• Kathleen Sebelius 'optimistic' about virus threat
• UK confirms new case of swine flu

The swine flu virus could turn out to be less severe than previously feared, the US government said today as one more new case of the outbreak was confirmed in the UK.

Kathleen Sebelius, making her first speech as the US health secretary, said: "We are cautiously optimistic that what we are seeing right now is presenting itself as a much milder virus than the initial cases that presented themselves in Mexico."

But the British government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, today warned it would be "premature" to assume the virus was a mild infection.

His comments came as the World Health Organisation said it had started to distribute 2.4m treatments of antiviral drugs to 72 countries "most in need".

It declined to name the countries but confirmed that they included Mexico, which has been hardest hit by the outbreak with 590 laboratory-confirmed cases and 25 deaths, according to WHO figures.

Donald predicted that a second, larger wave of infections could be expected during the usual flu season in the autumn and winter.

Health officials today announced one more new confirmed case of swine flu in Britain, taking the national total to 28. The unnamed patient, from south-east England, had travelled to Mexico.

Every household in the UK has been sent a leaflet advising how to prevent the spread of the virus in what is the biggest public health campaign since the 1980s.

The leaflets suggest ways in which people can reduce their chances of catching swine flu and gives advice on what they should do if they develop symptoms.

Donaldson said officials were closely monitoring the progress of swine flu in southern hemisphere countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which are currently experiencing their winter.

Earlier, five year seven pupils at Alleyn's school in Dulwich, south-east London, tested positive for the virus.

The school will close for a week on Health Protection Agency (HPA) advice.

The new cases were people who had come into contact with a pupil who had recently returned from the US and was diagnosed with the virus at the weekend. All the new patients are recovering well at home.

"Our advice is: please don't panic," Antony Faccinello, the senior deputy head at the school, said. "Parents should keep reading our website for advice, and stick to that advice.

"We want them to come in to the school to collect their child's preventative dose of Tamiflu."

Alleyn's shares facilities, including buses, with at least two other schools, James Allen's girls' school and Dulwich College.

The HPA said about 1,200 people, including Alleyn's pupils and staff, would be offered the antiviral treatment. A course of Tamiflu involves a pill a day for 10 days, but younger children will be given smaller amounts.

Donaldson said there was no need for the public to stock up on antiviral drugs. Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme whether people should buy Tamiflu over the internet, he said: "No, they should not.

"We have a very large stockpile of antiviral drugs – the largest in the world."

Commenting on accounts from some swine flu victims who had suggested the virus was no more severe than a cold, he said: "At the moment, we don't know enough about this virus to draw any conclusions about its severity.

"There have been deaths in Mexico … it is premature to conclude that is a mild infection."

In addition to the five Alleyn's cases, two further children – siblings who came into contact with a separate confirmed case in London – were confirmed as being infected.

Yesterday their school, the Dolphin school in Battersea, south-west London, said it would be closed for a few days as a precautionary measure.

Over the weekend independent schools were issued with advice about what to do in the case of a pandemic, mirroring that already supplied to state schools.

They are advised to set up text message systems to inform parents of school closures, and web access for pupils to work from home if necessary.

The advice, drawn up by lawyers for the Independent Schools Council, says: "Consider whether extra space will be required for effective quarantine of suspected victims."

Melvyn Roffe, chairman of the Boarding Schools' Association, said the organisation had been in daily contact with government officials monitoring the potential for an outbreak among boarding pupils.

"We are stocking up on cleaning equipment and making contingency plans," he said.

Later this week the exams watchdog, Ofqual, and the Qualification and Curriculum Authority will meet exam boards and representatives from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly to discuss this year's exams.

Next week's Sats tests are expected to go ahead as planned in primary schools. A-level and GCSE exams are scheduled from now into June.

Another suspected case of H1N1 came to light in Scotland, the fifth in eight days. A traveller from Fife, thought to have contracted the virus in Las Vegas, is under voluntary quarantine.

Health authorities issued an alert for passengers on board a FlyBe short haul flight from Birmingham to Glasgow on 30 April after a man from Ayrshire and Arran fell ill. The man tested positive for swine flu and is being treated at home.

Meanwhile, a relative of the first Britons to catch the virus, Iain and Dawn Askham, from Polmont, near Edinburgh, has been flown home from a North Sea oil rig as a precaution.

He is not showing any symptoms, and is not among the 19 other "possible" cases in Scotland.

According to the WHO, 21 countries had officially reported 1,085 cases of H1N1 infection.

• Swine flu
• United States
• Health
• Scotland
• Schools

Read more [Guardian Observer Health] 

With so many experts on a team, why does the result sometimes prove disappointing? New research by HBS professor Heidi K. Gardner probes the social dynamics of teamwork in knowledge-intensive settings, such as professional service firms, and the accompanying pressure to perform at the highest caliber. Her findings suggest that teams may yield right-of-way to colleagues with higher authority and thus miss out on the potential contributions of lower-status team members who know more about the client's needs.

As Gardner writes in the working paper "Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance" [PDF], "I find both qualitative and quantitative evidence to demonstrate that teams facing performance pressures tend to default to high-status members at the expense of using team members with deep knowledge of the client, with detrimental effects on team performance. In other words, the more important the project, the less effective the team: performance pressure results in teams reverting to less effective ways of divvying up influence over their end product, in turn leading to lower performance ratings for the whole team."

"Understanding ways to make project teams more effective is thus a crucial question facing practitioners and theorists alike," Gardner concludes.

This week also sees faculty research on using social marketing for treating HIV in developing nations. Cases examine the symptoms prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year and the development and strategy of E Ink to reconfigure the publishing industry.

— Martha Lagace

This paper analyzes the effects of the formation of a regional trade agreement on the level and nature of multinational firm activity. We examine aggregate data that captures the response of U.S. multinational firms to the formation of the ASEAN free trade agreement. Observed patterns guide the development of a model in which heterogeneous firms from a source country decide how to serve two foreign markets. Following a reduction in tariffs on trade between the two foreign countries, the model predicts growth in the number of source-country firms engaging in foreign direct investment, growth in the size of affiliates that are active in reforming countries both before and after the tariff reduction, and an increase in the extent to which the sales of affiliates in reforming countries are directed towards other reforming countries. Analysis of firm-level responses to the creation of the ASEAN free trade agreement yields results that are consistent with these predictions.

Download the paper from SSRN ($5): http://papers.nber.org/papers/W14891

Battered by contracting markets and frozen credit, many businesses today are fighting for survival. Indeed, the current global financial crisis provides a mandate for restructuring. But survival is not the end goal. In fact, cost cutting and restructuring are simply the first steps in repositioning and leading a company and industry through the crisis and in defining how business will be conducted in the future. This paper describes how IBM managed to not just survive the crisis it faced in the early 1990s, but to reposition the company to lead the industry. The powerful lesson from the IBM story is that innovation is not a side business to running the real business. Innovation is the business. Breakthrough innovations that change people's lives and the very structure and power dynamics of industries can't be managed as "silos," tucked away in corporate, university, or government research labs, in incubators, or within venture capital funded entrepreneurial start-ups. Access to the marketplace is needed to help speed commercialization and adoption. Emerging opportunities must be nurtured and the transition to high growth must be managed. Once breakthrough innovations catch hold, growth must be funded and managed to exploit the full value of the opportunity. And finally, incremental innovations must ensure that businesses that have passed through the high-growth stage can continue to deliver the resources, capabilities, and platforms needed to fuel the emerging opportunities of the future. This business lifecycle view of innovation requires new leadership and organizational models and new approaches to managing risk and uncertainty.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-127.pdf

Why do some teams fail to use their members' knowledge effectively, even after they have correctly identified each other's expertise? This paper identifies performance pressure as a critical barrier to effective knowledge utilization. Performance pressure creates threat rigidity effects in teams, meaning that they default to using the expertise of high-status members while becoming less effective at using team members with deep client knowledge. Using a multi-method field study across two professional service firms to refine and test the proposed model, I also find that only the use of client-specific expertise (not the expertise of high-status members) enhances client-rated performance. This paper thus reveals a paradox affecting teams' use of members' knowledge: the more important the project, the less effective the team. This paper contributes to the emerging literature linking team-level expertise utilization (instead of just recognition) with performance outcomes and also adds a novel, team-level perspective to the literature on inter-firm relations.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-126.pdf

Social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace have witnessed a rapid growth in their membership. Some of these businesses have tried an advertising-based model with very limited success. However, these businesses have not fully explored the power of their members to influence each other's behavior. This potential viral or social effect can have significant impact on the success of these companies as well as provide a unique new marketing opportunity for traditional companies.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-123.pdf

No abstract is available at this time.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-125.pdf

This study examined the convergent and construct validity of ratings of individual creative contributions in a team context. A sample of 201 employees and supervisors, working on 26 team projects, completed the NEO-Five Factor Inventory and rated themselves and their teammates monthly on a single item measuring creative contributions to the project. The convergent validity of the ratings was supported because there was consistency among other ratings of the same targets and among different types of ratings (peer, supervisor, and self ratings) of the same targets. The construct validity of the ratings was partly supported because there were positive associations between individuals' peer-rated creativity and their extraversion and between individuals' self-rated and supervisor-rated creativity and their openness to experience. From peers and the self, women had lower creativity ratings than men, but other ratings were not influenced by the gender of the judge or the difference in gender of the target-judge dyad. The implications of these findings are discussed.

No abstract is available at this time.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-062.pdf

This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we focus on disentangling the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical analysis examines 26,924 multi-channel customers of a nationwide retail bank. For each customer, we track channel usage, overall satisfaction, and actual retention over a one-year period. We find that relative to face-to-face service, customers who use self-service channels for a greater proportion of their overall transactions, are either no more satisfied or less satisfied with the service they receive, depending on the channel. However, we also find that these same customers are predictably less likely to defect to a competitor if they are heavily reliant on self-service channels characterized by high switching costs. We demonstrate that when self-service usage promotes retention, it does so in a way that is consistent with switching costs rather than via increased satisfaction. As a robustness check, we examine the behavior of channel enthusiasts, who concentrate transactions among specific channels. Relative to more diversified customers, we find that self-service enthusiasts in low switching cost channels defect with greater frequency, while self-service enthusiasts in high switching cost channels are retained with greater frequency. Managerial implications of these findings are discussed, as well as opportunities for future research.

It is more than mere coincidence that the highest rates of HIV occur in the world's poorest countries. Of the over 40 million people currently living with HIV, 95 percent are in the developing world. The first part of this paper explores the economics of HIV and treatment from a social marketing perspective. The second part of the paper uses three specific case histories of successful social marketing organizations in Africa, Asia, and South America to inductively generate a consumer (patient)-centric marketing model. The focal organizations are unique in that they all identify patient needs first, then work backwards to develop economically viable solutions. These solutions are not without flaws, and the future of these programs remains uncertain, but we hope that illuminating these particular cases within the consumer-centric marketing paradigm will shed light on ways in which other organizations may be able to serve the poor profitably.

This research examines felt obligation to help others in employees' and managers' professional networks using a social exchange perspective. We hypothesize that obligation toward others would follow the norms of both direct and indirect reciprocity. Direct reciprocity predicts that obligation toward network members increases to the extent that one receives resources directly from others. In the case of socio-emotional resources, such as friendship and mentorship, this obligation is mediated by affective closeness. Indirect reciprocity predicts that obligation is felt toward others simply as a function of their inclusion in one's network, implying that obligation increases with the others' degree of embeddedness in the network. Results from two network surveys supported these hypotheses.

Harvard Business School Case 309-101

Richard Ferlauto, director of pensions and benefits policy at the AFSCME, the largest public sector workers union in the U.S., was responsible for protecting the pensions of its members. Because pensions were invested for decades, Ferlauto wanted the companies in which the union invested to be managed for the long-term interests of shareholders. He believed this required good corporate governance and effective oversight by the board of directors. The case explores the history of AFSCME's shareholder activism on this front and particularly its use of shareholder proposals voted on by shareholders at annual meetings. The case then looks at the issue of executive compensation and the idea that excessive compensation is a sign of poor governance. It also discusses the union's "Say on Pay" proposals that sought to allow shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation. Finally, the case provides details on the rise of Countrywide Financial, its collapse, the role it played in the mortgage financial crisis, and the excessive compensation of its CEO.

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Harvard Business School Case 709-493

Less than a week before Barack Obama was due to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Obama for America (OFA), the president-elect's official campaign organization, announced the formation of a post-election organization, Organizing for America. The new organization would keep the campaign field team offices open after Obama took charge of the country for the express purpose of influencing supporters to back his administration's agenda. The case describes the activities of the Obama for America campaign and asks whether the new president should use social media tools to activate the grassroots, or whether he should abandon these unconventional tools in order not to upset politicians in Washington.

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Harvard Business School Case 309-093

This case examines Lehman Brothers in the months preceding its collapse. Following the announcement of a huge and unexpected second quarter loss, the CFO was removed from her post after only seven months in the job. This case explores the challenges faced by a firm leader as she attempts to manage a situation that threatens the firm's survival. In particular, the case allows for an examination of how changes in a firm's performance and position are communicated to key external stakeholders in an effort to retain their confidence, while market conditions worsen, the balance sheet deteriorates, and the firm's credibility is challenged by a short-selling hedge fund.

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Harvard Business School Case 708-001

In July 1997, Thailand became the first Asian "tiger" economy to abandon its fixed exchange rate system in response to speculative attacks on its currency. Investors started to flee Asia, and the crisis rapidly spread to other countries. Central banks spent billions of dollars to try and defend their currencies, only to seek emergency bailouts from the International Monetary Fund. This case presents a chronology of events that unraveled during the Asian financial crisis from 1997 to the end of 1998.

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Harvard Business School Case 709-443

In the fall of 2008, E Ink had positioned itself as a leader in electronic ink technology thanks to the launch of several eBook devices such as Amazon's Kindle. Yet E Ink still faced the question of how to turn its technology into a profitable business amid competing technologies and financial challenges.

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Harvard Business School Case 209-110

Thomas McDonald, senior vice president of Equity International (EI), is weighing an investment in the Brazilian homebuilder Gafisa. Was this the right country? The right company? The right co-investor? The right time? McDonald would be investing alongside a Brazilian private equity firm, GP Investments, and must decide how to structure the investment. Especially, he must decide how to align his interests with those of GP. GP has recruited EI due to its prior experience with the Mexican homebuilder Gafisa. McDonald must also consider: Is that experience transferable to this investment?

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Harvard Business School Case 609-069

Business ecosystems require careful orchestration and strategic choices regarding make/buy/partner decisions and membership access. This case examines the strategic and technological issues related to managing SAP's thriving ecosystem of user communities, software vendors, integration partners, and technology providers. It details how the ecosystem gets developed and the challenges in meeting the needs of the internal organization, large partners, and small up-and-coming firms. SAP executives, in this case, have to make a decision if a relatively small startup firm should be elevated to the highest strategic partnership level, normally reserved for very large firms.

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Harvard Business School Case 809-119

No abstract is available for this case.

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Harvard Business School Case 209-119

No abstract is available for this case.

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Purchase Supplement (B), 209-131:
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Purchase Supplement (C), 209-135:
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Harvard Business School Case 209-144

A leading low income housing builder in Mexico decides which prospective new local partner best extends its advantages in managing twin production lines of homes and clients. URBI has built substantial competitive advantage in the technology and culture that matches the outputs of these two production systems. The company has also built extensive expertise in accessing the many mortgage and funding sources in Mexico. To grow, the company is interested in entering other Mexican geographies but faces a choice of doing this with its own staff and buying land for cash, or partnering with local entrepreneurs and local land owners. In evaluating the choices, students must think more deeply about what makes the two production lines work and how to balance the two lines. The discussion can end with comparisons of the Mexican political and government circumstances that encourage this method of producing workforce housing as compared with the U.S., China, India, and other markets.

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Harvard Business School Case 709-045

In March 2009, the U.S. economy was in a severe recession not seen since the Great Depression after the subprime mortgage crisis had spiraled out of control. The situation had dramatically changed in one year since the Federal Reserve Board had helped to bailout investment bank Bear Stearns. Deflation, not inflation, had become a top concern. Interest rates were near zero percent. Five million jobs had been lost. The new Barack Obama administration had pushed forward with a $787 billion stimulus package, coupled with various programs to address the frozen credit markets and depressed investors' confidence. Yet the burning question in every policymaker's mind was—how effective would the various plans work to revive the U.S. economy?

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Harvard Business School Case 709-444

The board of Young Presidents' Organization needs to decide on the future of its Networks Initiative, designed to connect its geographically dispersed membership base through 60 different interest-based networks. So far, one half of these networks have been considered successful, and now the board needs to decide what to do to make the remainder successful. Two options were considered. The first option, called "broad networks," focused on developing weaker ties and entailed keeping the initiative intact but funding it better, by allowing outside sponsors to provide the funds. The second option, called "deep networks," focused on developing strong ties and entailed scaling down the number of networks and providing them with support to encourage deep network formation, all funded internally.

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I propose the following leadership guidelines for C-level executives, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and everyone else.

Family businesses will retain more profits within their companies rather than pay the money out to avoid the 50pc rate of income tax accountants predict.
Read more [Teslegraph Business] 

A new way for students to find work experience at some of Britain's most exciting small businesses is launched as fears grow that this year's graduates will struggle to land jobs.
Read more [Teslegraph Business] 

The Houston Growth Summit on May 21 aims to give local executives and entrepreneurs an opportunity to get ahead of the business curve.
Read more [BizJournals US National News Feed] 

Daniel A. Rabuzzi is Chief of Staff at the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), the leading provider of entrepreneurship education for youth (www.nfte.com), having previously been NFTE’s Director of Sales and National Director of Programs. Previous positions include CEO of the...

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Read more [S Ramana Mitra] 

Volkmann studied economics at Gießen University (Germany) and was a research associate while doing her PhD with support from Deutsche Lufthansa AG. She held leading positions in Corporate Development, Corporate Banking and Company Succession at Deutsche Bank. Volkmann was as a professor of...

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Read more [S Ramana Mitra] 

As a small business owner, I think our legislatures need to realize that mandated policies for large corporations can absolutely hamstring small business (generally defined as less than 100 workers.)   I wanted to share another new resource with you.  It’s not only for your own edification—if you are a small business owner—but you might want to pass along to your government representatives. The Sloan Work and Family Research Network at Boston College has released a new research mini-brief for state policy makers, entitled, Work-Family Information on Small Businesses, at http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/pdfs/minib_smallbusiness.pdf .  The purpose of this brief is to help policy makers better understand the small business perspective on work-family legislative mandates.  The mini-brief summarizes the small business viewpoint on work-family legislation, including paid sick days and paid family leave, underscoring both the concerns of and benefits to small businesses.  The mini-brief also provides statistics, suggested readings, and websites with more information.

Influential group, including Sainbury's and Carphone Warehouse bosses, hopes to derail government's runway plans

A group of some of the most influential businessmen in Britain have lined up against the government by opposing plans for a third runway at Heathrow.

The rebels – led by Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, and Tony Blair's "favourite banker", Russell Chambers of Credit Suisse – are forming a lobby group to block the controversial runway. They argue the government has failed to demonstrate the business case and are backing the concerns of environmentalists.

The government justified giving the go-ahead earlier this year by claiming the benefits to the economy and the City outweighed the environmental impact.

But today the group, which includes Sainsbury's boss Justin King, Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse and the leading private equity figure Jon Moulton of Alchemy Partners, publishes an open letter calling on the government to reconsider.

Until now, most business groups, such as the CBI and London First, have backed the government's plans to build a new runway. In the letter, the executives stress there is no guarantee a third runway would ensure the airport serves more destinations, as BAA, airlines and the government have claimed. They argue the recent opening of Terminal 5 mostly served only to increase flights on existing popular routes.

They also claim it is misleading to compare Heathrow with its European competitors, which mostly have more than two runways, because London is served by five airports in total. They also express concern about the environmental damage caused by an extra runway.

Cheshire told the Guardian that many business leaders have been reluctant to speak out because they worked with or for companies that supply services to the airport or aviation sectors. By forming a public group representing business, he said he hoped other executives opposed to the third runway would come forward. If they did, he said he would seek meetings with government ministers to press their case.

Cheshire said: "The motivation is that the debate up to now has been based on the assumption that anyone who is in business must be in favour. What became clear is that people privately felt it [opposition] and weren't sure how to kick it off."

He said London First, which represents London business, had been giving out "mixed messages" on the issue. A spokesman for London First admitted there was no unanimity among the business community – in London or nationwide – on whether to build a third runway.

Cheshire, who has met the Conservative transport spokeswoman, Theresa Villiers, to discuss the group's plans, insisted the idea to form a group was not politically motivated. "If we made the wrong decision [and built the third runway] on the grounds of business then people would ask why no one from business said anything at the time," he said.

But if the lobby group achieves its aim, it will deal a heavy blow to the government. The Conservatives have already said they would overturn the decision to build a third runway, while environmental and local groups have promised to continue to fight the plans.

Gordon Brown will be irked by the involvement of Chambers. He was dubbed Tony Blair's "favourite investment banker" when Chambers famously lent the then prime minister his lurid Bermuda shorts while on holiday in Barbados.

The dozen signatories of today's open letter also include United Business Media boss David Levin, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts partner Dominic Murphy and Sir Roy Gardner, chairman of the Compass Group.

Villiers said the emergence of a powerful business voice against the third runway left the government increasingly isolated. "The coalition against the third runway at Heathrow is now extremely broad. Bankers and executives from private equity firms like KKR are not exactly known for being dewy-eyed environmentalists and sharing similar causes with radical groups such as Plane Stupid."

She added that the government's forecasts of exponential passenger growth at Heathrow were out of date as environmental concerns and the recession meant demand for flights would be weaker.

Rebel set

Ian Cheshire Chief executive, Kingfisher

Russell Chambers Adviser, Credit Suisse  

Jon Moulton Founder, ­Alchemy Partners

Charles Dunstone Chief executive, Carphone Warehouse

David Levin Chief executive, United Business Media

Dominic Murphy Partner, KKR

Justin King Chief executive, J Sainsbury

Sir Roy Gardner Chairman, Compass Group

• Heathrow
• Heathrow third runway

By Guest Authors Steve Mariotti and Daniel A. Rabuzzi [This series ends with a blog entry on youth and entrepreurship from The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) For the Global Education Initiative Blog at the World Economic Forum on April 24, 2009. The entry is based on an essay by Julie...

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Read more [S Ramana Mitra] 

Richard Buxton wants justice for those affected by green energy plans, he tells Terry Macalister

A small Victorian terraced house in the centre of Cambridge does not look like the headquarters of a well-oiled machine that is threatening to derail Britain's fight against climate change.

And it is hard to recognise a scourge of wind energy developers in the smiling, white-haired gentleman who opens the door with a black labrador at his feet.

But to a host of renewable power operators, Richard Buxton is the "nimby-in-chief" who earns up to £300 an hour using his legal practice to scupper wind schemes across the country.

Last week the pressure was turned up on those who oppose renewables, when the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas blamed the "not-in-my-backyard" merchants for forcing the closure of its manufacturing plant on the Isle of Wight. Meanwhile, energy minister Ed Miliband has accused wind opponents of being "antisocial".

Buxton, who has been involved in legal action against at least eight wind schemes, says he himself is not opposed to wind power, but he is happy to justify his work on behalf of clients who oppose particular wind schemes. "I am fighting on behalf of individuals but also sometimes local authorities and NGOs to ensure that the law is properly implemented. Wind may or may not help with the nation's needs, but we tend to find these things placed next door or too close to people's houses. They are disproportionately annoyed for the amount of electricity that is produced," he argues.

Last month the East Anglian lawyer sent Ecotricity back to the drawing board after his high court victory in a case to halt a planned wind farm development on a greenfield site at Shipdham in Norfolk.

Buxton is also providing legal advice to those opposed to other schemes, including one planned by RWE Npower at Romney Marsh in Kent, another involving MK Renewables near Milton Keynes and another in the north of Scotland.

He is incensed by the suggestion from Vestas boss Ditlev Engel that wind opponents are being selfish and unreasonable. "I think that the charges of nimbyism are unfair. People see other people making large amounts of money from having wind farms on their land while the neighbours have to put up with the consequences without compensation."

Buxton believes the government should introduce a national policy about where wind farms are placed and not leave all the decisions to private entrepreneurs and the local planning system. "If this is a national emergency and we need to put up 10,000 turbines, then let the government say it and act on it. Properties [close to wind farms] should be compulsorily purchased and the householders suitably compensated," he argues.

The British Wind Energy Association complains that dozens of schemes are stuck in planning inquiries or judicial reviews because of objectors and despite government attempts to speed up the process in order to meet its targets of generating 35% of the UK's electricity through renewables by 2020.

Nevertheless Buxton, who often works on a no-win, no-fee basis, says his sole motivation is to see justice done. "Overall, I think it is a good thing to have renewables but the government should do much more to compensate people, including the client of mine who was driven out of her home at Deeping St Nicholas [near Spalding, Lincolnshire]."

He has tended to issue legal challenges against wind developers on the basis that they have failed to properly assess the benefits and the environmental impact of particular schemes. As in the case at Shipdham, Buxton has concentrated particularly on the problems caused by noise from the turbines. He has also challenged schemes on the basis of the "flicker" produced by the turbines, saying it can be intolerable for local residents whose natural light is constantly distorted by the movement of the blades.

Buxton is no big supporter of wind power, questioning the size of the subsidies it receives and its efficiency, but it is hard to paint him as a threat to the wider environment.

He has fought on behalf of campaigners opposing night flights out of Heathrow and liquefied natural gas shipments into Milford Haven, and even worked for Buglife, a charity opposing a Royal Mail scheme to take over an old ash tip at West Thurrock in Essex, home to rare insects.

Buglife say Buxton has been good news for them, taking their case to the high court. A spokesman for the wildlife group said: "Ultimately, it is irrelevant what a lawyer thinks. The trouble is not lawyers - it's the UK law, which is based on the protection of property and the rights of individual owners rather than the common good."

• Ethical business
• Energy
• Wind power

By Guest Author Christine Volkmann [Last week, the series discussed what entrepreneurship education should look like; today Christine Volkmann addresses to implement last week's ideas in a university setting.] Creating a “high surge” of entrepreneurs in institutions of higher education The current...

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Read more [S Ramana Mitra] 

If you read books on the iPhone or another device, you can now download Entrepreneur Journeys (Volume One) and Entrepreneur Journeys (Volume Two): Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction from Smashwords, and read on Stanza and other e-book readers. Btw, Stanza was acquired by Amazon this week,...

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Read more [S Ramana Mitra] 

EasyJet has lost its finance director in the latest fallout from the row with company founder Sir Stelios HajiIoannou.
Read more [Teslegraph Business] 

A Cambridge entrepreneur is made a new board member of the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).
Read more [BBC News | Latest Published Stories | UK Edition] 

How two entrepreneurs are cashing in on coconut water and other exotic drinks – and how they’re getting in so many stores so fast.
Read more [Fox Business: Small Business] 

- Answering calls from struggling auto dealers, the Small Business Administration announced today it will temporarily offer alternate size standards to qualify for its popular 7(a) loan program. Businesses with under $8.5 million in net worth and less than $3 million in net income the preceding two years will now have access until Sept. 30, 2010. The agency estimates that up to 70,000 additional businesses will now qualify for 7(a) loans. [SBA]

- The House of Representatives passed credit-card-reform legislation with new protections on consumer credit cards, including preventing arbitrary rate changes and double-cycle billing. It left out a proposal, however, that would have extended the protections to small-business credit cards. [BusinessWeek]

- A small Texas surgical-mask company scrambles to fill government orders amid swine-flu scare. [CNN]

- A glimmer of hope that businesses have passed the worst of the recession: Delinquent loans taken by small and medium-sized U.S. businesses seems to have peaked in March, according to PayNet Inc., which tracks the commercial lending market. [Reuters]

- Several new optimism surveys show small-business owners felt more confident about their business in April. But they still appear nervous about their financials: A Discover Financial Services survey found only 21% say they plan to increase spending over the next six months. [WSJ Real Time Economics]

- Should you choose a descriptive or made-up word as a business name? Here’s how to decide which is best for you. [SmallBizTrends]

- How small businesses can take precautions against swine flu. Ideas: Make sure employees wash dishes after use, keep lots of antibacterial soap on hand. [USA Today]

Any interesting or relevant small-business items we missed this week?

Read more [Business Week: Small Business] 

Published:May 1, 2009Author:Jim Heskett

On the day two weeks ago when I put this piece together, several pieces of news reminded me of the importance of this question. It was reported that Saturn dealerships were closing in anticipation of the announcement by General Motors that Saturn was one of three brands that it would drop. Saturn, arguably the most innovative undertaking by the company in several decades, is on the auction block. Consumers apparently loved the car more than GM executives, who couldn't figure out how to make much money with it. The same day, Google announced its earnings: In discussing the announcement, analysts reminded investors that 97 percent of the company's revenues still come from one source, search and advertising, despite the organization's emphasis on providing time and an organization for innovation among its associates. I remembered the airline Song, which had introduced service innovations until it was folded back into parent company Delta and oblivion, just one of several unsuccessful attempts by large airlines to compete with smaller, more focused, low-priced competitors. Then I picked up Stall Points, a book by Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever.

The books Built to Last and Good to Great have informed us about success. Stall Points is of the same genre in the sense that it is based on extensive quantitative research of a large database followed by more detailed examinations of a subset of organizations. But instead of success it deals with failure and its causes. The sample of organizations here is composed of 400 corporations that at one time or another have comprised the Fortune 100 since 1955 as well as some 90 non-U.S. based corporations. From the larger base, the authors selected 50 organizations whose experiences met the criteria for a stall and whose profiles were representative of the entire group in terms of industry mix and age. They were studied in-depth and provided the basis for conclusions of the study.

For the group as a whole, the authors found that growth rates: (1) increased up to the "stall year," (2) dropped precipitously in the following year, and (3) faced increasingly difficult odds of regaining momentum with the passage of time after the stall. Of the companies in the study, 87 percent had experienced a stall. Fewer than half of those were able to return to prior rates of growth within a decade after the stall. Of the reasons for the stall, 87 percent were within managers' control. The four most important causes of stalls were found to be "the presumption of an unassailable competitive position" by management; "innovation management breakdown," including such factors as slow product development, too much decentralization of research and development, or curtailed R&D spending; premature diversification from "core" activities; and a "talent bench shortfall." In the stalled companies, innovation suffered from a concentration on smaller and smaller niche opportunities, brand extensions, or generally ideas with small business impact.

All of the companies in the sample had reached substantial size at the time they stalled, suggesting that organization size must play a role in this mix of phenomena that includes "innovation management breakdown." But why do these phenomena occur, especially given what we generally assume to be the availability of superior resources to support innovative activities in larger organizations? Whatever happened to the focus on intrapreneurship (within large organizations) that fascinated us in the 1980s? How do a few well-known large organizations, such as Apple, Virgin, and Tata continue to innovate and support entrepreneurship? Or are they just delaying the inevitable? Do organization size, innovation, and entrepreneurship have to be incompatible? What do you think?

To read more:

Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don't (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001)

Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever, Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing—Yours Doesn't Have To (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)

James C. Collins and Jerry I Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: HarperBusiness, 1994)