NHS: Too Big to Manage?

On September 25, 2009

NHS: Too Big to Manage?

The financial crisis gave us to the concept of organisations too big to fail, but are their also organisations too big to run? With 1.5m staff and a £100bn annual budget, is the National Health Service literally unmanageable? The NHS tops ministerial problem piles but constant re-organisations have failed to find a solution. Restructurings cause more problems or expose new ones that seem too great for its management.  Private sector executives who study the health service are shocked at what they see but fail to implement serious changes, not least because the scale of the problem requires a massive solution. The prospect of failure, besides the financial rewards, prevent top corporate executives taking on the public sector role. The scale...


On September 25, 2009

Is Your Face Holding You Back?

The old expressions ‘he has an honest face’ and ‘don’t trust him -- his eyes are too close together’ are often associated with gossiping grannies of fiction. But they may actually have some basis in fact. The British Psychological Society Research Digest Blog has a post on a recent study that links aggression in men with the shapes of their faces. According to research conducted by Justin Carre, subjects were able to accurately assess how aggressive a series of men were by looking at pictures of their faces. The research found that it takes an instant for people to come to a decision about the person they see before them. Faces that are broader than they are tall were the...


On September 24, 2009

Cable Networks Will Be Last Old Media to Face Digital Destruction

Even the cable networks that are today's multi-revenue stream darlings are destined for the same "digital destruction" as advertising-supported broadcast television, newspapers and other traditional media. It's just a matter of time. That likely scenario from former News Corp. president and COO Peter Chernin, represents the final blow to media conglomerates. which currently rely on their cable networks for at least 60 percent of their profits. Whether niche cable programming can survive and thrive in a streaming on-demand video world "is the single biggest question facing the media industry," Chernin said Wednesday during a roundtable discussion USC Annenberg School for Communications. "At some point, it (cable) is vulnerable to the same disaggregation as everything else," he said. Chernin should know....
On September 24, 2009

First Look: Newest Tiffany May Outshine Vegas

If you’re Tiffany and you’re opening a new store in Las Vegas, you have to fit the town and yet, somehow, live up to tradition, and a look at the artist renderings of the jeweler's soon-to-debut space demonstrates that it is trying to do both. And, if it leans a little to the Vegas side of the equation, consider that people don’t visit that particular city to appreciate the subdued. If you’re going to do retail on the Vegas strip, the best bet is to bet big. The new Tiffany location, slated for a December opening, will emerge as part of CityCenter, an urban resort operation being developed as a Vegas Strip showcase. It will be the jeweler’s third in...
On September 24, 2009

Who’s Afraid of Big, Bad Cardiovascular? Apparently Not Biotech…

Cardiovascular disease brings to mind huge, expensive clinical trials and huge, expensive primary care sales forces…but not necessarily huge, expensive drug prices. With the basics of cholesterol management met, some big pharmas are turning away from the field, but enterprising biotechs are stepping in.
On September 24, 2009

10 Classic CEO Quotes for Today’s Economy

If you're reading this, chances are your business is struggling. I know mine is. But this isn't my first recession and it won't be my last. I've learned to look at down cycles opportunistically -down markets are the best time to retrench and take risks. Here are 10 CEO quotes and takeaways to help.
On September 24, 2009

Mass. Governor’s Hyatt Boycott Gains Support

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has declared a state employee boycott on Hyatt Hotels & Resorts for firing 100 housekeepers last month and outsourcing the jobs to a Georgia company, and his decision seems to be garnering public support. Hyatt Hotels Corp. said it was a simply a cost-cutting measure to replace the Boston-area employees with cheaper workers from Hospitality Staffing Solutions. The about 100 workers came from the Hyatt Regency Boston, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge and the Hyatt Harborside at Logan. Patrick's, and later the public's outrage, stemmed from employee accounts of Hyatt asking them to train the new workers, saying they were "vacation fill-ins" rather than their replacements. In a letter to Hyatt chief executive Mark Hoplamazian, after being unable to change the CEO's mind,...
On September 24, 2009

Nature Knows Best: The Future of e-Readers

Boston Imagine this: A butterfly's wings and the way they use ambient light to generate colors all along the spectrum, as needed. Or this: The microstructure of opals, and the magic by which a substance made up of nothing but glass and water (both of which are colorless) can generate an endless color spectrum as well. These are the key insights I obtained today at a panel about bringing color and video to eReader devices at the EmTech (Emerging Technology) Conference here at MIT. Afterward, I started pondering whether there is any issue facing any company, either from a business or a technology perspective, that hasn't already been dealt with in nature. To be explicit, rocks, plants, and creatures of...
On September 24, 2009

Chesapeake Energy: Industry Can Cope, Not Grow with $4 Nat Gas

Natural gas prices, still sitting below $4 per million British thermal units, have produced an interesting combination of cautious hope for the future and we-can-cope-with-this-for now attitude.   As BNET noted in a post earlier this week, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon told analysts on its August earnings call he expected natural gas prices would rise between $6 and $8 per thousand MMBtus by summer 2010. McClendon struck a more cautious tone Wednesday at the IHS Herold energy conference, according to Reuters. "The industry can cope with $4 gas. The industry can't grow or sustain production with $4 gas,"  said McClendon during the conference. So, where do prices need to be? Three times the finding costs, which translates to $6 to $9...


Next Page
Previous Page