What is business intelligence (BI) and how can it benefit your organization? This article offers two examples to show how a company might use BI and then asks several questions to help you determine how well you're putting this intelligence to work.

..."Whether at a Web store or a real store, when users don't get what they want, they leave. But they leave more readily on the Web. In our recent e-commerce study (see "E-Commerce User Experience"), the most common factor that stopped users from buying on a site was that they couldn't find the item they were looking for. This accounted for 27 percent of all lost sales in our study. And when they used a site's search function to try to find items, the failure rate was even higher -- a full 36 percent of users couldn't find what they wanted.

So is there hope for e-commerce sites that compete with physical stores? Certainly. Our research showed what did work for e-commerce site users, as well as what didn't work. From this research, we've developed specific user experience design guidelines that often focus on what we know works well in physical stores: options, flexibility, and guidance."

ABSTRACT: A sizeable literature has argued that the growth effects of changes in flat rate taxes are small. In this paper, we investigate the relatively unexplored area of the growth effect of changes in the tax structure, in particular, in the progressivity of taxes. Considering such a tax reform seems empirically more relevant than considering changes in flat tax rates. We construct a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth in which there is heterogeneity in income and in the tax rates. We limit heterogeneity to two types, skilled and unskilled, and posit that the probability of staying or becoming skilled in the subsequent period depends positively on expenses on "teacher" time. In the production sector, we consider two sources of growth. In the first, growth arises as a purely external effect on account of production activities of skilled workers. In the second, a portion of the skilled workforce is used to work in research and other productivity enhancing activities and is compensated for it. Our analysis shows that changes in the progressivity of tax rates can have positive growth effects even in situations where changes in flat rate taxes have no effect. Experiments on a calibrated model indicate that the quantitative effects of moving to a flat rate system are economically significant. The assumption made about the engine of growth has an important effect on the impact of a change in progressivity. Quantitatively, welfare is unambiguously higher in a flat rate system when comparisons are made across balanced growth equlibria; however, when the costs of transition to the higher growth equilibrium is taken into account only the currently rich slightly prefer the flat rate system.

ABSTRACT: This article examines empirically the dynamic relationship between two key US money market interest rates - the federal funds rate and the 3-month Treasury bill rate. Using daily data over the period 1974-1999, we show that a long-run no-arbitrage relationship exists between these two rates. This relationship is shown to be remarkably stable across monetary policy regimes of interest rate and monetary aggregate targeting. Employing vector equilibrium correction models which allow for both asymmetric and non-linear dynamics, we find that most of the adjustment towards the no-arbitrage long-run equilibrium occurs through the federal funds rates. The results appear to suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is the Treasury bill rate, rather that federal funds rate, that 'anchors' the short end of the term structure.

James Waldroop and Timothy Butler, directors of the career center at Harvard Business School and authors of the book Maximum Success: Changing the 12 Behavior Patterns That Keep You From Getting Ahead, have identified the character traits that get in the way of success. Five listed in this article include:
1. The Impostor Syndrome (fears he/she doesn't belong in their current position)
2. The Meritocrat (won't accept that life isn't always fair)
3. The Hero (someone who constantly tries to do too much and push too hard)
4. The Peacekeeper (someone who sees herself as a diplomat, the glue that holds everything together)
5. The Procrastinator

This article examines a new artificial intelligence based virtual customer service solution known as a chatterbot.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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Information systems - even the ones with all the right technologies - often fail for reasons related to human behavior and culture. Information itself - or more specifically, how it is given meaning - is a highly social construction. Tom Davenport offers these Ten Commandments of Organizational Computing to deal with the organizational and human side of computing.

Marc Andreessen is interviewed by Fast Company and discusses what he believes is still true - and what never was - about the Internet.

Trying to paint telecommunications in the Asia-Pacific region with a broad brush is unwise, according to a recent report from Gartner. Read on to get an overview of how countries including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea have taken a different approach to liberalizing the industry. Full report is also available for free download.

Article discusses the outlook for India to become the next Asian tiger and some of the issues involved with that potential. Economic statistics are also highlighted.

In direct marketing campaigns - Audience is essential … Offer is Everything … Creative is merely Compulsory.

Fine. Nevertheless, Copy is still King. Here's why: without good copy, your perfectly-targeted audience might never understand that wonderful offer of yours - or, even if they're suitably impressed, may not summon up the energy to do anything about it.

So whether you're penning an e-blast yourself, or reviewing your agency's draft of an upcoming self-mailer, it pays to know the difference between highly effective copy - the kind that commands high response rates - and the kind that just speeds your campaign's journey to the recycle bin.

Here are 8 ways to make sure the copy does its job...

How to improve data organization and create useful summaries.

Article (and especially the discussion forums attached to it) talks about how to count the number of times an item occurs in a column (using the example of customers per zip code).

Article discusses Toshifumi Suzuki, CEO of Seven-Eleven Japan, and his plan to turn his ubiquitous stores into a center for all kinds of commerce. Also offers some interesting background info and statistics.

Article discusses the potential resurgence of Six Sigma and its implications for the New Economy.

So far online marketing has been something of a bust. So what went wrong? Most online marketers forgot that no amount of flashy Web technology could replace a sophisticated understanding of consumer behavior. Here's how to learn from their mistakes.

Editor's Note: I found the discussion of the four generic types of buying behaviors identified by Professor Henry Assael to be quite useful.

This profile of new economy innovators and influencers includes: Vani Kola, RightWorks founder; Andreas Schmidt, president and CEO of Bertelsmann AG¹s eCommerce Group; Stanford economist A. Michael Spence; Jayshree Ullal, general manager and VP of Cisco Systems' switching group; Nancy Li, CEO iCan-ASP Inc. CA; Carolyn Osborne, founder of GoBeyond LLC; Rusty Braziel, founder and chairman of Altranet Technologies; David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue Airways; Elliot Masie, director of the Masie Group; Dave Hollander, XML co-inventor; Bill Glynn, VC; Donna Dubinsky; Harriet Edelman; Joe Forehand; and Aram Sinnreich.

This article ostensibly discusses the importance of CIOs presenting IT issues and initiatives to the Board and how to do so effectively. Yet, the framework they recommend is valuable for discussing IT initiatives at a high level to any audience.

Article looks at the customer management software market, its players, and its implications.

Article uses the concepts of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to discuss group dynamics and ways to foster better communication.

Similar to their gravitational counterparts, supply chain management implementations can grow to vast, unanticipated proportions, enveloping unbudgeted amounts of time, resources, and money. A crucial difference between the two is that supply chain projects can be kept to a manageable size by making careful preparations and setting realistic expectations at the outset. The following real-life examples offer insights that may help prevent your supply chain project from collapsing into oblivion, taking your enterprise with it.

Article talks about the online group shopping cyber mall and outsourced employee discount stores Samsung has pioneered in South Korea. Highlights the group ethos of South Koreans and discusses e-commerce stats and trends.