The Latest Carnival of The Capitalists

I welcome all of you to the first edition of the Carnival of the Capitalists here at Gyaan Sutra. This carnival covers the latest and greatest posts on business, and travels from city to city, country to country and continent to conitnent.

This week The Cotc has landed in Pune, India, at my blog Gyaan Sutra, which is about entrepreneurship and the Indian Online Industry. This carnival consists of 13 entries, chosen amongst 25 great entries.

I have also added a snapshot to each of the articles, to help you decide which ones you would like to read, so that you can read the best of the posts, without spending all Monday doing it. (Though you are welcome to do that too ). The comments are wide open and waiting, so do enjoy the posts, and let them know you like it.

The new-era-marketing-fundamentals department:
We begin this week’s carnival with Charles H. Green’s article Rethinking Commerce on Trust Matters. He writes about the future of selling.

The right approach for sales in the future is not based on getting the sale, or on achieving sustainable competitive advantage for the selling company. It’s about tearing down the boundaries between organizations, collaboratively helping each other to figure out the best thing to do for both.

The killer-business-book-review department:
Rob presents a book review of “The Halo Effect… and Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers.”. The review is posted at Businesspundit. By the end of the post he almost manages to make me buy the book, this is what he says:

Beware that The Halo Effect may open your eyes to a world of business that is not what you want it to be. If you want to take the blue pill, stick with the business best seller section. If you want to have your eyes opened that the red pill and read The Halo Effect.

. Do read the article, and if possible the book too.

The will-they-won’t-they department:
CA presents a well researched post The Atlantic Gateway Challenge for Atlantic Canada. The problem at hand is about promoting Halifax as Canada’s Atlantic Gateway for trade.

The question that begs answering is: Do the Atlantic Provinces have the inclination to become a global player in world trade? Or will we just let one of the greatest economic opportunities for Atlantic Canada slip by?

You can find it posted at Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog.

The executive-homophobia-problem department.
Paula presents Trading Authenticity for the Chance at CEO posted at Queercents.

The unspoken attitude is still “that you can be a gay employee, but for God’s sake, don’t be a gay vice-chairman,” said a former senior manager. “I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine going to a function with a vice-chairman of a bank and their gay partner.”

The triple-m department:
Michael K. Dawson tries to document the problems in the mining industry in his blog post titled Mining Merger Mania: Say It Three Times Fast which is posted at his blog Breaking the Shackles of the 9 to 5 | by The Time & Money Group.

cranking up supply in the short term is usually impossible; the process of prospecting, exploring and developing a mine takes many years, sometimes decades. The scale of most base metal mines is huge—they take an enormous amount of financing, require endless environmental permissions and need extensive infrastructure. These factors make it very difficult to balance supply with demand in the short term (meaning, up to a few years)

The get-paid-to-have-sex department:
The next post is I Fly Free & Get Paid To Have Sex by Jeffrey Strain at the Personal Finance Advice. In this humorous post, Jeffery encases his love for his credit cards, because

The other credit card that I have is one that pays me back 5% for every purchase that I make. Since it’s probably not appropriate for me to go into the details of my sex life here, it will suffice to say that birth control, sexy lingerie and other sex-related items all go on this credit card. In essence, I’m getting paid back 5% for having sex.

The stock-market-survival department:
Silicon Valley Blogger explains a few strategies to handle the extremely elastic stock market5 Ways To Survive A Volatile Stock Market posted at The Digerati Life.

#5 Sit tight and do nothing.
This is a prerogative that you have during crazy times like these when we hear that certain parts of the economy are unraveling. Stay put and stay the course. It’s also called ‘buy and hold’.
If there are fundamental reasons to break out of the inertia that is ‘buy and hold’, then we need to reevaluate and see if we can capitalize on these changes in the financial and investing landscape.

The redefining-fashion department:
Pawel Brodzinski presents Screwing Performance Review, where he redefines performance reviews, with suggestions including

1. Don’t make reviews. Don’t make them at all. It’s a waste of time anyway. Have you ever seen a review meeting which motivated an employee? Imagine how much important work you could do during all this time.

He posts at Software Project Management.

The evils-of-democracy department:
Jack Yoest presents Is the Manager Obsolete? Or When Does Consensus Stop? posted at Reasoned Audacity. He discusses and deduces why the demographic model (everybody’s eqal, and don’t need managers) is not suitable for firms looking to make some profit.

If there were no problems, or no change of any kind, or no exciting opportunities to compete for capital budget allocation, there would be no need for that overhead kn
own as the Manager.

The titanic-won’t-sink department:
Next on the list is Wayne Hurlbert, who writes about Sunk costs: Know when to pull the plug. The post is about

When business people think of sunk costs, if they ever consider the concept at all, think in terms of throwing good money after bad. While that is part of the definition of what constitutes a sunk cost, there is much more to the story. In fact, your own business probably has a few sunk costs and you might not even know it.

posted at Blog Business World.

The somebody-is-missing department:
Babak asks Where Are the Retail Investors ?and does a research about them, to find out that some of them are really missing. He posts at Trader’s Narrative.

Anyway, in the graph you can see that the traffic for the different online brokers not only ebbs and flows as a group, it does an impressive job of reflecting the moods of the average retail investor out there. For example, notice how in the summer of 2004 the traffic hits a low just as the market was forming an intermediate bottom.

The can-i-be-a-leader-too department:
Wally Bock presents Fads and fashions in writing about leadership posted at Three Star Leadership Blog. He talks about the search for the ideal leader.

he went looking for commonalities among excellent leaders. Here’s what he found : “They were right-brained and left-brained, tall and short, fat and thin, articulate and inarticulate, assertive and retiring, dressed for success and dressed for failure, participative and autocratic. There were more variations than themes.”

The savings-are-everywhere department:
Daniel Foster presents The Secret to Beating the Postage Increase posted at Logos Bible Software Blog. He finds an unusual way to save money

I went over to my local stamp and coin place and made a deal with them. They agreed to hand-apply the correct postage to my statement envelopes when they had down time if I agreed to buy my postage from them. Sounded like a no-brainer to me. They sold the postage to me for 10% off face value and applied it for free.

Thanks for coming here to Gyaan Sutra. I hope you had a great time reading the articles.

The next week’s Cotc would be on 800-CEO-READ Blog on May 21st, so get your submissions ready.

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