Newsletter: December 2003

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White Paper on Rapid Strategic Planning
Over the past year, we've worked with several clients using a new approach to strategic planning. With the urgency of setting a new direction, often under the constraints of tight budgets and stretched staff, we have evolved an accelerated strategic planning process.
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Digital Services Newsletter
August 2004

Elsevier Faces More Choppy Water
Despite its recent concession granting authors limited rights to self-publish their articles that also appear in its journals, Elsevier’s academic publishing business appears as endangered as ever. Committees of the British House of Commons and the US Congress recently released recommendations to set up free repositories for scientific research articles. Read More...

Online Advertising Finding New Frontiers
As online publishers and search engines search for ways to sell more online ads, it’s clear that the cycle of innovation is far from over. Selling keywords on search engines has skyrocketed into a multi-billion dollar business in just a few years, but newer forms of online advertising are still emerging, and some are controversial. Read More...

Risk Management Goes Mainstream
Ever wonder if your sister’s new boyfriend is as nice as he appears or is actually an axe-murderer, or whether your new nanny really is the Mary Poppins she purports to be? Background checks used to be the province of employers, lenders, landlords, and law enforcement agencies only. But a consumer market for such risk management tools is now emerging, driven in part by the fact that more and more personal networking is conducted via the internet with people we don’t know. Read More...

That Funny Thing Called Trust
We’ve written here before about the power of ratings as a form of information. Whether it is a Consumer Reports rating of a car or a Standard & Poor’s credit report, ratings help guide complex purchase decisions. But not all ratings are created equal, and many so-called ratings lack the authority or independence to claim legitimacy. Amazon has violated that rule with its anonymous book reviews. It turns out that many of these anonymous reviews were actually written by the authors themselves or by their families and friends. Read More...