Color and marketing

The use of color in business and marketing copy has been a powerful psychological tool for many years. The following are some basic color guidelines: black represents power; white is purity; gray is stability; red represents energy; blue is calming; green represents nature or money; yellow is for happiness; orange is flamboyant; purple is royalty; and brown represents stability and friendship.
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Karl Marx

German-born philosopher Karl Marx, considered the "father of Communism," believed that class struggle was the basic tenet of society and predicted that capitalism would be ultimately destroyed by its own inherent contradictions. Although obscure during his life, Marx's influence would profoundly affect the world's political and economic landscape during the course of the 20th century.
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Rebates

Nearly 20% of all computer and digital products are now sold with some form of rebate, according to a recent Business Week article. Industry experts estimate that some 400 million rebates with a value of $6 billion are offered each year. Retailers and manufacturers love rebates because almost 40% of them never get redeemed, translating to more than $2 billion in extra revenue each year.
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Fastest growing occupations

According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections, the fastest growing occupations in the United States are: network systems and data communications analysts; computer software engineers; personal financial advisors; veterinarians; and substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors.
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KPI

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. KPI are quantifiable measurements that help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. KPI indicators are a function of the business or the type of organization. The key requirements for KPI are they must reflect the organizational goals, they must be quantifiable, and they must be measurable across time frames.
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Business travel

Business travel, once considered a perk of a job, is now looked at increasingly as a nuisance activity. Increasingly crowded aircraft, security screenings, flight delays and late-night work-related dinners are some of the reasons why business travel has degraded, according to a recent YPBR travel survey. More than 30% said they were actively seeking new technology to reduce business travel.
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Business.com

Business.com is a leading business search engine and directory serving more than 40 million users. Business.com helps decision makers quickly find what they need to manage and grow their businesses. It also allows advertisers to reach these users wherever they are across the business Internet through premier partners, including Forbes, BusinessWeek, Hoovers, Financial Times and Internet.com.
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Museum of American Finance

The Museum of American Finance was established in New York in 1988 at the former home of the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784. Items from the permanent collection include ticker tape from the Crash of 1929, a working model stock ticker, the earliest photograph of Wall Street, and documents and artifacts tracing the development of the financial markets.
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Dyslexia

A recent study found that dyslexia is more common among small-business owners in the U.S. Professor Julie Logan, author of the study, also found that dyslexics were more likely than non-dyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving, and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.
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LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an online network of millions of experienced professionals. LinkedIn members create a professional profile that helps them be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. Members are encouraged to develop personal networks and link to other member networks. LinkedIn is ideal for business development, career advancement, recruiting and professional development.
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Doing Business in America

Atlanta, Georgia earned the number one spot on Inc.com's most recent Top 25 Cities for Doing Business in America. Inc ranked 250 regions based on job growth and small business creation as a measure of business vitality. Green Bay, Wisconsin earned the top spot for medium-sized cities. Montpelier, Vermont earned the top spot for small cities.
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Business costs

In business, all costs will fall into one of two categories: fixed costs or variable costs. Fixed costs remain the same regardless of the level of sales or production. Typical fixed costs include rent, insurance, equipment expenses and salaries. Variable costs increase directly in proportion to the level of sales or production. For example, shipping charges and costs of materials.
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"Killer bees"

The business phrase "killer bees" refers to one or more individuals or firms hired by a company to fend off hostile takeover bids. These groups include investment bankers, attorneys, tax accountants and management consultants. The goal of killer bees is to develop a strategy to make the target company less attractive as a take-over candidate.
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The Long Tail

Chris Anderson made popular the statistical phrase "The Long Tail" in a recent Wired Magazine article. Anderson cites examples, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. The Internet is enabling consumers to shift from mainstream products toward niche products found in the "tail".
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Activity-Based Costing

Activity-Based Costing is a method for estimating the resources required to operate an organization's business processes, produce its products, and serve its customers. ABC is generally used as a tool to understand product cost and profitability, and to support strategic decisions, such as pricing, outsourcing and identification and measurement of process improvement initiatives.
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Competitive Advantage

The 1998 best-selling book "Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance" by Harvard Business Professor Michael E. Porter is a highly recommended business read. Porter extends his powerful analytical techniques to the level of the individual firm, showing managers how to evaluate their company's competitive position and how to implement the specific steps to improve it.
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Startup.com

Startup.com is a 2001 documentary film that chronicles the development of a rising Internet company. The film tells the story of two young and inexperienced graduates who receive millions of venture capital dollars to launch a dot com company. As the project progresses, personalities and egos clash during long work hours, technology is stolen, and the project never works as planned.
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Jidoka

Sakichi Toyoda introduced the idea of Jidoka while perfecting his weaving machine in the 1920s. Jidoka, also known as autorotation, describes a quality control process that prevents the production of defective products, eliminates overproduction and solves underlying processing problems. The concept of Jidoka became central to the Toyota automobile company, which was founded by Toyoda's son.
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Business rule of thumb

A business rule of thumb says if you have a good idea, five other companies are doing the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.
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The Mythical Man Month

The classic book "The Mythical Man Month" was written by IBM project manager Fred Brooks in 1975. The book cites the fallacy in the attempt to add more workers to a project that is falling behind schedule. Brooks' law is simple: adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
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AboutUs

AboutUs is an online wiki providing information on every domain in the world. The free directory that anyone can edit offers a great place to provide further information on your website, products, descriptions, background, etc. Anyone is free to add or edit a domain entry. See this unique directory at AboutUs.org.
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Innovative superstars

The Boston Consulting Group, in partnership with Business Week, compiles The World's Most Innovative Companies annual list. Topping the most recent list were innovative superstars Apple, Toyota and IBM. According to a survey of the list companies, the biggest obstacles to success they face is lack of coordination and slow development times for their products and services.
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Peter Drucker

"There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer." -- Peter Drucker.
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Rght stuff to be a CEO

Do you have the right stuff to be a CEO? Take Fortune's CEO quiz to see if you could make it as a CEO. The quiz is based on the ideas presented in Kathleen Kelley Reardon's recent book "The Secret Handshake: Mastering the Politics of the Business Inner Circle". Take the quiz at money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/quizzes/ceo_makeit/frameset.exclude.html
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General George S. Patton

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - General George S. Patton.
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Fastest Growing Technology companies

The categories of electronics, medical and digital delivery were tops among the CNN Money/Business 2.0 annual list of the Top 100 Fastest Growing Technology companies. Not surprisingly, California led all U.S. states with 37 of the top 100. Following California: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut. All told, 21 states placed at least one tech company in the top 100.
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The first email message

Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email. Tomlinson sent the first email message in late 1971. While working on the TENEX timesharing system, Tomlinson modified the existing SNDMG mail utility and CYPTNET protocol to allow mail transmission from one ARPANET host to another. Tomlinson also devised the ubiquitous @ between the user's name and the host name.
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Pareto's Principle

Pareto's Principle, or the 80/20 Rule, describes the principle that twenty percent of a resource is responsible for eighty percent of the results. The 80/20 Rule may be applied to almost anything, from the science of management to the physical world.
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Executive job change

Most executives cited the lack of challenges or opportunity for career growth rather than inadequate compensation as the main reason they left their last job, according to a recent survey by executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. Twenty percent cited ineffective leadership, while 17 percent said the attractive job market was why they left their last jobs.
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Hawthorne effect

The "Hawthorne effect" refers to improvements in worker productivity that result from the mere fact that they are being studied or observed. This observation came from studies carried out at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant in Illinois during the late 1920s. The experiments validated the idea that people are motivated by feeling involved and receiving attention rather than only economic factors.
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Return after a vacation

Monster.com offers several tips to make a smooth return to work after a vacation: Leave a to-do list for teammates and colleagues; draft a to-do list for your first day back; set up appropriate phone and email reminder and messages; plan and send requests to be fulfilled while you are away; schedule an extra day off to use to prepare; keep expectations low for the first days back to work.
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