Practical Roadmap Research Articles

Supermedia: saving journalism so it can save the world

SuperMedia is a lively, engaging, and refreshingly-opinionated text offering informed discussion on the importance and future of liberal journalism as a healthy part of a flourishing society. * Examines the profound changes journalism is undergoing for social, economic and technological reasons * Explores the potential for a entirely new type of journalism which these changes create, discussing the impact of social networking sites and blogs on traditional journalism, and making the case that journalism could be the catalyst for change needed to solve many of the world’s problems in a controversial manner * Written by a first class broadcast journalist, it provides a practical roadmap for identifying the issues and solutions that will ensure an open and reliable news media for generations to come

Spa Revenue Management

In principle, spa managers should be able to apply revenue management to spa operations. To do so, however, requires a revision in the way most spas traditionally have viewed sales. Most spa managers track appointments and customer needs, but instead they need to focus specifically on the time element involved in their services. A time-related measure, revenue per available treatment-hour (RevPATH), integrates the price and duration of the treatment as factors in the revenue calculation. Certain elements of current-day spa practice, such as discounting and managing treatment duration, carry the seeds of revenue management, but those are often implemented as tactical measures during particularly slow or busy times. Few spas have established the necessary strategic approach to assemble those tactics into a coherent revenue management strategy. This report establishes a framework for implementing a spa revenue management strategy and sets a practical road map for its execution.

Book and Media Review: Coalitions and Partnerships in Community Health

Coalitions and Partnerships in Community Health is a newly released text written by Frances D. Butterfoss. This book achieves the stated goal of being a one-stop shop for creating effective and long-lasting coalitions and partnerships as an effective strategy to achieve public health goals. The text is divided into four parts covering the importance of coalitions and partnerships, building and maintaining effective coalitions and partnerships, and coalitions and partnerships in action. Numerous figures, exhibits, examples, and resources make this 500+ page book an outstanding resource and roadmap for practitioners and researchers in all segments of public health and academia.

Strategies and criteria for new payments technology investments

In the relatively short span of perhaps a decade, ‘payments’ have emerged from sub-conscious obscurity in the back shops of banks to assume a functional identity of their own as a valueadded financial services industry, and a priority item in the strategic planning agenda of virtually every institution. But payments are also at the core of the ongoing revolution in banking, from a traditional mainframe- and paper-based transaction model to an Internetbased, electronic transaction model. As technology improvements, new regulations, competitive pressure and customer expectations drive an accelerating evolution from paper-based cheques to electronic forms of payment, banks and the vendors that provide their payments-related technology find themselves at odds with longestablished processes, systems, revenue streams and value propositions. Vendors, in particular, are facing many new questions and challenges as they plan their market strategies and product portfolios for financial institutions. With the payments arena in such upheaval, how should a financial services vendor determine what technology to invest in or bring to market? What factors are involved and what criteria are important in this new payments environment? This paper addresses how a leading financial services technology vendor approaches these and similar questions. By carefully laying out how to distinguish between tactical and strategic approaches to the changing payments landscape, it will provide vendors, bankers and other interested parties with a practical road map that can ensure alignment between short-term and long-term technology objectives.

The Natural Biogerontology Portfolio

The early days of biogerontology were blessed with an undiluted forthrightness concerning the field's ultimate goals, epitomized by its leaders. Luminaries from Pearl to Comfort to Strehler declared the desirability of eliminating aging with no more diffidence than that with which today's oncologists aver that they seek a cure for cancer. The field's subsequent retreat from this position garnered a modicum of political acceptability and public financial support, but all biogerontologists agree that this fell, and continues to fall, vastly short of the funding that the prospect of even a modest postponement of aging would logically justify. The past 20 years' discoveries of life-extending genetic manipulations in model organisms have weakened the argument that a policy of appeasement of the public's ambivalence about defeating aging is our only option; some of the biogerontologists responsible for these advances have espoused views of which our intellectual forefathers would be proud, without noticeably harming their own careers. With the recent emergence of a detailed, ambitious, but practical roadmap for the comprehensive defeat of aging, this process has moved further: our natural and most persuasive public stance is, more than ever, to reembrace the same unassailable logic that served pioneering biogerontologists perfectly well. In particular, we are in a position to explain that the disparate strands of contemporary biomedical gerontology are not in conflict, but rather that they constitute a portfolio of approaches with a range of potential efficacies and degrees of difficulty of implementation, which can save more lives together than any can save individually, and all of which thus merit intensive pursuit.

Iran aerospace industries' KM approach based on a comparative study: a benchmarking on successful practices

PurposeThe main objective of this paper is to develop a knowledge management (KM)approach in Iran aerospace industries based on the findings through the analysis of successful practices in KM area.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case study technique has been used in this paper for data collection and analysis. For that, “grounded theory” research approach has been selected by which the collected data from successful organizations in KM adoption are categorized and analyzed. The extracted concepts were deployed in Iran aerospace industries to present a KM approach through benchmarking.FindingsThe overall results from the case studies analysis were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness for benchmarking. The extracted concepts clarify how to develop KM approach in an organization. This approach has been applied in a large case study in Iran and is supported by practical implementation in Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO), one of the most important high‐tech industries in Iran.Practical implicationsThis paper provides a helpful roadmap for practitioners in implementing KM through out the organizations and especially in large‐scale ones. This helps to ensure that the essential issues are covered during design and implementation phase. For academics, it provides a common language for them to deploy a KM approach in the organizations.Originality/valueThis study is probably the first to provide a benchmarked integrated KM approach based on the critical success factors extracted by analysis in a multi case study research. This study further opens up new lines of research and highlights implications for KM efforts through benchmarking. It gives valuable information and guidelines which hopefully will help the leaders to deploy KM in their organizations.

An empirical approach to the bond additivity model in quantitative interpretation of sum frequency generation vibrational spectra

Knowledge of the ratios between different polarizability betai'j'k' tensor elements of a chemical group in a molecule is crucial for quantitative interpretation and polarization analysis of its sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy (SFG-VS) spectrum at interface. The bond additivity model (BAM) or the hyperpolarizability derivative model along with experimentally obtained Raman depolarization ratios has been widely used to obtain such tensor ratios for the CH3, CH2, and CH groups. Successfully, such treatment can quantitatively reproduce the intensity polarization dependence in SFG-VS spectra for the symmetric (SS) and asymmetric (AS) stretching modes of CH3 and CH2 groups, respectively. However, the relative intensities between the SS and AS modes usually do not agree with each other within this model even for some of the simplest molecular systems, such as the air/methanol interface. This fact certainly has cast uncertainties on the effectiveness and conclusions based on the BAM. One of such examples is that the AS mode of CH3 group has never been observed in SFG-VS spectra from the air/methanol interface, while this AS mode is usually very strong for SFG-VS spectra from the air/ethanol interface, other short chain alcohol, as well as long chain surfactants. In order to answer these questions, an empirical approach from known Raman and IR spectra is used to make corrections to the BAM. With the corrected ratios between the betai'j'k' tensor elements of the SS and AS modes, all features in the SFG-VS spectra of the air/methanol and air/ethanol interfaces can be quantitatively interpreted. This empirical approach not only provides new understandings of the effectiveness and limitations of the bond additivity model but also provides a practical way for its application in SFG-VS studies of molecular interfaces.

Continuously improving PSM effectiveness—A practical roadmap

AbstractPSM practices and formal management systems have been in place in many companies for more than 20 years. PSM is widely credited for perceived reductions in major accident risk and in improved chemical industry performance. Nevertheless, many companies continue to be challenged by resource pressures, inadequate management system audit results, and stagnant process safety incident performance.While most companies claim to advocate Continuous Improvement, few have actually put substance into these words and succeeded in practice. This is partly because there is no clear vision of what PSM performance and continuous improvement are. This article defines the following function:PSM Effectiveness = f [PSM performance + PSM efficiency]Continuous improvement can address performance issues or efficiency issues or both. Companies are seeking new ways to improve process safety management activities. This article defines these terms and gives examples and lessons that show ways companies are improving performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. © American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2006

Practical strategy development: a wise investment for middle market businesses

PurposeMiddle market businesses – entities from $50 million‐$1 billion in revenue – are a significant force in the economy, generating $3 trillion in annual revenues and employing 20 million here in the USA alone. They are particularly besieged, and vulnerable, and yet they are unlikely to use strategic planning systematically to help set priorities and improve performance. The article aims to explore the internal and external forces arrayed against these firms, then prescribe a practical process for developing strategy –what it is, who does it, when – to improve competitive advantage, management perspective, and overall performance.Design/methodology/approachThe practical strategy development process described in the article focuses on developing a strategic databank, convening and managing the strategy team, and setting the stage for practical implementation , when broad objectives need to be translated into specific actions, schedules, budgets, and metrics. The approach described balances internal and external analysis and stakeholder input, captures the key decisions in an accessible, common format, and creates a practical roadmap for managers to help guide decision‐making throughout the course of the year. Dozens of middle‐market firms across a wide array of industries have used the methodology, which derives from two decades of strategy consulting and senior operating experience.FindingsFormal strategy development is underdeveloped or ignored in many middle‐market businesses, even as market and industry forces grow more antagonistic. This practical, streamlined methodology delivers substantial process and content dividends – giving managers strategic perspective, a forum for debating resource allocation, and an accessible platform for setting priorities and making key decisions. Equally important, is it is a straightforward approach to securing stakeholder input, enhancing the firm's ability to carve out competitive advantage and enhance stakeholder satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsThe guidelines and logic are universal for middle market businesses, but some of the parameters described may need to be adapted to fit the planning cycle and technology of each firm, and refined over time to dovetail with the firm's budgetary process.Practical implicationsMiddle‐market businesses need to institute a streamlined, rational, balanced, and participative strategy development process to navigate the forces that confront them. The process can be compressed to eight weeks, and will deliver a small set of focused, practical strategies and performance metrics that can be communicated to key stakeholder groups. Careful process management will induce managers to commit to implementation, and clarify the rationale for allocating the firm's precious resources. By breaking down lofty, abstract statements into practical, actionable, measurable activities, the firm's leaders can better chart the future, respond to threats and opportunities, and enhance performance.Originality/valueThe rational, practical approach described offers middle market business managers a toolkit for formulating strategies that can be implemented – for bridging the gap between aspirations and real performance. The article outlines a straightforward process, providing hands‐on guidelines for optimizing performance, and galvanizing the management team.

From School to a Career: A Student's Guide to Success in the Real World (review)

Reviewed by: From School to a Career: A Student's Guide to Success in the Real World Scott C. Brown From School to a Career: A Student's Guide to Success in the Real World John R. Jell Lanham, MD: ScarecrowEducation, 2005, 96 pages. $10.95 (softcover) The stated objective of this book is to provide high school and college students with a practical roadmap to be successful in the real world. This slim volume is meant to be a guide to this journey, and is organized into seven chapters: "What do You Want to Do in the Future?"; "What Employers Are Looking For"; "The Importance of Balancing Formal and Informal Learning"; "The Role of Degrees, Grades, and Experience Come Graduation"; "Getting Relevant Experience by Investing Time"; "Getting Focused on Your Future"; and, "Going to College and Education Costs." Each chapter has a summary and a basic application piece, and Jell uses anecdotes and simple diagrams to keep things lively. He pitches this to all high school and college students, but this audience is too broad. There is much press about the anxieties of college-bound students of not just getting into college, but getting into the "right" college. These are the savvy students that have grown up in an environment with coaches and tutors providing ways to give advantage in the college process. This book is not for them. This book will be a bit too simplistic and obvious (e.g., internships are important), and some of the bromides and platitudes may seem a bit clichéd or cloying. [End Page 700] Jell does not say this outright, but this book is best suited for students who are most likely first-generation college students or are not in an educational environment that has a great deal of resources, expectations or systems in place that typically support college-bound students. For example, he makes the case why a college degree is important, which seems that the intended audience is not necessarily familiar with the benefits of a college education. He also identifies how the home or personal context can constrain the benefits of college, again hinting that the reader may not have a home environment that is necessarily supportive or understanding of the college experience. There are a number of books that have addressed students' transition to college and beyond. Other books treat the issues much more comprehensively. For example Career By Design: Communicating Your Way To Success (Hanna, 2005), and Job Hunting Guide: Transitioning from College to Career (Krannich & Krannich, 2003) both address self-assessment, the tools to obtain work (e.g., resumes, cover letters, networking, etc.), with a great deal more supporting research and resources, websites, involved personal exercises and are presented in a much more exhaustive and slick fashion. From College to Career is different because it is designed to help the tentative and the largely less-informed student navigate the basic steps of this uncertain process. It strips down the process to its most basic steps to help jump-start this path, removing all but the most essential information to get started. Its more no-frills look may be less attractive to some audiences, but this presentation may be less overwhelming and intimidating for the tentative student. The book's strength is its plucky, scrappy, boot-strapping spirit. It is hard not to like Jell's earnest and sincere interest in helping young people. It is hard to dissociate the book's content from the author. This book is an impassioned plea from an ardent believer, short on research but long on lessons learned from the School of Hard Knocks. He makes a clear case of why students need to buckle down and maximize their college years. Although the first person perspective is sometimes distracting, his intended audience will care a great deal about his personal story, which is a source of authority. Jell offers himself as the savvy, caring, straight-talking big brother you wish you had or a personal guidance counselor in your hands. He talks with great candor about his family difficulties in a way that sets an effective context as to how to transcend them. The tone is incessantly upbeat and empowering...

A Roadmap for Cognitive Engineering in Systems Engineering

We are concerned with three challenges in the design of military Command and Control (C2) systems, namely: the demand for “smaller” organizations, the demand for “better” coordination (human-system, human-human and system-system) and the demand for “faster” execution. Driven by these demands, we performed a survey of Cognitive Engineering techniques with an eye towards how they can improve Systems Engineering efforts. This paper outlines our three challenges (smaller, better, faster) and reviews three successful applications by other Cognitive/Systems engineers faced with similar challenges. The applications employ Computational Cognitive Modeling (to address a demand for smaller), Cognitive Work Analysis (to address a demand for better) and Goal-Directed Task Analysis (to address a demand for faster). These three successes provide a practical roadmap for using Cognitive Engineering methods to address Systems Engineering problems in C2 as well as other domains.

Managing the project management process

The effective executive operating in today’s global environment must formulate, operate and execute across multi‐faceted environmental and organizational modes for different projects throughout their distinct phases in order to achieve results that meet shareholder expectations. In this study, the authors draw on a stream of research dealing with domestic and international project managers as well as the practical experience of the lead author to provide an informational integrated approach to help senior executives and project managers manage the strategic and operational facets of different projects. In this context, a practical roadmap for identifying problems and implementing timely corrective actions to improve projects’ success is advocated by this study.

A road‐map for creating efficient corporate internal labor markets

In today’s hyper‐competitive markets, the most valuable asset and the primary source of competitive advantage is human capital. It is also the resource which is most difficult to maintain, for the ongoing war for talent depletes the human capital of companies that fail to meet their employee expectations. To increase employee satisfaction and retention, corporations are eliminating the restrictions on internal employee mobility. Free internal labor markets (ILMs) demonstrate to employees that they can realize their career goals within rather than outside of the company. The liberalization of internal mobility and the institutionalization of job competition cause the convergence of the ILM and the external labor market. The transition to ILM is challenging but is the only road to securing long‐term competitive advantage. The present paper offers both a conceptual analysis and a practical road map for implementing ILM. It also discusses how two global financial companies build their ILMs.

Darwin and the Fully Human Theory of Evolution

Among scientists today a matter that many had assumed was long laid to rest is moving from the background to the foreground in the minds of the broad-gauged and the discerning. It is that what we call evolution theory requires a massive updating, integrating, and streamlining if it is to meet the needs of the 21st century. On one hand here is a planet with threats to the survival of ourselves and all species everywhere on the rise. On the other hand are the sciences, to which we look for answers on how to meet the threats, in disarray. Evolution theory, for example, supposedly provides the grounding for all science. Yet behind an outdated and dangerously constricted assumption of unity, instead of any useful cohesion it offers a bewilderingly disparate and unfocused sprawl. How then are we to move toward the evolutionary gestalt or framework needed to pull together science into some new intelligibility? But of more immediate urgency, how are we to build an evolution theory that can provide the practical guidance-or road map to the future-to our species at a time of exponentially escalating confusion and need?

Culture.com: building corporate culture in the connected workplace

From the Publisher: Key strategies that every organization must embrace in their infrastructure to gain a competitive advantage on the Internet. While the business world is spending vast resources on designing, marketing, selling, and delivering goods and services in the networked world, very few companies are addressing the internal infrastructure changes. This book tackles the question of how to create a corporate culture that matches the new .com business strategy. It provides a practical roadmap of strategies to shift an organization's culture from a liability to a competitive advantage in the .com world. Readers will find a practical approach that guides them through the ten key characteristics of a .com culture that every organization must embrace. They'll also learn how to break old organizational habits that no longer fit in the world of e-business, and how to develop new ways to think, believe, and behave.

Open source software adoption: a status report

Using the right software is increasingly critical to project success, but the choices keep getting wider and more confusing. Open source software (OSS) has entered the mix, leaving the traditional confines of the hacker community and entering large-scale, well-publicized applications. However, although some argue that it is ready for wide-scale commercial adaptation and deployment, the myriad number of OSS packages make actual adoption a real challenge. This article presents a straightforward and practical roadmap to navigate your OSS adoption considerations. We do not have a universally accepted definition of OSS. For instance, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, and Apple recently introduced what they call versions of their popular software-the Mozilla project, Solaris, and MacOS X, respectively. Such efforts, while validating the OSS concept, also make their inclusion into the OSS community a potential topic for contention. We use the loose definition of OSS that includes publicly available source code and community-source software.

Corporate growth engines: driving to sustainable strategic advantage

In today's highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, core competence and capability principles have become mainstay concepts of corporate strategic thinking. They lend themselves well to high-level strategic analysis, but their limited focus and static character do not inherently provide either an application roadmap to develop a competence/capability, or, given the existence of a core competence, a framework to achieve active market superiority. The concept of corporate growth engine, a further development of core competence and capability, unifies and extends several existing strategy paradigms, and spans all three phases of the corporate strategy process - analysis, planning and execution. Its characteristics can be used by the management team with the desire to actively drive to sustainable strategic advantage as a blueprint for implementation. Some empirical evidence points at significant benefits for both well and poorly run corporations. This paper, conceptual in nature, will introduce the growth engine paradigm, trace its use through ten vignettes of large technology-intensive corporations, and discuss its seven defining characteristics. It will contrast this new construct to existing strategic principles, and illustrate its greater power in providing a framework for achieving sustainable superiority. Finally, it will present preliminary requirements for building, identifying, and sustaining a growth engine. The highly competitive environment that now confronts many firms has been forcing managers to re-examine and improve the strategic rules and processes by which they operate. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art strategic concepts in the literature and as dispensed by consultants are still piecemeal and incomplete. They primarily have an analysis focus, and fail to offer sufficient guidance beyond that stage they must be complemented by a separate methodology to carry through into planning and especially into execution [1]. Thus, these concepts, because of their limited foci within the overall strategic process, do not define, enrich or structure strategic planning and execution. Nor do they provide the critical drive and vision often needed. The management team interested in developing strategic superiority needs something more, a coherent whole that can provide meaning and direction, a systemic and context-rich approach that can deal with the totality of the strategic challenge. We are proposing here a new construct, that of corporate growth engines, that aims at bridging the whole strategic process from analysis to planning and execution. It is evolved from existing strategy paradigms, and provides the corporate management team with a practical roadmap to tackle strategic issues along the whole span of the strategy process. In proposing this new concept for the first time, our purpose is to present and explore new insights into the strategic process, and to illustrate it in action through several vignettes. Formal testing and validation of the ideas introduced remain for future research, hopefully stimulated and informed by this presentation. We will begin with a review of the overall strategy process to show that no existing strategic concept provides the paradigms needed to cover its entire span. We will then analyse a series of corporate case study vignettes, using the corporate growth engine concept as an explanation for company success and failure.

For your Bookshelf: Waltzing with the Raptors: A Practical Roadmap to Protecting Your Company's Reputation

For your Bookshelf: Waltzing with the Raptors: A Practical Roadmap to Protecting Your Company's Reputation

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Self-Management and Leadership Strategies for Success. Christopher S. Frings, PhD, CSP. Washington, DC: AACC Press, 1998, 103pp., $19.00. ISBN 1-890883-00-X.

How do you start on the road to success? Christopher Frings’ book Hitchhiker’s Guide to Self-Management and Leadership Strategies for Success provides readers with a seven-step plan of attack that will help them in both their personal and professional life. The author reminds the reader that the 10 most powerful two-letter words are, “If it is to be, it is up to me”. This book provides a practical road map and the motivation for readers to change their habits and set a path toward their goals. Dr. Frings provides a seven-step process for changing one’s habits: (1) put balance in your life with written goals; (2) create a plan for reaching your goals—and stick to it; (3) expect the unexpected and become a master of change; (4) learn from past mistakes and …

Restaurant Revenue Management

In principle, restaurant operators should be able to apply the time-based philosophy of revenue management to restaurant meals. To do so, however, requires a revision in the way most restaurateurs traditionally have viewed sales. Most restaurants track item contribution margin, sales per server, revenue per day part, or similar operating ratios. A different type of measure, revenue per available seat-hour, integrates the duration of the meal as a factor in the revenue calculation. Certain elements of current-day restaurant practice, such as differential pricing (e.g., early bird specials, AARP discounts), promoting special events (such as wine tastings on off nights), and managing table turnover carry the seeds of revenue management, but few restaurants have established the necessary strategic approach to assemble those tactics into a coherent revenue-management strategy. This article seeks only to establish a framework for such a strategy, and not to set a practical road map for its execution.