“Take a trip around the world to discover how easy (or difficult) it is to do business in 175 countries. Click on green, yellow or red placemarks to learn more about each country… The World Bank Group’s Doing Business project aims to provide objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 175 countries.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“Trial and error are usually the prime means of solving life’s problems. Yet many people are afraid to undertake the trial because they’re too afraid of experiencing the error. They make the mistake of believing that all error is wrong and harmful, when most of it is both helpful and necessary. Error provides the feedback that points the way to success. Only error pushes people to put together a new and better trial, leading through yet more errors and trials until they can ultimately find a viable and creative solution. To meet with an error is not to fail, but to take one more step on the path to final success. No errors means no successes either.”

“You would be wise to listen to the customers you’re threatening to sue — they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn’t be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark. All of which is to say — no amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company.”

“I just got back from the Economics of Social Media conference put on by Rafat Ali, Staci Kramer, and the rest of the PaidContent crew and it was really an excellent event… The only awful thing about EconSM though — as is the case with most conferences — was the design of the conference badges. While talking to Andy Sternberg of LAist, at one point I interrupted him and said: ‘You know super-complicated innovation would double the amount of socializing going on in this lobby? Double the size of the badges. I can’t frickin’ see anyone’s name.’ Andy agreed.”

“After nearly 14 months of researching, writing, editing, and rewriting, ‘The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth’ is set to debut. The book is officially on sale Tuesday, February 27, 2007, which means if you order it online it should ship out then. The publication date, one week later, is Tuesday, March 6, 2007; this is when ‘The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth’ should be available in bookstores.”

“Welcome to our experiment. It’s a new way to tap the collective knowledge of our community about the internal network of any company–so new that we are introducing it not only in beta form but in early beta. We know it’s a work in progress, and we want your help to make it better. Wiki away and let us know how we’re doing. This is an experiment in collaborative problem solving, where our goal is to create something of great value to the whole web community.”

“I’m writing this article on the flight back from a week-long trip to Istanbul, Turkey. My wife Kirsten is an amateur rug collector and we decided to celebrate her birthday in Istanbul where the 11th International Conference On Oriental Carpets was being held… Loving husband that I am, I accompanied Kirsten during her visits to a variety of rug dealers in Sultanhamet (the old district of Istanbul which is the carpet capital of the world). This is where The Grand Bazaar is located. If you’ve never been to Istanbul, I highly recommend it. It’s a great city. In any case, here are some of the insights I gained from my experience.”

“Today’s random topic is Professionalism in the Workplace. I’m not in a position where I can quit my day job and work on SportsNode full time. So I work in an office. In said office I sometimes see some things that inspired this post (regardless of how “common sense” some of these items are). Some of these rules (presented in an unordered list) have been broken by new folks for which this happens to be their first job and they just don’t know any better. Some however are perpetrated by people that should really know better…”

“I had the opportunity to take part in a session of teamwork training this week, which is always a joy. The trainer reminded us of a classic led us through a model used by effective teams to implement core values into their daily practices.  The model is called B.A.S.K., which is short for Behavior, Attitudes, Skills, Knowledge.”

“All of the possible methods of bringing customers value—anything from more-efficient production lines to new products and services—boil down to just three fundamental strategies. All business models can be seen as one of these three things, or a combination of two or more. In that light, the best way to tweak a business model is to find a new combination of building blocks that better fits market conditions.”

“‘While companies might have an intended strategy, the strategy that actually emerges can be very different,’ says HBS professor Clark G. Gilbert. It is a topic that Gilbert and professor Joseph L. Bower have explored at length for a new book they have edited, From Resource Allocation to Strategy, published by Oxford University Press.”

“In my day job, I not only hear a lot of PowerPoint pitches, but I also read a lot of business plans. The PowerPoint pitches explain my Ménière’s disease, but the business plans explain my recent need for reading glasses. One of my goals for blogging is to reduce the external factors that are causing the degradation of my body, so this entry’s topic is the zen of business plans.”

“Quite a bit back, I wrote on the subject of “No Job Titles.” The subject has come up again within Adaptive Path, as Todd’s post shows. There’s also been discussion on internal mailing lists, which prompted me to write the following…”

“Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”

“Welcome to the 100 Best Corporate Citizens page. For the past eight years, Business Ethics Magazine (and now The CRO) has been working with KLD Research & Analytics to rank and recognize publicly listed U.S. companies that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders. The 100 Best Corporate Citizens list is regarded as the third most influential corporate ranking, behind Fortune magazine’s ‘Most Admired Companies’ and ‘100 Best Companies to Work For,’ according to a PRWeek/Burson-Marsteller CEO Survey.”