A bit of chatter out there about how Starbucks, which has had a rough few years, has quietly launched a new shop on London’s Conduit Street. You can see some pics of the new cafe on Tiki Chris’s Flickr page. They did this first in New York a few months ago, with a cafe that you would have barely realised was a Starbucks cafe.

Judging by the pics, it is a subtle-ish revamp - more communal spaces, like shared tables, more trendy lighting and furniture, a darker and warmer feel to the place, more books and so on.

Will it work? I have no idea but I do think there are a couple of interesting points here. First, Starbucks is applauded for at least being bold enough to rethink what they are doing. When the chain first started expanding outside of its Seattle base, it traded more on being a cool place to go rather than simply being ubiquitous. When Howard Schulz, its founding chief executive, came back to run the company this was one of his key messages; the chain, he lamented, had loss the “romance and theatre” on which the company was founded.

Continue reading "The soft launch rebrand of Starbucks hits London"

I recently participated in a debate entitled “The good society: virtues for a post-recession world”. A couple of my fellow panellists emphasised the importance of promoting happiness rather than material wealth as a true measure of human progress. They believe that advances in gross domestic product are an inferior way to achieve greater wellbeing, and that a concept such as “gross national happiness” might be a better tool.

As I listened to their definitions of happiness, I realised that not many coincided with my view of what made entrepreneurs tick. I have spent decades partnering entrepreneurs, trying to understand their psychology and motivation. I find them hugely exciting to work with, because it is only thanks to their ambition and ingenuity that enterprises are started and fresh wants satisfied.

There is no stereotypical personality, but one can identify characteristics that most entrepreneurs share. At heart they are highly competitive. They do not seek security as their main goal – rather, they actively seek risk, and enjoy overcoming stressful challenges. They are not sheer gamblers, but they embrace dynamism and are willing to invest in spite of the possibility of failure – to have the chance to win.

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Every organisation needs to think about how it manages its communication and engages with new media. The Catholic church is apparently no different.

“Benedict XVI has chosen to dedicate World Communications Day 2010 to the theme “The priest and pastoral ministry in a digital world: new media at the service of the Word.”

The announcement continues:

The Holy Father urges priests to “consider the new media as a powerful resource for their ministry in the service of the Word and wishes to express a word of encouragement in order to address the challenges stemming from the new digital culture,” the communiqué explained. “If the new media is adequately known and appreciated, it can offer priests and all pastoral agents a wealth of data and content that previously was difficult to access, and it facilitates ways of collaboration and growth of communion that were unthinkable in the past.”

Hat tip: Sameer Padania

A few weeks ago, the most popular story on FT.com was on Dyson’s new bladeless fan. I have to admit, I couldn’t quite figure out why so many readers were looking at it, but who am I to go against the grain?

I did wonder if it had anything to do with the following Dyson has among consumers and this video suggests I may have been on to something. Emma and Molly are two fans of the fan and have created a video showing just how this impressive device works. I especially like the Brazilian music overlaying the clip. What was that I said in a previous post about the changing nature of consumer engagement?

Of course, this could be nothing more than a clever marketing ploy and for all I know these could be Dyson employees or the wife and child of the guy who designed it. Whatever the case, I wonder if it will generate as much attention as our original story.

An extraordinary video has emerged of a London Underground worker who was filmed yelling at an elderly passenger (non-UK readers will not be able to see the video but it might be available elsewhere online). The employee has since resigned.

The incident happened on the day after Transport for London announced a price rise, which couldn’t have been great timing. That aside, it is interesting how quickly this story got out and how the instinctive reaction of a fellow passenger was to film the whole event, presumably on his mobile phone.

The quick dissemination of the message goes to the heart of all sorts of questions on the way we work: if you have a public-facing position, don’t expect that you can get away with anything because someone might be watching (though, London Underground are well covered with closed circuit television cameras - one assumes that if his bosses had seen him on their own footage, they would have been less than pleased but a colleague apparently “laughed and walked away” ); consumers/the public see themselves as more than mere clients - they are stakeholders, and the passenger who took the video claims that part of his motivation was the fact that it had happened on the day after the price increase.

England football manager Fabio Capello has had a remarkably successful career in Italy, Spain and now as manager of England (ok, he hasn’t won anything yet, but they have qualified for the World Cup). Sports analogies are used too often in the world of management speak (even for a sportsfan like me) but according to an article in the Guardian about his presentation at the Global Sports Summit in London, Capello reveals a couple of interesting truths.

First, he says that when he took over England the quality of the players was very high in training but not in matches.

“I understood everything when they played Switzerland in the first match, the same players who played well in training played with fear, with no confidence, and I said this is a big problem of the mind,” he said. “Step by step, game after game, we have improved a lot.”

Continue reading "Fabio Capello on the management of fear"

Canada’s WestJet airline doesn’t have a business class or premium economy, but it’s come up with another idea to give its passengers a bit more space, save on fuel consumption and avoid having to buy new planes for longer flights - charge people a bit extra to keep the middle seat vacant. According to Richard Bartrem, WestJet’s vice-president of corporate culture and communications, one motivation is to deal with the “question of real estate” when it comes to the armrest between seats.

I will confess, I didn’t realise this was such a problem but stranger business ideas have worked in the past, so I’ll happily eat my hat if this becomes a huge success.

• A husband and wife switch jobs for two weeks - Huband takes become the stay-at-home parent, wife takes over his job as an editor of Slate, the online magazine. Not exactly the craziest switch in the world; Susan Burton is a former editor at Harper’s Magazine (declaration: I was an intern at the magazine at the time when Susan was an editor there) but still could prove an intriguing experiment. At the very least, it should be a good read.
• David Hockney’s iPhone passion - If I was Apple, I’m not sure I could have come up with a better advertisement of just how useful the iPhone is for some people. This has to take the mobile phone as utility to a new level. The piece includes examples of work he’s created on the phone
• The price of being gay - The authors admit that this isn’t an exact science but…
• Parental benefits for the self-employed - I’m Canadian and a parent and I know lots of people who might break out and do their own thing if not for the need to keep their benefits, including maternity or paterntiy pay. Does this hold back business and entrepreneurship?
• France Telecom makes changes at the top in wake of scandal of suicides - a story that still has yet to be resolved. Here’s the FT’s take, the story in Les Echos, Liberation and Le Figaro