When the Male Market Softens...Hooters Discovers Demographics

51% of the population are women. So are 60% of college students. And you know what is happening in the work force.

So it is no surprise that a bar/restaurant chain catering egregiously to 'dudes' is not enjoying the same financial success it might once have done. With household incomes in decline, there isnt enough money to go around for segmented family entertainment. Family, more than ever, has to be inclusive. Places where women feel uncomfortable, never mind unwelcome, have some 'splainin' to do.

In addition, getting expense account charges approved when the boss is just as likely to be a woman as a man makes submitting bills from the raunchy bar scene a more questionable career-enhancing strategy.

The larger issue is change in the face of demographic and psychographic changes that portend shifts in mores, values and, ultimately, purchase decisions. In the post-industrial economy, people are what they buy. Their choices broadcast more about them they did when price was all that mattered.

Men, perhaps more than women, have had to adjust. It's a process - and it is far from over. But any enterprise that assumes attitudes are static is likely to find itself on the wrong side of history. JL

Duane Stanford and Leslie Patton report in Bloomberg Businessweek:

Four years of revenue declines have forced Hooters to revamp its appeal. Women, even fully dressed ones, are welcome

Deceptive Delight: Secrets of the Fast Food Industry's Dollar Menus

How do they do it?

How can they possibly sell food for less than it would cost you to make it at home - and maybe even buy the raw materials at the grocery store?

It is not, as surprised as you may be to hear it, out of the goodness of their hearts.

The dollar menus are not loss leaders in the classic sense, although they work in a similar fashion to increase volume by enticing more customers to buy. According to the industry, they do not lose money, though they barely make a profit. And as many consumers have noticed, the size of the offerings has diminished as the price of meat, vegetables and the energy cost of transportation has risen.

The real secret to the dollar menu's power is that very few people ever buy just the dollar menu items. And that is where the profit lies. The drinks (super-size me!), sides and desserts that people purchase to accompany the basic dollar menu are the highest margin items. Drinks are especially big money makers since the volume of ice and water in the biggest sizes disguises the fact that in terms of ingredients they are almost indistinguishable from the smaller ones.

So, the combination of increased traffic and additional purchases makes the dollar menu a profitable strategy option for an industry whose customers have seen their incomes shrink in real terms over the past generation.

This is a relatively benign form of advantage-taking, especially when compared with the truly predatory mortgage lending practices of the past decade. People can buy just the dollar menu if they want to, whereas in the financial services case, they were required to agree to conditions that were patently misleading.

Americans have become more cost-conscious as real estate prices, jobs and wages have declined. Household debt is being paid down and depressed retail sales suggest that an economy built on credit is readjusting to reality. What the dollar menu example does illustrate is that people have to be discerning stewards of their own resources, however small the costs involved, particularly in times of constraint. JL

Candice Choi reports in the Huffington Post:

That cheeseburger on the value menu may end up costing more than you think.

Does Listening to Music at Work Make You More or Less Productive?

Is your work cognitively demanding?

Because that appears to be the crucial determinant as to whether listening to music makes you more or less productive. If it is, ie, if you actually have to think while you work, rather than performing rote tasks, the research suggests it is more likely than not to be a distraction.

If you 'have' to listen at work, classical or instrumental music is the most conducive (though for those Boomer survivors of the 60s and 70s this probably does not include the 17 minute riff from 'In-a-gadda-da-vida'). Music with singing and lyrics is less beneficial to completing tasks accurately and to quicker output. Singing along is most emphatically not a productivity enhancing activity.

There are, of course, exceptions. 'Well-practiced experts' like surgeons have reported that background music relaxes them and helps them concentrate. Unfortunately, anesthesiologists report that such music is distracting.

There is probably no right answer applicable across all jobs, personalities, age groups, functional specialties, office configurations, shoe sizes or whatever other metrics may influence performance. Knowing that it can be measured is worth remembering the next time someone in the office comments about your expensive headphones. JL

Annie Paul reports in Time:

Music can lift your mood and give you a relaxed focus, but it decreases your performance on cognitively demanding tasks.

Why Men's Earnings Have Been Falling Since the 1970s - and What It May Mean

One of the most profound changes in the economy is largely the result of unintended consequences.

Household incomes have been in decline for over a decade. Some argue this has been going on for almost 30 years, since the period when the economies devastated by WWII - Germany, the UK, France, Japan et al - began to realize the fruits of their Herculean recovery efforts.

Much has been written about this worrisome trend, its reasons, antecedents and potential solutions. But buried in that data is another, socially disruptive trend - men's earnings have been in decline relative to women since the 1970s. And due to structural changes in the economy may not recover in the near future.

Older men - Boomers, et al - have been exiting the work-force largely due to lack of opportunity. The impetus has been the decline of male-dominated industries in manufacturing and construction, as well as the hollowing out of middle management brought about by technology and the competitive demands of the global economy. The sectors that have risen - health care, government work, services - are less reliant on physical labor and do not bear the legacy of industrial traditions so are more open to women.

This could have a profound impact not just economically, but socially. Data already demonstrate that in the US, 60% of university students are women. They do better in school and may, in many circumstances, be more productive employees. We may already be seeing some of the implications of these trends in the decline of marriage, the loss of interest in religion and the disaffection with government. In other words, belief in and support for institutions that have been the pillars of civilization may be eroding.

These changes in themselves may be neither wholly bad or wholly good. But they will impact the way that people relate to each other, to the businesses that cater to them and to the institutions that attempt to govern them. Could get interesting. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

The most recent Census report confirmed one of the worst facts about the U.S. economy.

Typical household income fell by 1.5% in 2011. But that's not the worst thing. Median household income fell for the second consecutive year, despite being two years into a recovery, and now sits 9% below its all-time high in 1999. But that's not the worst thing, either. There were 46.2 million people living under the Census's definition of poverty -- e.g.: a family of four with an income of $23,021 or less -- and income inequality is rising again. These are all tragedies, but I would argue there's something even worse going on.

Google and Dynamic Pricing: Patenting Your Propensity to Overpay

This 'dont be evil' thing turns out to be, well, pretty open to interpretation.

Lots of people overpay. Or feel that they do. Buyer's remorse is a common emotion. But it turns out that the propensity to overpay can be identified, managed and even predicted. To the point where Google has patented a means of doing so.

In our current socio-economic state, living by the Golden Rule about doing unto others or being your brother's keeper are about as popular as submitting to the dentist's drill without novocaine. We dont appear to have a lot of sympathy for anyone else. Could be due to our straitened economic circumstances. Or maybe a couple of generations of prosperity have just coarsened us. Whatever the reason, taking advantage of others appears to be considered a fair part of the bargain between buyer and seller.

This is particularly interesting in the internet context: Nigerian investment scams, Chinese IPOs and American political promises all vie for the consumers' attention. But actually patenting ways in which people can be targeted to overpay seems a mite predatory, even by today's morally flexible standards.

The advantage the net has had over tangible, retail commerce is its transparency, convenience and generally lower costs. They are mutually supportive and deeply interwoven. As soon as it is perceived that one of them has been undermined, the others may soon follow. JL

Timothy reports at SlashDot:

A newly-granted Google patent on Dynamic Pricing of Electronic Content describes how information gleaned from your search history and social networking activity can be used against you by providing tell-tale clues for your propensity to pay jacked-up prices to 'reconsume' electronic content, such as 'watching a video recording, reading an electronic book, playing a game, or listening to an audio recording.'

Is Your Workplace Industrialized or Humanized?

The soul-deadening nature of traditional management practices is an easy target.

In fact, it has become a cliche. Insensitive bosses with anger-management problems, inflexible rules, calcified procedures and an overarching culture ripped right out of 'Father Knows Best.'

It is hard to know to what extent that ethos has survived the past 20 years of technological innovation, globalized competition and tsunamis of downsizing that have left a few stunned survivors to complete with the help of a random laptops the tasks that dozens used to accomplish. Certainly the selfishness of senior executive compensation in the face of almost universal economic suffering suggests that the mindset exists even if the practices have been papered over by facile references to team work.

But those who work now, even in the hip, open, collaborative workplaces personified, at least theoretically by Google et al, also risk a different kind of threat. It's root is that very technology and the flexibility it offers. 24-7 can be an opportunity to manage one's own time - or it can mean always on, always tethered.

The notion that Apple products somehow represent freedom of thought and action is more than somewhat diminished by the knowledge of incandescent Jobs-ian verbal abuse of underlings and his demand for total control of the business' every aspect.

The stories coming out of Zynga about megalomaniacal founders and the equally searing management horror stories from a host of other allegedly 'new economy' avatars suggest that the twists of human personality and emotion can transcend even the coolest, most bleeding edge atmosphere.

Technology can set us free. But it can also enslave us. Whether it humanizes or industrializes a workplace has less to do with the devices than with the mindset of those who use them. JL

Jody Thompson comments in the Cali & Jody Blog (hat tip Greg Satell):

Are you a PC or a Mac?

You remember those commercials, right? Talk about the ultimate way of "humanizing" your company. Apple personified it's product as a hip young person you could relate to (at least, who their target market would relate to), and personified their competitor as a stiff, boring spreadsheet geek who didn't "get it."

All is Forgiven: Credit Card Companies Think You're Wonderful - Again

Nothing personal, but it is, as they say, not about you.

Strictly business. It's about your ability to pay your bills. Which means that your credit card debt can be rolled up into asset-backed securities which can then be sold to investors.

So everyone benefits: you get more credit to buy lattes and large screen TVs. Investors get some new debt-securities to stuff in their portfolios since no one with a pulse trusts the equity markets. And investment banks? Well, heck, they get paid for packaging and selling this effluent. Nothing fancy, just doing their job keeping America and England and France and wherever financially solvent. God's work, as one I-bank CEO called it a while back.

Except, of course, that this is how it started The Last Time. Before that event whose name shall not be spoken. When even really smart, savvy executives discovered they had no frickin' idea what all this financial innovation meant, or obligated them to or implied.

So if that fall nip is in the air and splurging a little here and there feels right, have at it. Just remember what your parents told you about too much of a good thing. Because we have been down this road before. And it doesn't end in a good place. JL

Nick Summers reports in Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

Banks are returning to a practice they abandoned after the financial crisis: taking Americans’ credit-card debt, slicing and dicing it, and selling it off as bonds.

The US Health Care System May Be Wasting $750 Billion a Year

That's inflation for you: a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're at $1 trillion.

The estimate is that approximately one third of US health care spending is 'wasted.' But before we start ratcheting up the talk about axes and cuts and such, defining terms in necessary. One person's 'unnecessary paperwork' is another person's attempt to reduce fraud and duplication.

Nonetheless, we can safely assume there is waste and whatever it totals is a big number, probably somewhere in the hundreds of billions. The question is what to do about it.

The problem is that businesses like monopolies. Competition sounds good on talk shows and in Chamber of Commerce speeches, but in real corporate life, it increases stress while it reduces margins and profits which, in turn, threatens people's promotions and jobs. And hey, who needs that?

Well consumers could use some of that, for one. But no one listens to them much anymore. The financialization of the economy has reduced everything to the term sheet of a deal. It's a point to be negotiated, not a promise to deliver care.

The waste is there because the forces that frame the health care system tolerate it. They would prefer that go into their P&L statement but such 'friction' is the price of doing business in a way that could be worse for margins if real competition were allowed to break out.

This will only change when the burden becomes so intolerable that people are motivated to act. Perhaps the aging Boomers may provide the final impetus. They have shaken things up in the past when it was in their best interest to do so. Everyone agrees that old age is not for the weak and meek. The Boomers have been called many things, but not that. JL

Ricardo Alonso-Zalvidar reports in the Huffington Post:

The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign.

Can Electronics Stores Survive?

Labor Day has evolved over the years from a day of rest to a day of sales. Back to school, end of summer clearance, pre-Christmas.

Humans love to shop and they love gadgets. It is - or was - a match made for marketing. Some of the earliest innovations in consumer hard goods marketing came out of this industry. EJ Korvette, Kresge and Sears. Then came the major discounters like Crazy Eddie. His prices were insane, as the ads screamed, but so was the business. And it soon demonstrated just how much, by going bankrupt.

The ease of ecommerce - comparing, buying, returning when dissatisfied - has taken the rest of the pizzazz out of going to the store. So the retail industry - with its penchant for strip malls as well as the jobs and state and local tax payments that go with them - is powering down.

The initial counter-strategy was large screen TVs. Too bad virtually everyone had the same idea, prices plummeted, margins evaporated and everyone who wanted one, got one. Plan B? Mobile phones. And, what a surprise, everyone glommed on to that notion as well. Mere humans generally need only one, prices are consistent with a band of options, packages likewise and so much for that.

There may, eventually, be a market for used devices but Amazon is already on top of that one. GameStop grabbed first mover advantage with its iPhone resale concept, but the same dynamics apply: how many of the things do we really need, or where need is not part of the equation, want?

We suspect humans will always want to shop with other humans around. The concept of the market is as ancient as civilization. Surveys continue to report that shopping is the most popular form of entertainment in many societies. But the evolution must continue. Costs must come down. Real estate prices and taxes must moderate. Reliance on the auto must be supplemented. We love to look - but we also love convenience. There's a market opportunity in there for someone. JL

Ann Zimmerman reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Is there a future for electronics specialty stores? Not long ago, retailers such as Best Buy Co., GameStop Corp. and RadioShack Corp. were outmuscling competitors across America by offering one-stop shopping for the latest televisions, computers, videogames and gadgets.

Now all three are fighting to survive. The rise of online competitors like Amazon.com Inc. that offer low prices and downloadable products have siphoned customers and sales from these once-powerful retailers

Patience is Passe: Disney Is Spending Millions to Reduce Resort Ride Wait Times

As the summer vacation season draws to a close, some of its major beneficiaries are taking stock of what they have learned. And it is confirming what legions of retailers have experienced the hard way: convenience rules.

Mobile phones and the mindset they have engendered are shortening consumers already hair-trigger tempers. No one wants to wait. For anything. But especially not in the hot sun of an amusement park with bored kids in tow.

Disney had pioneered the science of crowd management. It understood that to make more money it had to move more people through more experiences more quickly. Entertainment, sales, looping lines and a host of other innovations remade the entertainment industry approach to coddling customers.

It turns out that was the easy stuff, the proverbial low-hanging fruit of reducing consumer frustration. It has now brought in the engineers with stop watches to identify cuts of a few seconds which, when added up over the course of a few days spent at one of the company's parks, can result in hours redeployed to more enjoyable pursuits.

This is not just the obsessive-compulsive behavior of a famously detail-oriented enterprise. People's ability to design and manage their own experiences via computer and mobile phone may well be reducing their tolerance for for anything they perceive as less than optimal. It may not be fair, or reasonable, or even realistic, but at the margins Disney and others are gathering, they can not afford to be complacent. Disruptive innovation is a couple of buttons away. JL

The Palm Beach Post reports :

As with all magic, it's what you don't see that pulls off the trick.

Financially Squeezed Workers Impede Economy's Growth

It's perfect for one of those 'you know you're in trouble when...' jokes that stand-up comics often use.

So here's one for all the economists gathered at the annual Federal Reserve confab in Jackson Hole, with a special shout-out to all the austerity fans in the audience: You know you're in trouble when 70% of your economy is driven by consumer spending but employee compensation as a share of gross domestic income is the lowest it's been in 52 years. Baddabing...

Too bad it's not a joke.

The harsh reality is that the US and Europe continue to flounder precisely because they dismissed the importance of the consumer. As we try to adapt to what we thought was going to be the relative ease of the post-industrial economy (no nasty and dangerous factories, no physically demanding tasks, ample pay for stimulating and satisfying work), we continue to exemplify Winston Churchill's line about choices: "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."

Selling real estate to each other? Ask Ireland, Spain, the UK and the US about that strategy. The internet changes everything? Um, yeah, but maybe not the way you meant it. Financialize everything so we can all trade securities with each other without ever having to connect with the economy that produces actual results represented by the pieces of paper being traded? Yup, that worked really well - for SOME bankers.

The problem is that by driving compensation to the lowest levels in two generations, we have starved the economy of the demand it requires. A few people made lots of money and with it they were able to buy the compliance of politicians and regulators. But the system was inherently unsustainable precisely because so many were denied so much.

It is somewhat startling that this has even risen to the level of a story in the Wall Street Journal, the leading megaphone for financialization. The evidence has been in for a long time. Years, in fact. But perhaps this is good news. Because it may signal that even those who have benefited from the financial economy are starting to feel the pinch. And that may, finally, stimulate the change necessary to get the economy moving again. JL

Justin Lahart reports in the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. workers' immediate problem is that the U.S. economy isn't expanding fast enough. Over the longer haul the bigger problem is that they aren't seeing as much of the economy turn up in their paychecks as they used to.

60% of US Workers Are Unhappy in Their Jobs

Be happy in your work.

That was the ironic advice given by the Japanese prison commander to the inmates of his slave labor camp who were beaten, starved and dying like flies in the Academy Award winning film "Bridge Over the River Kwai."

Not that your average cubicle patch is comparable to a slave labor camp. But surveys report that employees are mighty unhappy. A majority would rather be doing something else someplace else.

Employee satisfaction and commitment ratings have not returned to even their relatively anemic pre-financial crisis levels. The issue is, primarily, money. They are underpaid for what they do, at least by historical standards. And they are not mollified by claims of global competition as the reason for their new compensation standards because they see executives' salaries increasing exponentially relative to their own.

They understand that under current circumstances they have little bargaining power and even fewer options if they leave or are shoved out. Younger colleagues - the Gen Xers and Yers can afford to treat the situation like a great adventure. But those with homes, mortgages, car payments, school bills and the like, all of which they assumed based on their belief that the system was stable do not have that flexibility.

Furthermore, three decades of stagnant to declining wages have led to depleted savings and reduced circumstances. This could be chalked up to the typical grousing of people trapped in an economic down cycle. But the problem is systemic and structural.

The implications for business are worrisome. Unhappy employees are unenthusiastic and frequently disloyal employees. They will jump if they can. And the cost of replacing even lower level workers has been repeatedly quantified to demonstrate that losing an employee is as expensive as losing a customer. Unhappy employees tend to create unhappy customers. And unhappy customers are prone to share their dissatisfaction far more than happy ones. The result is that in an economy where personal recommendations or criticisms are crucial to sales, the impact can be devastating.

Managers ignore such warning signs at their peril. JL

The Huffington Post reports:

We can’t get no satisfaction.

Nearly 60 percent of American workers say they would choose a different career,

About Those Jobs That Will Never Be Outsourced: Meet China's Noodle-Making Robots

We keep trying to convince ourselves that there are just some things a machine can not do as well as a human.

And then we proceed to prove ourselves wrong.

The technological and intellectual effort involved in advancing the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics in order to produce new, more functional machines continues to amaze.

One would think that simply creating jobs that pay a living wage should be much easier. JL

Megan Garber reports in The Atlantic:

There are many forms of culinary busywork: slicing, dicing, chopping, peeling, prepping. If you're a home cook, making a meal for family or friends, that work can be pleasantly repetitive. For restaurant cooks, however, it can easily become drudgery. Chopping one onion is very different from chopping 100 of them.

Quantifying You: The Business Proposition

Analyze this, indeed.

CEOs have been paying lip service to the value of their employees for a couple of decades now. That is, ever since it became fashionable during the run-up to the dotcom bubble. Lots of variable costs like people were assigned value in those heady days. With the valuations going the way they were, who cared about impacts the size of minor rounding errors?

But no one took the rhetoric too seriously, especially the executives themselves. It was a throw-away line that curried some favor with the troops but no one really expected the bosses to be held to it. And as the cataclysmic lay-offs of the post-financial era have demonstrated, they werent.

It would be easy to point all the fingers at the nasty guys and gals in the corner offices - and they deserve plenty of blame for heedlessly destroying value - but there was another issue: no one had successfully quantified the intangible inputs and outcomes statistically linked to the notion that people contribute to organizations in ways that can be identified, measured and managed.

Yes, that was a problem. We could talk around and about it. We could allege and declaim and assert and even correlate. But establishing causality was not often achieved. And many doubted it was achievable.

Which is why the latest developments in personnel management are such a welcome relief. Because all those ephemeral attributes that we know, can see and can feel make a difference between a highly functioning organization and a less successful one can no be isolated and connected to outcomes that matter. To the managers, investors and colleagues of those in question.

So the C-suite dudes no longer have an excuse when they are asked to assess the value of their staff - and what the impacts of layoffs - or, perish the thought, hiring might be. And neither do the rest of us. JL

Ciara Byrne reports in Venture Beat:

Talent Analytics measures people, weighing their preferences and motivations and how those characteristics predict job performance. ”Our niche is companies who have employees,” jokes founder Greta Roberts.

The company surveys employees and summarizes them in 12 numbers that cover work style (“What kind of tasks do you prefer? Are you detailed-oriented? Collaborative?) and motivators like creativity, bottom-line, or a sense of mission.

Are Foxconn's Chinese Internships Now Better Than American Internships?

Ok, forget, if you can those stories about unhappy workers throwing themselves out of windows. They're working on it.

And they're being monitored. To the extent that even their internship programs are getting attention - and that's 180,000 interns, thanks very much. Who, we'll add, since you might just be curious, are PAID. Cash money.

So think about that as you trundle off to gather up another round of half caf/decaf soy lattes, you unpaid drones.

Yup, everyone's favorite bogeyman employer has gotten to the point where even interns are being treated like human beings. Make no mistake, there are still some issues. Internships in the US may be time-wasting, morale-sapping, boredom-inducing nonentities, but rarely does the phrase 'employees being held prisoner,' ever seem to enter the managerial self-improvement dialogue.

The Foxconn CEO has acknowledged that the thought of being the employer of over 1 million people 'gives him a headache.' And who can blame him? But given that many US interns are lucky if they even make it to afterthought status, this is an interesting development. Joking aside, this falls into the realm of disruptive innovation. The Chinese are learning from their past experiences. And they have demonstrated that they are pretty good at applying what they learn. JL

Austin Carr reports in Fast Company:

Under intense scrutiny from the Fair Labor Association, the Apple supplier has revised its labor policies, including changes to its internship program. Now one of the paragons of bad labor practices is treating interns better than most U.S. companies

GenY Employees Have Some Demands. And Firms Are Listening

We hate to sound jaded. But.

Every time a new generation enters the work force there are a spate of articles about how different they are. And how dismissive their superiors are of their talents. Their people skills. Their attitude. Their disrespect for others. Their dress.

So, here's another one. Gen Y, the Millennials are making demands in the workplace. As if the Boomers and Xers didnt do the same thing. There is, as usual, a 'this time it's different' chorus, but the basic demands have been the same for a couple of cycles now: more autonomy, less structure, faster promotion, better pay and benefits. This is not exactly Moses descending from The Mount with his chiseled tablets (and not the ones made in China).

That said, the Gen Yers have some leverage. Companies have cut their staffs to the bone. Senior execs dont believe in the future and are investing, or rather, not investing as such. So they do rely on skilled, multi-tasking employees. And to their mutual benefit, the Gen Yers fit that bill. They also appear willing to trade some benefits and security for some flexibility. Which, to companies looking to keep their senior execs 'appropriately' compensated, is just fine, thanks.

There are challenges on both sides: companies must deal with turnover from a group to whom job change is a benefit, not a reputational threat. Employees must deal with the growing knowledge that in a stagnant economy, opportunities are not rampant. Everyone seems to be adapting. The interesting inflection point will come when the multi-talented really begin to figure out the system and apply their advantage. Some very creative institutional changes could be in store. Just as they were the last couple of go-rounds. JL

Leslie Kwoh reports in the Wall Street Journal:

They're often criticized as spoiled, impatient, and most of all, entitled.

But as millennials enter the workforce, more companies are jumping through hoops to accommodate their demands for faster promotions, greater responsibilities and more flexible work schedules—much to the annoyance of older co-workers who feel they have spent years paying their dues to rise through the ranks.

From Farm to Fork, 40% of Purchased US Food Is Wasted

That's a lot of waste. Especially for an economy still struggling to emerge from recession four years after the fact. And facing a drought that is already driving food prices higher.

Higher that is, than they were already being driven by increased demand from emerging markets whose populations crave more nutritious - and expensive - diets. And higher than the demand for ethanol or other natural sources of energy may also have driven grains.

The two foodstuffs most likely to be wasted, according to the latest study, are fruits/vegetables and seafood. Which makes sense since they are generally the first to spoil.

But the larger question is whether incentives can be devised to change behaviors created over time by foods' relative inexpensiveness. Personal proclivity is beginning to impact public policy. Waste is a reflection of perceived value. Until that equation shifts, there will be little demand for corrective action. JL

Dina Elboghdady reports in the Washington Post:

Americans throw away up to 40 percent of their food every year, cramming landfills with at least $165 billion worth of produce and meats at a time when hundreds of millions of people suffer from chronic hunger globally, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The analysis, a compilation of various studies and statistics, found that waste exists from farm to fork even as an ongoing drought threatens to boost food prices.

The Crisis of CEO Credibility

It used to be that the buck stopped here.

Now it seems to stop everywhere but.

Reset options. Plausible deniability. The always upward compensation ratchet. Golden parachutes. Indictment-free 'missteps' thanks to cowed regulators. There appears to be no downside once you get those three letters beside your name. The worst that can happen? An eight figure payout - at the very least.

But there is an impact, however subtle it is for now and how ever long it may take to become apparent. Polls and surveys, among them the Edelman Trust Barometer conducted in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, show that CEOs have lost credibility. Their opinions are suspect and their role as leaders is diminished.

Ironically, some of the reasons for the reputation decline are due to actions of their own making: chronic staff cuts in order to pay for senior compensation increases have reduced the numbers of people who can double check for internal problems; short-termism in managing and reporting - in part to satisfy financial analysts - has led to decision-making not based on long term economic health of the enterprise; a culture of what might politely be called moral agnosticism has emerged from an 'ends justify the means' obsession; and a 'blame the regulators or politicians for everything' mindset has shifted responsibility and obligation in every direction but home.

The reality is that the CEO position has gotten more difficult and more complex. But CEOs themselves have helped make it so. Globalism has expanded the scale of the enterprise. The cultural and organizational complexity have increased exponentially. The amount of information the CEO is expected to master has risen accordingly. All of which suggests that contemporary leaders need to self-actualize that hoariest of management cliches: there is no i in team. Operational decision-making and leadership example setting need to reflect that if credibility is to be restored. JL

Knowledge@Wharton reports:

Seemingly endless bank scandal have made people start to question the credibility of CEOs everywhere.

Computer Viruses in Cars' Electronic Systems Are a Nightmare Experts Are Working to Prevent

Your computer crashing is bad enough. But at least it is unlikely that anyone will die as result.

Your car crashing due to a virus in the electronic and computer systems that now govern how most autos function? Yes, nightmare. And lots of people are thinking about it - both good and bad.

An estimated 30 to 40% of a car's value is now derived from on-board electronics. That means there are a lot of systems to hack. And in terms of potential impact, an average late model sedan weighs approximately 3,000 pounds. An SUV can be double that. That's a lot of steel, aluminum and plastic hurtling into harm's way if the wrong signals are sent.

The auto companies - and various governments - are taking the threat seriously. So far, they claim to be 'unaware' of any attempted hacks on vehicle systems. But once again, our societal preference for convenience, connectedness and convergence may be overwhelming our ability to anticipate and counteract potential threats. We want to be able to do everything everywhere. That is the essence of mobility. But the public policy implication is increased vulnerability. That is a trade-off we seem prepared as a society to accept. Just as shootings in workplaces and movie theaters have not stopped people from either working or movie-going, so turning cars into literal vehicles of mass destruction seems unlikely to stop us from driving - or demanding more and better electronics. But foreshadowing the possibility - and insisting on safeguards may reduce the likelihood of its occurring. JL

Jim Finkle reports in Reuters:

A team of top hackers working for Intel Corp's security division toil away in a West Coast garage searching for electronic bugs that could make automobiles vulnerable to lethal computer viruses.

Intel's McAfee unit, which is best known for software that fights PC viruses, is one of a handful of firms that are looking to protect the dozens of tiny computers and electronic communications systems that are built into every modern car.

Skilled Work Without the Worker

A century ago it took almost 80% of the population to feed the rest. Farm employment in the US peaked in approximately 1910.

Today, 2-3% of the population are engaged in agriculture. Many people consider that progress. A triumph of efficiency and technological ingenuity enabling the rest to pursue less physically demanding and more financially rewarding occupations.

Or so we were taught.

But what if the same thing were about to happen to industrial and commercial jobs? In fact, what if it IS happening?

As the following article describes, advances in robot technology are making it possible to replace many of the people whose tasks - and pay for them - powered the economies of the past century. Those jobs and functions that created the industrial revolution and the middle class lifestyle it enabled.

As the Luddites learned the hard way, there is no stopping technology and its implications. But the public policy impact may be more profound - and expensive - than we have been led to believe. The gaps in technology adaptation can take 40 years. Those whose incomes are devastated are certainly victims, but there appears to be scant sympathy or appetite for public programs to help ease the transition.

These changes may well result in a better economy in the future. But getting an entire society from now to then may be a tad more difficult than anyone realizes. JL

John Markoff reports in the New York Times:

At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.

At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility.