Issues with focus on shareholder value?

Interesting post in the blogging stocks blog awhile back. The article talks about the corporate focus on shareholder value and how it can cause companies to look short term.

My limited opinion is that the sometimes extreme focus on shareholder value and its impact on leadership compensation is a big part of the corporate executive scandals as of late. Also, think about how this goes hand in hand with activist investors who purchase large shares in companies in order to "turn them around"? Perhaps a lot of their tactics really represent ways to inflate shareholder value shorterm in order to get a quick gain but in the end severally degrade the company's profitibility and long term value?

Target is going through this right now with the activist investor William Ackman who purchased around 8% of Target stock right before the market went south. He has since seen his investment devalued over 70%. He is just starting a proxy fight with the board to get representation on it so he can influence Target's strategy.

How do we find the right people for the job?

Just read an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell titled "Most Likely to Succeed". The crux of the article is about determining who will succeed in a particular role. The article discusses this in terms of NFL quarterbacks, school teachers, and financial advisers and how each go about finding/hiring for each respective position. The issue for each is that what makes for the most successful people in each role are traits and skills that are not easily determined before someone is actually in the role. Think of how Matt Cassell succeeded this year despite never starting a game in college and being a seventh round draft choice.

One interesting thought the article comes up with is that in order to find the best of the best it is more important to increase the potential pool of candidates and put them in situations that would actually imitate what the job would do. For teachers, this would mean lowering standards for them to be certified and instead allowing them more on the job training and evaluating them on that instead. This vastly differs from the common practice of raising standards in order to get more qualified candidates.

I find this applicable at my own workplace in that we should apply some of these learning's to our own internship programs. Make sure that the programs are putting the interns in as many difficult situations that a normal team member would face as possible. Further, the focus for a internship program should be less on managing the intern on a day to day basis and more on constant and consistent evaluation of the traits that an organization feels makes for a successful team member. For Target, this may mean evaluating how they collaborate, navigate the culture, and strive for personal development to name just a few things.

All in all a very intriguing article.

Apple store, watchmen, favorite sites

Latest Apple store trip
Went to the Apple store yesterday to pick up a skin for my iPod touch. Have to say that store still never ceases to amaze me. I haven't been by a Apple store that has ever had less than 10 people in it. I finally realized this time that I saw no check out line or registers, so I was a little confused as I was trying to make my purchase. Up comes a Apple rep who whips out a small handheld and he proceeds to check me out right there next to the Apple accessory's. Woila.

I still am unsure about how the business model for the Apple store actually works. They have a ton of staff in the store at one time so the SG&A cant be cheap and I just cant see them selling a ton of product seeing that their online store is so successful. Ill have to work this one out a little further.

Watchmen
Saw the watchmen yesterday and was relatively pleased. Pros: Film looked great, the fight scenes were pretty sweet especially the opening, majority of the cast was excellent. Cons: Wasnt terribly pleased with the changed ending, movie was plenty long, one key scene from the end of the book was missing, not a huge fan of the Ozymandias casting. I give it 3 out of 4 popcorns.

A quick run down of my favorite sites to check daily
-Engadget - Great blog that runs down the latest in all tech gadgets. Great source for all types of breaking news, reviews, and nerd alert items.
-Blogging Stocks - Daily rundown on all financial and stock related news. Has had a lot of great posts about the economic crisis since this fall. Everyone's favorite shock TV finance jock, Jim Cramer, posts on here.
-Ask MetaFilter - Great site to find answers for any random questions you may (or may not) have. Need to subscribe in order to ask or answer but you can browse free of change.
- Joystiq (for xbox) - site for the latest Xbox news. I check to find out the latest Rock Band music releases
- Slate.com - probably my favorite site to check daily. Great site for news and opinions on world events, politics, finance, entertainment and everything else. Also links to other interesting blogs and sites. Their explainer column is awesome.
-SI.com Hot Clicks - Check it once a day for all that's relevant in the internet world...introduced me to being Rick Rolled

Flash

Interesting discussion on Intel in class today. They are a unique company in that they have actively practiced cannibalization with with their processors, something most companies try to avoid. This, along with their tremendous(revolutionary?) marketing, has helped them dominate the processor market for almost 30 years.

The big question is what do they do next? The PC processor market is fast becoming a commodity and may not sustain them in the future.

One big opportunity may lie in Flash memory. As the price drops and the storage amount increases, it increasingly looks like Flash may be the key technology to drive many of our future portable devices. For example, users still need to decide between the large storage capabilities of the iPod classic (120gb for $250) or the more flashy iPod touch (16gb for $300 or 32gb for $400).
I personally geeked out big time over this decision, first getting a iPod classic then returning it (after opening it. Still not sure how I convinced Target to let me swing that) for the iPod touch. I figured I could manage my large music collection with just a little bit of extra care. But it was annoying to be so close to being able to get all my music, videos and pictures (around 60gb) onto one device.

How long until we can get a moderatly priced flash hard drive for larger devices (i.e. a laptop). I imagine a 80gb hard drive on a laptop would be more than enough for most people. Any extra could be handled by a cheap external drive. A laptop with a flash drive would be way quieter, use less power, and have speed advantages. Hey, maybe it wouldnt take me 35 minutes to boot my work laptop up in the morning!!! Currently Dell offers SSD drives on their top line laptops. It will be nice to see this as an option on the studio series.

I think a Intel branded flash memory card would carry a lot of weight and present a new market opportunity for them. It will be interesting to see how they ultimatly attack it.

Side note:
Ill be in the market for a new PC probably in the next year or so. I think ill spring once Windows 7 comes out. Next step is figuring out if I can just get a laptop to replace my desktop. I spend 85% of my time on my work laptop anyways as I primarily use my home PC for media storage. Maybe a cheap desktop is still all thats needed.