Many executives are in the throes of the budget season, so their discussions with other decision-makers will invariably turn to strategy setting for the coming year. Given the current backdrop - a sluggish economy, the need to manage growing complexity in the multichannel environment, and increased opportunities for using customer data and analytics - executives should be thinking about growing their businesses through customer-centricity.

Continue reading "Customer Strategist Orkun Oguz: Place Customers at the Forefront of 2011 Strategic Planning" »

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One of the single most important elements of industrial efficiency and technical progress is the concept of "division of labor." The original thesis behind division of labor was stated succinctly by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, with his classic description of the pin factory, where each task was divided into standardized steps to be completed more cost-efficiently by different people and machines. When an analogous principle is applied to nation-states we get the theory of comparative advantage, which underlies the benefits of free trade. Both division of labor and comparative advantage presume that people can perform separate tasks and then trade with each other for mutual benefit. Trading is critical. Without trading, among people and nation-states alike, progress is stunted.

Continue reading "Karl Marx, the Division of Labor, and Employee Engagement" »

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What if we could change the income tax so that it taxes low incomes instead of high incomes? Suppose, for instance, that everyone had to pay 100% of their first $15,000 of income to the IRS, and only after this could they keep any money they earned. Of course, this would provide a terrible disincentive for people to work - it might even make it impossible to find people willing to take minimum wage jobs, which pay about $15,000 a year. No one would want to impose such a tax.

Continue reading "The Most Regressive Income Tax Imaginable" »

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