless.”
Victims are people who see problems as occasions for persecution rather than challenges to overcome. We all play the role of victim occasionally, but for some, it has turned into a way of life. These people feel persecuted by humans, processes, and inanimate objects with equal ease—they almost seem to enjoy it. They are often angry, usually annoyed, and almost always complaining. Just when you think everything is humming along perfectly, they find something, anything, to complain about. At Halloween parties, they’re Eeyore, the gloomy, pessimistic donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories—regardless of the costume they choose.
Victims aren’t looking for opportunities; they are looking for problems. Victims can’t innovate.
So if you want an innovative team, you simply can’t include victims. Fire the victims. (Note to the HR department: Victims are also the most likely to feel the company has maliciously terminated them regardless of cause. They will often go looking for someone—anyone—who will agree that you have treated them unjustly. Lawyers are often left to play this role. So have your documentation in order before you let victims go, because chances are you will hear from their attorneys.
2. The Nonbelievers
“Why should we work so hard on this? Even if we come up with a good idea, the boss will probably kill it. If she doesn’t, the market will. I’ve seen this a hundred times before.”
We love the Henry Ford quote: “If you think you can or think you cannot, you are correct.” The difference between the winning team that makes industry-changing innovation happen and the losing one that comes up short is a lack of willpower. Said differently, the winners really believed they could do it, while the losers doubted it was possible.
In our experience, we’ve found the link between believing and succeeding incredibly powerful and real. Great leaders understand this. They find and promote believers within their organizations. They also understand the cancerous effect that nonbelievers have on a team and will cut them out of the organization quickly and without regret.
If you are a leader who says your mission is to innovate, but you have a staff that houses nonbelievers, you are either a lousy leader or in denial. Which is it? You deserve the staff you get. Terminate the nonbelievers.
3. The Know-It-Alls
“You people obviously don’t understand the business we are in. The regulations will not allow an idea like this, and our stakeholders won’t embrace it. Don’t even get me started on our IT infrastructure’s inability to support it. And then there is the problem of ….”
The best innovators are learners, not knowers. The same can be said about innovative cultures; they are learning cultures. The leaders who have built these cultures, either through intuition or experience, know that in order to discover, they must eagerly seek out things they don’t understand and jump right into the deep end of the pool. They must fail fearlessly and quickly and then learn and share their lessons with the team. When they behave this way, they empower others around them to follow suit—and presto, a culture of discovery is born and nurtured.
In school, the one who knows the most gets the best grades, goes to the best college, and gets the best salary. On the job, the person who can figure things out the quickest is often celebrated. And unfortunately, it is often this smartest, most-seasoned employee who eventually becomes expert in using his or her knowledge to explain why things are impossible rather than possible.
This employee should be challenged, retrained, and compensated for failing forward. But if this person’s habits are too deeply ingrained to change, you must let him or her go. Otherwise, this individual will unwittingly keep your team from seeing opportunity right under your noses. The folks at Blockbuster didn’t see Netflix (NFLX)‘s ascendancy. The encyclopedia companies didn’t see Google (GOOG) coming. But the problem of expert blindness existed well before the Internet.
Two of our favorites from rinkworks.com: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” —Western Union internal memo, 1876.
And “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” —David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
At one point in his career, Thomas A. Edison had dozens of inventors working for him at the same time. He charged each with the task of failing forward and sharing the learning from each discovery. All of them needed to believe that they were part of something big. You want the same sort of people.
You don’t want the victims, nonbelievers, or know-it-alls. It is up to you to make sure they take their anti-innovative outlooks elsewhere.
Maddock is chief executive, and Vitón is president, of Maddock Douglas, an innovation consultancy that specializes in inventing and launching new products, services, and businesses. Maddock and Viton are the authors of Free the Idea Monkey (ISB Publishing, 2012), and Maddock is the author of Brand New: Solving the Innovation Paradox—How Great Brands Invent and Launch New Products, Services, and Business Models (Wiley, 2011).
Source: www.businessweek.com
The 10 Biggest Business Plan Mistakes
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The 10 Biggest Business Plan Mistakes
Former venture capitalist and angel investor Christine Comaford-Lynch has reviewed hundreds of business plans. She explains where many entrepreneurs go wrong
By Christine Comaford-Lynch
It's a crime to work so hard on writing a business plan only to sabotage your chances of getting funded by omitting or shortchanging the key components. When a financier, board member, or key executive assesses your plan, they want to see the 10 topics listed below. The problem is, many businesses plans I've read make the same mistakes. Getting it right conveys that you know where your business is going, and you know how to get there. The following advice applies to a traditional business plan:
1. Company Overview
The Goal: A few concise and compelling sentences describing your company's purpose/goal.
The Mistake: More often than not, the company's purpose/objective is vague, common, not compelling. I stop reading here.
2. Pain
The Goal: Identify the specific market pain you will reduce or remove. At the same time, explain why your product or service is crucial.
The Mistake: Some entrepreneurs feel they don't need to include this topic, but you always have to make a case to convince readers unfamiliar with your product or service.
3. Solution
The Goal: Explain as completely as possible what your solution is to the market pain—and exactly how it works.
The Mistake: Not fully explaining your solution and exactly how it works.
4. Company Information
The Goal: While no one expects you to have a fully fleshed-out team in the early days, you should at least have a skeletal team supplemented with advisers.
The Mistake: One- and two-person teams simply don't demonstrate your ability to enroll others in your vision. As a general rule of thumb, list as many key players as possible in this section.
5. Financial Information
The Goal: Describe your funding history (if you have any), the total amount of money sought, the source, the anticipated use of funds, last year's revenue, a five-year revenue forecast, monthly burn rate, projected cash-flow positive date. Entrepreneurs always ask me why five years of fictitious revenue estimates matter. The answer is because financiers want to know how ambitious you are.
The Mistake: Pie-in-the-sky financials. Be sure to back up your projections with how you expect to achieve them.
6. Product
The Goal: A short paragraph explaining the status of your product. It's okay if you're in early trials or even if you have a killer demo.
The Mistake: Not helping the reader understand how you're going to get to a full-fledged product and when.
7. Defensibility
The Goal: Explain how your intellectual property or market position will be protected from competitors and how you'll mitigate risk for financiers. You also need to answer these questions: Do you have patents in process? What are the key risks with your company? How will you help to mitigate them?
The Mistake: Not demonstrating that you've considered these topics, and have thoughtful answers.
8. Competition
The Goal: Name your competitors, both now and in the future.
The Mistake: Saying you have no competitors—you do. Even inertia is a competitor, and a formidable one at that. A security company I recently met with listed all of their competitors to me, and one by one explained how their solution was better. I love honest acknowledgement coupled with doing your homework. It's rare and compelling.
9. Business Model
The Goal: Show how you'll make money and grow your business. By considering all the angles, you could end up discovering secondary and tertiary revenue streams that you've given cursory thought to. Don't hold back.
The Mistake: Not explaining exactly how your business will make money, when, and what the new revenue streams will be over time.
10. Key Milestones
The Goal: Show the deals/achievements that are accelerating/will accelerate your company's growth—be specific in stating the stage of these deals/achievements. This is where the rubber hits the road.
The Mistake: Not explaining specifically what you have accomplished within a time frame, and what you plan to achieve within a future time frame.
Source: www.businessweek.com
The 10 Biggest Business Plan Mistakes
Former venture capitalist and angel investor Christine Comaford-Lynch has reviewed hundreds of business plans. She explains where many entrepreneurs go wrong
By Christine Comaford-Lynch
It's a crime to work so hard on writing a business plan only to sabotage your chances of getting funded by omitting or shortchanging the key components. When a financier, board member, or key executive assesses your plan, they want to see the 10 topics listed below. The problem is, many businesses plans I've read make the same mistakes. Getting it right conveys that you know where your business is going, and you know how to get there. The following advice applies to a traditional business plan:
1. Company Overview
The Goal: A few concise and compelling sentences describing your company's purpose/goal.
The Mistake: More often than not, the company's purpose/objective is vague, common, not compelling. I stop reading here.
2. Pain
The Goal: Identify the specific market pain you will reduce or remove. At the same time, explain why your product or service is crucial.
The Mistake: Some entrepreneurs feel they don't need to include this topic, but you always have to make a case to convince readers unfamiliar with your product or service.
3. Solution
The Goal: Explain as completely as possible what your solution is to the market pain—and exactly how it works.
The Mistake: Not fully explaining your solution and exactly how it works.
4. Company Information
The Goal: While no one expects you to have a fully fleshed-out team in the early days, you should at least have a skeletal team supplemented with advisers.
The Mistake: One- and two-person teams simply don't demonstrate your ability to enroll others in your vision. As a general rule of thumb, list as many key players as possible in this section.
5. Financial Information
The Goal: Describe your funding history (if you have any), the total amount of money sought, the source, the anticipated use of funds, last year's revenue, a five-year revenue forecast, monthly burn rate, projected cash-flow positive date. Entrepreneurs always ask me why five years of fictitious revenue estimates matter. The answer is because financiers want to know how ambitious you are.
The Mistake: Pie-in-the-sky financials. Be sure to back up your projections with how you expect to achieve them.
6. Product
The Goal: A short paragraph explaining the status of your product. It's okay if you're in early trials or even if you have a killer demo.
The Mistake: Not helping the reader understand how you're going to get to a full-fledged product and when.
7. Defensibility
The Goal: Explain how your intellectual property or market position will be protected from competitors and how you'll mitigate risk for financiers. You also need to answer these questions: Do you have patents in process? What are the key risks with your company? How will you help to mitigate them?
The Mistake: Not demonstrating that you've considered these topics, and have thoughtful answers.
8. Competition
The Goal: Name your competitors, both now and in the future.
The Mistake: Saying you have no competitors—you do. Even inertia is a competitor, and a formidable one at that. A security company I recently met with listed all of their competitors to me, and one by one explained how their solution was better. I love honest acknowledgement coupled with doing your homework. It's rare and compelling.
9. Business Model
The Goal: Show how you'll make money and grow your business. By considering all the angles, you could end up discovering secondary and tertiary revenue streams that you've given cursory thought to. Don't hold back.
The Mistake: Not explaining exactly how your business will make money, when, and what the new revenue streams will be over time.
10. Key Milestones
The Goal: Show the deals/achievements that are accelerating/will accelerate your company's growth—be specific in stating the stage of these deals/achievements. This is where the rubber hits the road.
The Mistake: Not explaining specifically what you have accomplished within a time frame, and what you plan to achieve within a future time frame.
Source: www.businessweek.com
FIN-ECON-Impress Potential Investors in 12 Steps
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The ABCs of Business Plans
January 7, 2008
Impress Potential Investors in 12 Steps
To convince investors to fund your business, you'll need to address their chief concerns. Here's how to craft a presentation to do just that
by David E. Gumpert
David E. Gumpert has authored or co-authored seven books on business and written extensively about starting a business from scratch. The following advice on business plan presentations is an edited excerpt from his latest book, Burn Your Business Plan! What Investors Really Want from Entrepreneurs.
If you're trying to raise investment funds for an early-stage venture, one of the best opportunities is an in-person meeting with venture capitalists or angel investors. In preparation, you should develop a 20- to 30-minute slide presentation to address their most pressing questions and concerns.
To get you started, I've developed a list of 12 key questions you need to answer. I recommend devoting one slide to each question, for a presentation of 12 slides. Assuming it will take about two minutes to explain each slide, your entire presentation should take 24 minutes, which is right in the ideal range (BusinessWeek.com, 6/4/07).
I suggest you answer each question with three to six bullet points or phrases. If you can't capture the necessary details in bullet points or phrases, save them for the oral explanation you will provide for each slide. Jot down notes for each slide that will serve as the basis of your discussion. Your presentation should be more than a simple recitation of the points on each slide.
1. What is the opportunity? In other words: What is the problem you are fixing? Many Internet businesses—such as online car markets or travel agencies—aim to fix an inefficient and cumbersome market via a more open and speedy system. If it's a new problem or opportunity, investors will invariably wonder why no one has tried to fix this problem before? Or, if someone has tried, why didn't it work?
You also need to convince potential backers that there are huge premiums for solving the problem. Resist the urge to dwell on marketing studies showing annual growth of 50% for the next 200 years—investors have come to despise them—and instead provide data on the size of today's market, with various estimates of potential market growth. If the marketing data are suspect or incomplete, say so.
2. What gives you special advantages in solving the problem? Investors want to understand the competitive advantages your business brings to the marketplace. The ideal competitive advantage from their viewpoint is something proprietary—say, a patent on a new drug or important chemical or manufacturing process. A patent provides a form of government protection against imitators. Other proprietary advantages can come from trademarks and copyrights, though these are less desirable because they tend to be less protective for small companies. (A young company's trademark typically isn't well-known, and thus is less important in the marketplace than well-established corporate trademarks.) So be careful about overemphasizing trademarks or copyrights.
Another special advantage may be the experience of your management team. Simply having "a head start on the competition" isn't usually considered significant—unless you can create what are known as "barriers to entry," which make it difficult for new competitors to imitate your offering. For example, exclusive licensing agreements with corporate partners may help you create barriers to entry, and if so are worthy of mention.
3. What makes your team especially qualified to develop this business? Another way of asking this question: What makes this a business only you can do, or why is this business right for you? Investors are extremely skeptical about a team's ability to succeed, so it's best to anticipate their skepticism, and try to answer questions before they are asked.
The best answer provides evidence of past performance—not just that you started another company, but how that company fared. Many entrepreneurs gloss over this because the outcome wasn't clear-cut. I believe it's important to be as forthright as possible here: Explain that a previous corporate management stint was cut short because of downsizing, for example, or that another startup a team member helped launch was sold before achieving its full potential.
4. What is the model? This used to be posed as, What is the strategy? The word "model" became popular with the advent of the Internet, when entrepreneurs spoke about "the advertising model" or "the membership model" or "the retail model." It's your scheme, or approach, to conducting business and generating recurring revenues.
It has become another area of skepticism for investors because a number of models popular during the dot-com craze have fallen out of favor—particularly the advertising model. Advertising on the Internet (BusinessWeek, 11/12/07) hasn't turned out to be in the same league as TV or print advertising, though that is showing signs of changing.
Be sure to explain your model carefully and why you expect it to succeed.
5. What makes it scalable? This refers to your ability to ramp volume up quickly with minimal new hires. Scalability is another term that became popular during the dot-com boom because the Internet was believed to provide huge opportunities for scalability. For some businesses, such as online auctions and travel, the Internet has been a great mechanism for achieving scalability. For other businesses, like food and toys, the Internet didn't deliver on the promise.
6. How do you know you'll have customers? This is the question entrepreneurs typically answer most inadequately during presentations. A market study from Forrester isn't the right answer. For whatever reason, too many entrepreneurs use external market studies to justify their potential businesses, and neglect all they've done to identify customers and prospects.
Investors want to know about your own surveys (BusinessWeek.com, 11/19/07) or test-marketing initiatives. They'll be on the edges of their seats awaiting your evidence, and the harder the evidence, the better. The closer you are to achieving real sales, the better.
7. How do you connect to customers? This follow-up question concerns your methods of selling to and maintaining ties with customers. Are you going through retail channels, direct mail, the Web, or some combination thereof? And if you have customers, do you have standard practices for staying in contact?
Even more important: What evidence do you have of repeat sales? Repeat sales can suggest that most desirable of revenue models: the annuity sale, whereby customers buy repeatedly on a long-term basis.
This is a slide you should think long and hard about. Muster all the evidence you can to demonstrate which channels work best and what you have learned about customer behavior.
8. Do you have a rainmaker? Investors will want to know whether you have a super salesperson on board. Being able to point to one or two people with proven sales ability will give comfort to investors. They know that selling is a very special talent, and they respect it. They also know that too many young companies, technology companies in particular, don't have that talent on board—and it makes them uncomfortable.
9. What have you learned from the competition? Note that I haven't asked whether you have competition or to identify your competitors. That's because investors assume every business has competitors, and claims to the contrary will worry potential investors.
To answer this question, think about your competitors, what they do well, and what they don't do well. Pointing out competitors' strengths you would like to emulate will please investors. The more specific you can be, the better. For example: "One thing that impresses us about Competitor A is its rigorous follow-up with new customers, inquiring into their likes and dislikes. We would like to go one better by responding immediately to customer dislikes."
10. What are the risk factors? Every business entails risks, and as in the previous slide, acknowledging those risks will impress investors. This isn't an area you need to dwell on, as you should in some of the market and customer matters. But you should be matter-of-fact about the risks—that your model hasn't been well tested in your particular industry, for example, or that the competition six months from now is likely to be much greater than it is now.
11. What are the margins? Here you should provide a synopsis of your financial projections. The emphasis, though, is on your margins—profits before administrative expenses and taxes. These should be high—hopefully over 40%—but not unrealistically so.
You should also anticipate the question of how your margins will change once the competition heats up.
12. How realistic is the exit strategy? Your exit strategy is your plan for enabling investors to take their profits from the company within five years. Young companies most often cite one of two exit strategies: they plan to be acquired or to go public. Those approaches are fine, so long as they make sense. For example, you might say you are looking to an acquisition rather than an initial public offering (BusinessWeek.com, 3/27/07) because your business is in a niche market, and thus would be most attractive to a large company seeking to enter that market.
David E. Gumpert covers business/health issues and also writes the biweekly What Entrepreneurs Need to Know column.
Source: www.businessweek.com
The ABCs of Business Plans
January 7, 2008
Impress Potential Investors in 12 Steps
To convince investors to fund your business, you'll need to address their chief concerns. Here's how to craft a presentation to do just that
by David E. Gumpert
David E. Gumpert has authored or co-authored seven books on business and written extensively about starting a business from scratch. The following advice on business plan presentations is an edited excerpt from his latest book, Burn Your Business Plan! What Investors Really Want from Entrepreneurs.
If you're trying to raise investment funds for an early-stage venture, one of the best opportunities is an in-person meeting with venture capitalists or angel investors. In preparation, you should develop a 20- to 30-minute slide presentation to address their most pressing questions and concerns.
To get you started, I've developed a list of 12 key questions you need to answer. I recommend devoting one slide to each question, for a presentation of 12 slides. Assuming it will take about two minutes to explain each slide, your entire presentation should take 24 minutes, which is right in the ideal range (BusinessWeek.com, 6/4/07).
I suggest you answer each question with three to six bullet points or phrases. If you can't capture the necessary details in bullet points or phrases, save them for the oral explanation you will provide for each slide. Jot down notes for each slide that will serve as the basis of your discussion. Your presentation should be more than a simple recitation of the points on each slide.
1. What is the opportunity? In other words: What is the problem you are fixing? Many Internet businesses—such as online car markets or travel agencies—aim to fix an inefficient and cumbersome market via a more open and speedy system. If it's a new problem or opportunity, investors will invariably wonder why no one has tried to fix this problem before? Or, if someone has tried, why didn't it work?
You also need to convince potential backers that there are huge premiums for solving the problem. Resist the urge to dwell on marketing studies showing annual growth of 50% for the next 200 years—investors have come to despise them—and instead provide data on the size of today's market, with various estimates of potential market growth. If the marketing data are suspect or incomplete, say so.
2. What gives you special advantages in solving the problem? Investors want to understand the competitive advantages your business brings to the marketplace. The ideal competitive advantage from their viewpoint is something proprietary—say, a patent on a new drug or important chemical or manufacturing process. A patent provides a form of government protection against imitators. Other proprietary advantages can come from trademarks and copyrights, though these are less desirable because they tend to be less protective for small companies. (A young company's trademark typically isn't well-known, and thus is less important in the marketplace than well-established corporate trademarks.) So be careful about overemphasizing trademarks or copyrights.
Another special advantage may be the experience of your management team. Simply having "a head start on the competition" isn't usually considered significant—unless you can create what are known as "barriers to entry," which make it difficult for new competitors to imitate your offering. For example, exclusive licensing agreements with corporate partners may help you create barriers to entry, and if so are worthy of mention.
3. What makes your team especially qualified to develop this business? Another way of asking this question: What makes this a business only you can do, or why is this business right for you? Investors are extremely skeptical about a team's ability to succeed, so it's best to anticipate their skepticism, and try to answer questions before they are asked.
The best answer provides evidence of past performance—not just that you started another company, but how that company fared. Many entrepreneurs gloss over this because the outcome wasn't clear-cut. I believe it's important to be as forthright as possible here: Explain that a previous corporate management stint was cut short because of downsizing, for example, or that another startup a team member helped launch was sold before achieving its full potential.
4. What is the model? This used to be posed as, What is the strategy? The word "model" became popular with the advent of the Internet, when entrepreneurs spoke about "the advertising model" or "the membership model" or "the retail model." It's your scheme, or approach, to conducting business and generating recurring revenues.
It has become another area of skepticism for investors because a number of models popular during the dot-com craze have fallen out of favor—particularly the advertising model. Advertising on the Internet (BusinessWeek, 11/12/07) hasn't turned out to be in the same league as TV or print advertising, though that is showing signs of changing.
Be sure to explain your model carefully and why you expect it to succeed.
5. What makes it scalable? This refers to your ability to ramp volume up quickly with minimal new hires. Scalability is another term that became popular during the dot-com boom because the Internet was believed to provide huge opportunities for scalability. For some businesses, such as online auctions and travel, the Internet has been a great mechanism for achieving scalability. For other businesses, like food and toys, the Internet didn't deliver on the promise.
6. How do you know you'll have customers? This is the question entrepreneurs typically answer most inadequately during presentations. A market study from Forrester isn't the right answer. For whatever reason, too many entrepreneurs use external market studies to justify their potential businesses, and neglect all they've done to identify customers and prospects.
Investors want to know about your own surveys (BusinessWeek.com, 11/19/07) or test-marketing initiatives. They'll be on the edges of their seats awaiting your evidence, and the harder the evidence, the better. The closer you are to achieving real sales, the better.
7. How do you connect to customers? This follow-up question concerns your methods of selling to and maintaining ties with customers. Are you going through retail channels, direct mail, the Web, or some combination thereof? And if you have customers, do you have standard practices for staying in contact?
Even more important: What evidence do you have of repeat sales? Repeat sales can suggest that most desirable of revenue models: the annuity sale, whereby customers buy repeatedly on a long-term basis.
This is a slide you should think long and hard about. Muster all the evidence you can to demonstrate which channels work best and what you have learned about customer behavior.
8. Do you have a rainmaker? Investors will want to know whether you have a super salesperson on board. Being able to point to one or two people with proven sales ability will give comfort to investors. They know that selling is a very special talent, and they respect it. They also know that too many young companies, technology companies in particular, don't have that talent on board—and it makes them uncomfortable.
9. What have you learned from the competition? Note that I haven't asked whether you have competition or to identify your competitors. That's because investors assume every business has competitors, and claims to the contrary will worry potential investors.
To answer this question, think about your competitors, what they do well, and what they don't do well. Pointing out competitors' strengths you would like to emulate will please investors. The more specific you can be, the better. For example: "One thing that impresses us about Competitor A is its rigorous follow-up with new customers, inquiring into their likes and dislikes. We would like to go one better by responding immediately to customer dislikes."
10. What are the risk factors? Every business entails risks, and as in the previous slide, acknowledging those risks will impress investors. This isn't an area you need to dwell on, as you should in some of the market and customer matters. But you should be matter-of-fact about the risks—that your model hasn't been well tested in your particular industry, for example, or that the competition six months from now is likely to be much greater than it is now.
11. What are the margins? Here you should provide a synopsis of your financial projections. The emphasis, though, is on your margins—profits before administrative expenses and taxes. These should be high—hopefully over 40%—but not unrealistically so.
You should also anticipate the question of how your margins will change once the competition heats up.
12. How realistic is the exit strategy? Your exit strategy is your plan for enabling investors to take their profits from the company within five years. Young companies most often cite one of two exit strategies: they plan to be acquired or to go public. Those approaches are fine, so long as they make sense. For example, you might say you are looking to an acquisition rather than an initial public offering (BusinessWeek.com, 3/27/07) because your business is in a niche market, and thus would be most attractive to a large company seeking to enter that market.
David E. Gumpert covers business/health issues and also writes the biweekly What Entrepreneurs Need to Know column.
Source: www.businessweek.com
Gatorade Goes Back to the Lab
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
November 23, 2011
Gatorade Goes Back to the Lab
PepsiCo is bringing the original sports drink back to athletes—and expanding the brand beyond beverages
By Duane Stanford
Iman Shumpert is eight minutes into his Fatmax test at Gatorade’s new Sports Science Institute in Bradenton, Fla., before the first sheer layer of sweat appears on his shoulders. The National Basketball Assn.’s 17th overall draft pick has traded a New York Knicks cap and Beats by Dr. Dre headphones for a mask of tubes that makes him look like something out of Alien. At predetermined intervals, attendants boost the speed and grade of the treadmill he’s running on while computers record his heart rate and oxygen levels. The Fatmax figures out when a body is burning fat (as opposed to carbohydrates) most efficiently. “Hold out as long as you can,” Gatorade scientist JohnEric Smith tells Shumpert. Maximum effort yields the best results. Smith cranks it up another notch. Shumpert picks up the pace. “Good,” Smith beams.
Shumpert is among a string of athletes that includes NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade who have come to the new Bradenton lab looking for insights into their bodies (Shumpert has suffered muscle cramps for years) while Gatorade tests a series of new products, such as energy chews, intended to boost athletic performance. The lab is located at IMG Academies boarding school, which was founded by the late New York private equity magnate Theodore J. (Ted) Forstmann. The lab primarily serves IMG’s student-athletes, nearly 1,000 high school kids from all over the world who pay as much as $60,000 a year to go to boarding school nine months a year, splitting each day 50/50 between classes and their sport. “It’s Hogwarts for athletes,” says Trevor Moawad, director of the IMG Performance Institute, a unit of the academy. And for Gatorade, it’s a skunkworks with a captive crew of guinea pigs. “Where else is a population like this?” Smith says after Shumpert concludes his test and downs a bottle of lemon-lime G Series Pro O2 Perform, an update on its original drink, which introduced electrolytes to the mass market.
More than 40 years after football players at the University of Florida first sipped what would soon become Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo (PEP) is looking to move the brand beyond beverages. In the same way PepsiCo rules the potato chip aisle, its Gatorade division has embarked on an audacious plan to cover the sports nutrition world with offerings to challenge a full spectrum of energy and after-workout “recovery” products, including energy bars, gels, protein shakes, and pretty much anything else athletes put into their bodies. “One beverage can’t serve all your needs as an elite athlete,” says the brand’s chief, Sarah Robb O’Hagan. (Her official title is Gatorade president, North America, and global chief marketing officer, sports nutrition, for PepsiCo.) Gatorade’s goal is to go from a big fish in a $7 billion U.S. sports-drink industry to an even bigger fish in a $20 billion sports nutrition market.
The plan so far is in its infancy, visible to the outside world mostly in the repackaging of its three core product lines—the G Series, G Series Fit, and G Series Pro. Each now comprises pre-, during-, and post-workout products labeled 01 Prime, 02 Perform, and 03 Recover. They require a flow chart to keep straight, and some industry observers view the metamorphosis warily as a work-in-progress. “I think it’s a very confusing brand,” says Tim Hoyle, director of research for PepsiCo shareholder Haverford, a wealth management firm, and an avid cyclist.
Gatorade has its work cut out for it. It will need to persuade everyone from high school jocks to weekend tennis warriors that they should trade bananas for packaged carbohydrate chews, and peanut butter sandwiches for processed protein bites. And it must overhaul its distribution system. Instead of just stacking beverages high and selling them cheaply in grocery and convenience stores, the new strategy requires the company to rethink everything from advertising to in-store displays. Gatorade now is selling to GNC vitamin shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS), Whole Foods Market (WFM), and specialty sports stores. “It’s about being where athletes shop and sweat,” says Andrea Fairchild, vice-president of brand marketing.
One thing Gatorade doesn’t lack is motivation. After several decades of steady growth, Gatorade had sluggish sales in recent years and a full-scale collapse during the U.S. recession. Determined to walk away from discount-driven sales—or “rented volume,” as Robb O’Hagan calls it—the company decided in 2008 to turn away from couch potatoes who chugged Gatorade to wash down a cheeseburger or cure a hangover. Analysts gasped during a 2009 earnings call when PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra K. Nooyi said such consumers—who had by then reverted to cheaper beverages like soft drinks and tap water—“didn’t really have a right to exist in the Gatorade world.” Harsh, perhaps, but it was Nooyi’s way of saying PepsiCo wasn’t selling out anymore.
On a recent afternoon at Gatorade’s headquarters in downtown Chicago, Robb O’Hagan laced up her roadworn Nike Air Pegasus running shoes to discuss the Gatorade transformation over a light jog through the city. PepsiCo recruited Robb O’Hagan from Nike (NKE) in June 2008 as Gatorade sales were grinding to a halt. The 39-year-old executive is a test market of one. In August, Robb O’Hagan and her husband, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Web producer, completed the Chicago Triathlon. The Olympic distance race—1.5 kilometer swim, 40 kilometer bike ride, and a 10 kilometer run—was her annual athletic goal, part of a program she instituted for Gatorade employees to make sure they were walking the talk. “You can pick whatever your goal is,” she says. “It might be that you want to lose a few pounds. One guy wanted to bench-press 300 pounds.”
One of Robb O’Hagan’s first moves was to revive the idea of truncating Gatorade’s logo to a simple “G.” Unveiled in a mysterious Super Bowl ad in 2009 that never mentioned the word “Gatorade,” the G intrigued some consumers and baffled others. The intent, says Robb O’Hagan, was to appeal to a new generation and to develop a logo that can appear on a wider range of goods.
She also noticed the brand really wasn’t marketing to athletes. “The huge aha! for me was, ‘We’re an athletic performance brand, we’re selling in convenience stores, grocery stores, Wal-Mart (WMT), but we don’t even show up in a sporting goods store, in a cycling store, in a place where an athlete actually goes to equip themselves to play sports,’ ” she says. Robb O’Hagan has since brought Gatorade back to athletes and to the science that gave the brand its credibility.
First developed by researchers at the University of Florida in 1965, Gatorade took off quickly with college and professional athletes because it has a formula proven on the playing field. By 1983 it had became the National Football League’s official sports drink. In 2001, PepsiCo bought the $2 billion-a-year brand, and the soft-drink and snack giant spent the better part of the decade pushing Gatorade through its massive distribution system. PepsiCo introduced hundreds of flavors and package deviations, including a breakfast version, Gatorade A.M., pitched by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. The strategy made sense at the time, Robb O’Hagan allows, but it crashed along with the economy in 2008. In 2007 the sports-drink category had mushroomed to $8 billion a year in the U.S., and Gatorade controlled 80 percent, according to industry newsletter Beverage Digest. Within three years, the sports-drink market had declined by $1 billion, and Gatorade’s market share had eroded to 74.8 percent. Meanwhile, serious athletes were turning away from sports drinks to a raft of emerging products, including Jelly Belly Sport Beans, Bonk Breaker Energy Bars, and the Honey Stinger energy waffles endorsed by Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. They bought Carbo-Pro powders in large tubs. Gatorade had mostly conceded these markets. “It’s our role to make anything to drive an athlete’s performance that goes inside their body,” Robb O’Hagan says, drawing a comparison to her former employer’s strategy. “Nike’s all about what’s outside your body. We’re about what’s inside.”
Gatorade’s transition from beverage giant to sports nutrition company is taking shape on several fronts, not the least of which is social media. In a midsize conference room in Chicago known as “mission control,” four to six employees with laptops watch a bank of six screens like NASA rocket engineers. On the screens, they track the Internet’s “mood” toward Gatorade, thanks to software that collects, categorizes, and interprets a cross section of online conversations. Then, on their laptops, they follow up on individual comments and complaints. For example, Gatorade investigated one about caps on some drinks being hard to open and discovered that the bottles in question had overheated during shipping. “It’s the world’s largest unaided focus group,” says 31-year-old Randall Brown, global director of digital strategy for Gatorade.
To deepen and update the information, Gatorade recently hired the man who invented the Fatmax test. Asker Jeukendrup was a professor of exercise metabolism and director of the human performance lab at the University of Birmingham in England. He worked with Armstrong during the Tour de France winner’s comeback from cancer. Jeukendrup’s job is to take a maze of often conflicting and highly specialized nutrition science and boil it down for mass consumption. “A lot of the science actually goes unused; it’s done to maintain academia,” he says.
Gatorade plans to use his work as the basis of new products, too, although this won’t be easy. People absorb proteins, carbohydrates, and electrolytes at different rates, and those rates can change with the weather, says Lawrence Armstrong, professor of environmental and exercise physiology at the University of Connecticut’s human performance laboratory. Research, for example, says protein helps repair muscles after exercise. But simply chocking a bar full of protein won’t work. The body can handle only so much at a time. And even when the optimal level of a carbohydrate is determined, making large amounts of the supplement palatable in a drink requires further expertise. “There are many, many factors that influence performance, including psychology, including sleep, including environmental conditions,’’ Armstrong says.
NBA star Wade started taking his nutrition more seriously after leading the Miami Heat to the 2006 championship title. Wade’s leg muscles began to seize during the deciding sixth game against the Dallas Mavericks. “The last three to five minutes of the game, I was just cramping up bad and trying to tough it out,’’ he says by telephone from Australia, where he is helping launch G Series. Gatorade is working with Wade to customize a nutrition program for him.
Naturally, Gatorade can’t make individualized products for everyone; the company has to find common denominators. Its solution so far has been the G Series. The core line is targeted to “performance” athletes—competitive high school swimmers to adult basketball league players—who make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, Robb O’Hagan says. The series includes a 4-ounce carbohydrate-loaded “pre-game fuel” drink pouch designed to be easily torn open and squeezed into your mouth. The flavored recovery water in the series is packed with protein and carbohydrates.
G Series Fit moves down the ladder a bit and is intended for the roughly 55 million Americans aged 18 to 34 who exercise three times or more per week. These people work out to stay healthy, without necessarily competing. The supplements in Fit are scaled back to match less intense workouts. This line is where Gatorade’s departure from beverages is most pronounced so far: The main offering is a fruit-and-nut bar segmented into bite-size, 50-calorie squares. A fruit smoothie provides an after-workout dose of protein to help the athlete recover sooner.
G Series Pro, meanwhile, is a consumer version of products Gatorade had already been producing for professional athletes. A recovery bar contains whey and casein from milk protein for muscle growth. Vitamins and minerals in the bar boost muscle metabolism, Gatorade says, while carbohydrates help store energy in muscles and the liver in the form of glycogen sugar. Gatorade soon will roll out Pro chews—essentially Gummi Bears for endurance athletes—to compete with Gu Chomps and Clif Bloks that are a staple on long-distance courses. The company also sells two all-natural versions of its new drinks that use noncaloric sweeteners. Gatorade drinkers accustomed to buying 32-oz. bottles for 99¢ may experience sticker shock when it comes to the newest products. PepsiCo charges for its innovation. A 12-oz. bottle of the Pro pre-workout carbohydrate drink sells for $2.99.
This product lineup demands an equally dramatic shift in how and where PepsiCo distributes Gatorade in stores. Before Gatorade’s transformation, sales were split fairly evenly among grocery chains, club stores such as Wal-Mart, and convenience stores. “We are setting a different bar for how we are looking at retail,” says brand marketing Vice-President Fairchild, whom Robb O’Hagan recruited from Nike last year.
Gatorade has taken its Pro series into cycling and running specialty stores that cater to endurance athletes as well as health supplement stores such as GNC. “People come in and buy nutrition from me every day and spend hundreds of dollars,” says Julian Angus, 40, owner of Tempo Cyclery in Sarasota, Fla., who remembers a time last decade when only a few companies made products for elite athletes. Margins rival those of clothing and accessories, he says. Still, Angus was skeptical when Gatorade first pitched him on the products and started sending displays. He worried that customers, not realizing these were new offerings, would think they were being charged boutique prices for the same old drinks they could buy at the supermarket.
As far as they have come, Fairchild and Robb O’Hagan say a fully evolved distribution model is still years away. By some estimates, Gatorade controls about a fifth of the sports nutrition category. “It’s a pretty daunting task to create this across all retail channels and across all of our business,” says Fairchild. “We’re not looking to change the entire marketplace overnight.”
Stanford is a reporter for Bloomberg News.
Source: www.businessweek.com
November 23, 2011
Gatorade Goes Back to the Lab
PepsiCo is bringing the original sports drink back to athletes—and expanding the brand beyond beverages
By Duane Stanford
Iman Shumpert is eight minutes into his Fatmax test at Gatorade’s new Sports Science Institute in Bradenton, Fla., before the first sheer layer of sweat appears on his shoulders. The National Basketball Assn.’s 17th overall draft pick has traded a New York Knicks cap and Beats by Dr. Dre headphones for a mask of tubes that makes him look like something out of Alien. At predetermined intervals, attendants boost the speed and grade of the treadmill he’s running on while computers record his heart rate and oxygen levels. The Fatmax figures out when a body is burning fat (as opposed to carbohydrates) most efficiently. “Hold out as long as you can,” Gatorade scientist JohnEric Smith tells Shumpert. Maximum effort yields the best results. Smith cranks it up another notch. Shumpert picks up the pace. “Good,” Smith beams.
Shumpert is among a string of athletes that includes NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade who have come to the new Bradenton lab looking for insights into their bodies (Shumpert has suffered muscle cramps for years) while Gatorade tests a series of new products, such as energy chews, intended to boost athletic performance. The lab is located at IMG Academies boarding school, which was founded by the late New York private equity magnate Theodore J. (Ted) Forstmann. The lab primarily serves IMG’s student-athletes, nearly 1,000 high school kids from all over the world who pay as much as $60,000 a year to go to boarding school nine months a year, splitting each day 50/50 between classes and their sport. “It’s Hogwarts for athletes,” says Trevor Moawad, director of the IMG Performance Institute, a unit of the academy. And for Gatorade, it’s a skunkworks with a captive crew of guinea pigs. “Where else is a population like this?” Smith says after Shumpert concludes his test and downs a bottle of lemon-lime G Series Pro O2 Perform, an update on its original drink, which introduced electrolytes to the mass market.
More than 40 years after football players at the University of Florida first sipped what would soon become Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo (PEP) is looking to move the brand beyond beverages. In the same way PepsiCo rules the potato chip aisle, its Gatorade division has embarked on an audacious plan to cover the sports nutrition world with offerings to challenge a full spectrum of energy and after-workout “recovery” products, including energy bars, gels, protein shakes, and pretty much anything else athletes put into their bodies. “One beverage can’t serve all your needs as an elite athlete,” says the brand’s chief, Sarah Robb O’Hagan. (Her official title is Gatorade president, North America, and global chief marketing officer, sports nutrition, for PepsiCo.) Gatorade’s goal is to go from a big fish in a $7 billion U.S. sports-drink industry to an even bigger fish in a $20 billion sports nutrition market.
The plan so far is in its infancy, visible to the outside world mostly in the repackaging of its three core product lines—the G Series, G Series Fit, and G Series Pro. Each now comprises pre-, during-, and post-workout products labeled 01 Prime, 02 Perform, and 03 Recover. They require a flow chart to keep straight, and some industry observers view the metamorphosis warily as a work-in-progress. “I think it’s a very confusing brand,” says Tim Hoyle, director of research for PepsiCo shareholder Haverford, a wealth management firm, and an avid cyclist.
Gatorade has its work cut out for it. It will need to persuade everyone from high school jocks to weekend tennis warriors that they should trade bananas for packaged carbohydrate chews, and peanut butter sandwiches for processed protein bites. And it must overhaul its distribution system. Instead of just stacking beverages high and selling them cheaply in grocery and convenience stores, the new strategy requires the company to rethink everything from advertising to in-store displays. Gatorade now is selling to GNC vitamin shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS), Whole Foods Market (WFM), and specialty sports stores. “It’s about being where athletes shop and sweat,” says Andrea Fairchild, vice-president of brand marketing.
One thing Gatorade doesn’t lack is motivation. After several decades of steady growth, Gatorade had sluggish sales in recent years and a full-scale collapse during the U.S. recession. Determined to walk away from discount-driven sales—or “rented volume,” as Robb O’Hagan calls it—the company decided in 2008 to turn away from couch potatoes who chugged Gatorade to wash down a cheeseburger or cure a hangover. Analysts gasped during a 2009 earnings call when PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra K. Nooyi said such consumers—who had by then reverted to cheaper beverages like soft drinks and tap water—“didn’t really have a right to exist in the Gatorade world.” Harsh, perhaps, but it was Nooyi’s way of saying PepsiCo wasn’t selling out anymore.
On a recent afternoon at Gatorade’s headquarters in downtown Chicago, Robb O’Hagan laced up her roadworn Nike Air Pegasus running shoes to discuss the Gatorade transformation over a light jog through the city. PepsiCo recruited Robb O’Hagan from Nike (NKE) in June 2008 as Gatorade sales were grinding to a halt. The 39-year-old executive is a test market of one. In August, Robb O’Hagan and her husband, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Web producer, completed the Chicago Triathlon. The Olympic distance race—1.5 kilometer swim, 40 kilometer bike ride, and a 10 kilometer run—was her annual athletic goal, part of a program she instituted for Gatorade employees to make sure they were walking the talk. “You can pick whatever your goal is,” she says. “It might be that you want to lose a few pounds. One guy wanted to bench-press 300 pounds.”
One of Robb O’Hagan’s first moves was to revive the idea of truncating Gatorade’s logo to a simple “G.” Unveiled in a mysterious Super Bowl ad in 2009 that never mentioned the word “Gatorade,” the G intrigued some consumers and baffled others. The intent, says Robb O’Hagan, was to appeal to a new generation and to develop a logo that can appear on a wider range of goods.
She also noticed the brand really wasn’t marketing to athletes. “The huge aha! for me was, ‘We’re an athletic performance brand, we’re selling in convenience stores, grocery stores, Wal-Mart (WMT), but we don’t even show up in a sporting goods store, in a cycling store, in a place where an athlete actually goes to equip themselves to play sports,’ ” she says. Robb O’Hagan has since brought Gatorade back to athletes and to the science that gave the brand its credibility.
First developed by researchers at the University of Florida in 1965, Gatorade took off quickly with college and professional athletes because it has a formula proven on the playing field. By 1983 it had became the National Football League’s official sports drink. In 2001, PepsiCo bought the $2 billion-a-year brand, and the soft-drink and snack giant spent the better part of the decade pushing Gatorade through its massive distribution system. PepsiCo introduced hundreds of flavors and package deviations, including a breakfast version, Gatorade A.M., pitched by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. The strategy made sense at the time, Robb O’Hagan allows, but it crashed along with the economy in 2008. In 2007 the sports-drink category had mushroomed to $8 billion a year in the U.S., and Gatorade controlled 80 percent, according to industry newsletter Beverage Digest. Within three years, the sports-drink market had declined by $1 billion, and Gatorade’s market share had eroded to 74.8 percent. Meanwhile, serious athletes were turning away from sports drinks to a raft of emerging products, including Jelly Belly Sport Beans, Bonk Breaker Energy Bars, and the Honey Stinger energy waffles endorsed by Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. They bought Carbo-Pro powders in large tubs. Gatorade had mostly conceded these markets. “It’s our role to make anything to drive an athlete’s performance that goes inside their body,” Robb O’Hagan says, drawing a comparison to her former employer’s strategy. “Nike’s all about what’s outside your body. We’re about what’s inside.”
Gatorade’s transition from beverage giant to sports nutrition company is taking shape on several fronts, not the least of which is social media. In a midsize conference room in Chicago known as “mission control,” four to six employees with laptops watch a bank of six screens like NASA rocket engineers. On the screens, they track the Internet’s “mood” toward Gatorade, thanks to software that collects, categorizes, and interprets a cross section of online conversations. Then, on their laptops, they follow up on individual comments and complaints. For example, Gatorade investigated one about caps on some drinks being hard to open and discovered that the bottles in question had overheated during shipping. “It’s the world’s largest unaided focus group,” says 31-year-old Randall Brown, global director of digital strategy for Gatorade.
To deepen and update the information, Gatorade recently hired the man who invented the Fatmax test. Asker Jeukendrup was a professor of exercise metabolism and director of the human performance lab at the University of Birmingham in England. He worked with Armstrong during the Tour de France winner’s comeback from cancer. Jeukendrup’s job is to take a maze of often conflicting and highly specialized nutrition science and boil it down for mass consumption. “A lot of the science actually goes unused; it’s done to maintain academia,” he says.
Gatorade plans to use his work as the basis of new products, too, although this won’t be easy. People absorb proteins, carbohydrates, and electrolytes at different rates, and those rates can change with the weather, says Lawrence Armstrong, professor of environmental and exercise physiology at the University of Connecticut’s human performance laboratory. Research, for example, says protein helps repair muscles after exercise. But simply chocking a bar full of protein won’t work. The body can handle only so much at a time. And even when the optimal level of a carbohydrate is determined, making large amounts of the supplement palatable in a drink requires further expertise. “There are many, many factors that influence performance, including psychology, including sleep, including environmental conditions,’’ Armstrong says.
NBA star Wade started taking his nutrition more seriously after leading the Miami Heat to the 2006 championship title. Wade’s leg muscles began to seize during the deciding sixth game against the Dallas Mavericks. “The last three to five minutes of the game, I was just cramping up bad and trying to tough it out,’’ he says by telephone from Australia, where he is helping launch G Series. Gatorade is working with Wade to customize a nutrition program for him.
Naturally, Gatorade can’t make individualized products for everyone; the company has to find common denominators. Its solution so far has been the G Series. The core line is targeted to “performance” athletes—competitive high school swimmers to adult basketball league players—who make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, Robb O’Hagan says. The series includes a 4-ounce carbohydrate-loaded “pre-game fuel” drink pouch designed to be easily torn open and squeezed into your mouth. The flavored recovery water in the series is packed with protein and carbohydrates.
G Series Fit moves down the ladder a bit and is intended for the roughly 55 million Americans aged 18 to 34 who exercise three times or more per week. These people work out to stay healthy, without necessarily competing. The supplements in Fit are scaled back to match less intense workouts. This line is where Gatorade’s departure from beverages is most pronounced so far: The main offering is a fruit-and-nut bar segmented into bite-size, 50-calorie squares. A fruit smoothie provides an after-workout dose of protein to help the athlete recover sooner.
G Series Pro, meanwhile, is a consumer version of products Gatorade had already been producing for professional athletes. A recovery bar contains whey and casein from milk protein for muscle growth. Vitamins and minerals in the bar boost muscle metabolism, Gatorade says, while carbohydrates help store energy in muscles and the liver in the form of glycogen sugar. Gatorade soon will roll out Pro chews—essentially Gummi Bears for endurance athletes—to compete with Gu Chomps and Clif Bloks that are a staple on long-distance courses. The company also sells two all-natural versions of its new drinks that use noncaloric sweeteners. Gatorade drinkers accustomed to buying 32-oz. bottles for 99¢ may experience sticker shock when it comes to the newest products. PepsiCo charges for its innovation. A 12-oz. bottle of the Pro pre-workout carbohydrate drink sells for $2.99.
This product lineup demands an equally dramatic shift in how and where PepsiCo distributes Gatorade in stores. Before Gatorade’s transformation, sales were split fairly evenly among grocery chains, club stores such as Wal-Mart, and convenience stores. “We are setting a different bar for how we are looking at retail,” says brand marketing Vice-President Fairchild, whom Robb O’Hagan recruited from Nike last year.
Gatorade has taken its Pro series into cycling and running specialty stores that cater to endurance athletes as well as health supplement stores such as GNC. “People come in and buy nutrition from me every day and spend hundreds of dollars,” says Julian Angus, 40, owner of Tempo Cyclery in Sarasota, Fla., who remembers a time last decade when only a few companies made products for elite athletes. Margins rival those of clothing and accessories, he says. Still, Angus was skeptical when Gatorade first pitched him on the products and started sending displays. He worried that customers, not realizing these were new offerings, would think they were being charged boutique prices for the same old drinks they could buy at the supermarket.
As far as they have come, Fairchild and Robb O’Hagan say a fully evolved distribution model is still years away. By some estimates, Gatorade controls about a fifth of the sports nutrition category. “It’s a pretty daunting task to create this across all retail channels and across all of our business,” says Fairchild. “We’re not looking to change the entire marketplace overnight.”
Stanford is a reporter for Bloomberg News.
Source: www.businessweek.com
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