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MonthlyNewsletter

May2011

Quick Links:

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• Talking Money with Elmo

• Japan Quake Shakes up the Auto Industry

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• Where the Jobs Will Be• Earning an Honest McPaycheck• NYSE’s German Merger• Piracy May KO UFC• Sharing in Silicon Valley• Setting up Shop on Facebook• LearnVest Teaches the Financial Basics• The Elite World of Data Mining• Otis Elevators Come to the Rescue in Japan• America’s Robotics Rebound

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• Approximately 8.75 million jobs were lost during the recession, more than the previous four recessions combined.

• Jobs are beginning to rebound in accounting and IT, with the latter expected to grow by 30% through 2018.

• Much of the work people have taken since the

recession hasn’t matched the pay, the benefits or the hours as the jobs they held before.

Where the Jobs Will Be

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• Can the United States job market come back to pre-recession levels?

What do you think?

• What message should future job seekers take from this information?

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• On April 19 McDonald’s hired 50,000 people in the span of one day.

• During the downturn McDonald’s has seen an

increase in applications from professionals and college grads looking for work.

• More than three-quarters of McDonald’s

managers and half its franchise owners started behind a grill and worked their way up.

Earning an Honest McPaycheck

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• What’s the major misperception about working at a job at McDonald’s?

What do you think?

• As unemployment lingers, why is McDonald’s conducting a large hiring push now?

Photo courtesy of Andy Callahan

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• Electronic platforms have cut into the NYSE’s market share.

• In an effort to take on their electronic rivals, the NYSE will merge with Germany’s Frankfurt Stock Exchange in a $10 billion deal.

• The new mega-exchange estimates to save $400 million in operating costs annually.

NYSE’s German Merger

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• What does the merger of these exchanges reinforce about business?

What do you think?

• What does the merger of securities exchanges imply about the future of investing?

Photo courtesy of Markus TackerArticle indexVideo index

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• Sports leagues were relatively free from piracy for years as fans typically like to watch games as they happened.

• As online streaming technology has advanced, so too has sports piracy as thousands of game feeds leak onto the Internet everyday.

• Piracy is especially harmful to up-and-coming leagues like the UFC, which depend upon revenue from pay-per-view events.

Piracy May KO UFC

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• What’s the real danger of online streaming to emerging sports like UFC?

What do you think?

• Is online streaming a long-term danger to all major sports?

Photo courtesy of Elite Sports Tours

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• In the early days of Silicon Valley, a lack of non-compete clauses allowed employees to jump from company to company.

• This led to a culture of sharing as companies like Facebook and Google intimately collaborate while still remaining rivals.

• Apple, however, keeps a tight lid on its properties, refusing to release its code or let up on its strict App review process.

Sharing in Silicon Valley

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• Why do tech companies share information while other industries don’t?

What do you think?

• Will the cooperative sharing among tech companies continue on in the future?

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• Of its 500 million users worldwide, Facebook says that more than 200 million people access the site through mobile devices.

• A British retailer called ASOS is attempting to take advantage of Facebook’s mobile market with a store embedded directly on the site.

• In three to five years, economists estimate that as much as 15% of total consumer spending may go through social networking sites.

Setting up Shop on Facebook

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• Is traditional brick & mortar retailing coming to an end?

What do you think?

• What key advantage do online sites and social media offer retailers?

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• Although women now out earn men in some American cities, they’re still less likely to understand personal finance as well as males.

• Alexa von Tobel left her investment bank job to found LearnVest, a financial resource website geared towards women.

• With its sleek design and unique point-tracking system, LearnVest boasts 350,000 hits a month and $5.5 million in venture capital.

LearnVest Teaches the Financial Basics

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• How can someone educated and successful not understand personal finance?

What do you think?

• What is the major strength of the LearnVest system?

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• Silicon Valley’s premier data mining outfit Palantir is becoming one of the most exclusive employers in the tech world.

• The company’s computer whizzes create highly sophisticated interfaces that can parse enormous streams of data and search for potential hacks.

• With some of its staff former hackers themselves, their relative independence sometimes gets Palantir in trouble.

The Elite World of Data Mining

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• What do companies like Palantir tell us about the future of technology?

What do you think?

• Is it good business for Palantir to hire employees who were former hackers?

Photo courtesy of Marc Wathieu

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• When the earthquake hit Japan, Otis had 2,400 regional employees to worry about along with 80,000 elevators.

• Otis’s president deployed much of his staff up north to ensure their elevators’ emergency detection system worked.

• All of the emergency detectors functioned as planned, leaving no one harmed or trapped inside the elevators.

Otis Elevators Come to the Rescue in Japan

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• What does the crisis in Japan teach us about strategic and tactical planning?

What do you think?

• What does the quick response of Otis Elevators tell us about the company?

Photo courtesy of Brigitte Deisenhammer

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• Although the American robotics industry started strong, by 1991 it was almost entirely overtaken by German, Japanese and Korean companies.

• In the service robot sector, though, American

companies account for 70 of the world’s top 200 firms.

• Big military investment and dropping prices in computer components has allowed the U.S. to keep pace with its foreign rivals.

America’s Robotics Rebound

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• What key advantage do U.S. companies have in the robotics industry?

What do you think?

• Should the government invest funds to encourage growth in robotics?

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