5 posts tagged “business”

Lifted from Evhead, who found it at Treehugger:

"Today Staples launched its national 'Computer and Office Technology Recycling Program.' Thus becoming the first national store to offer everyday, in-store recycling of pretty much any sort of electronic equipment. Just bring in your computer, monitor, printer, fax machine, scanner, etc. and they'll recycle it 'in accordance with environmental laws.'"

This is good.

Google edged out McKinsey as the company most M.B.A. candidates said they would like to work for, according to a survey by Universum.

Hmm... This cannot be good. (via DealBook)

One of the most annoying constructs in American business language:

"...the Googles and Yahoos of the world..."

Why do people refer to industry giants and one of a kind companies in the plural? They intend to call them out as examples, but the structure suggests that there are others that are similar. I hear and read this more than I would like. "The big investment banks, you know the Morgan Stanleys and Goldman Sachs of the world..." Blech.

The very characteristics that make these firms familar also make them unfit to serve as examples. There are no IBMs and Microsofts of the world. There is IBM and there is Microsoft.

And consider the usage. Rather than: "they don't have the same advantages as the Googles and Yahoos of the world...," why not say, "When compared to smaller players, the big technology companies such as Google and Yahoo have significant advantages...." Don't be lazy! Say what you mean.

From a post at The New York Times DealBook:

UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.”

Following the meeting, Mr. Schachter wrote a research note, flagged by Tech Trader Daily, which suggests that he still doesn’t quite get the concept of serving customers first, and worrying about revenues later, if at all (and nevermind profits). Craigslist, the analyst wrote, “does not fully monetize its traffic or services.”

How totally awesome. That's not a hard exchange for me to picture, as I have spent a fair bit of time seeking out both perspectives. What's particularly fun about this exchange is that Jim Buckmaster gets to have this conversation over and over and over, and even better, he now gets to explain his values from a position of success, sustainability, and safety. Bah to monetization. It's good to hear that some are still not focused on turning everything into money.

"Every time we've elected to do the right thing, even when it costs twice as much to do it that way, it's turned out to be more profitable."

"When we act positively on solving prodlems instead of trying to find a way around them, we're farther along on the path toward sustainability. Plus we are constantly discovering more things we can do."

Yvon Chouinard is the founder and owner of Patagonia. The quote is from his book, Let My People Go Surfing, which I am reading and enjoying.