Yesterday the Vista Group (sans NF) celebrated its first anniversary (approximately) with a somewhat raucous discussion on advertising using humour. While we could all remember great ad campaigns that used humour very effectively, we also had stories to tell of ads that were very funny, but the product and brand messages were lost or mangled.  One current example we discussed is a TVC with a couple dining in a restaurant; the woman tells the man that she’s leaving him, but he can’t hear her and bluffs along saying “Great”. OK, we got the fact that it’s for a hearing aid, but none of us could remember the brand even though it was put up twice (Google tells me it’s Widex), and in any case the joke was negative on doing something about hearing loss.  So the brand was lost and the message was mangled. Most people respond better to ads that make them feed good about the product and the brand, and which leave a clear understanding of a positive message.  The Widex ad did not, despite it being mildly humorous. Contrast this with the Toyota “bugger” ad; strong positive brand personality which appeals to self-deprecating Kiwis and a clever demonstration of the product’s qualities (strength and utility). (Unfortunately I can’t find the Barry Crump cliff ascent ad).

Our message: humour in advertising works when the joke positively reinforces the message and the brand, but you’re wasting your money if the joke obscures them.  Meanwhile, here’s one that falls between the two extremes.  It was hilarious and everyone talked about it, so the cheeky brand personality message (for scratch lottery cards) did get through.

Michael Gregg alerted me to a fun internet marketing campaign from Air New Zealand, using a fictitious airline website to attack competitors’ misleading pricing tactics.  This is a nice way to get a complex message across, especially now most airline tickets are bought online these days. Check out the other pages and the small print at Saverjet.com, after you’ve watched the short video.

Of course, there’s no-one more conscientious than a reformed wrongdoer, and, oh dear, I do seem to recall a Commerce Commission fine imposed on a certain airline. Fortunately, that’s all in the past, now, and Air NZ is still my favourite intercontinental airline.

Lawyer and ex-MP Stephen Franks has written a thoughtful piece on the erosion of ministerial responsibility, not only because of political opportunism in shifting blame to public servants, but also due to modern Westminster-style democracies imposing strict limits on what ministers can and can’t do. For example, if you are prohibited from any say in who is hired or fired as CEO of your department, how can you be held responsible for the actions and non-actions of that department? Franks speculates on whether such well-intentioned conventions, with their unintended consequences, might spread to company boards. He uses employment law to suggest that such a trend may already be happening.

I found Franks’ closing paragraph particularly chilling (my emphasis):

An eventual consequence may be that we will refuse to hold directors and managers fully accountable, because we know it would often be unfair. Power without responsibility, and responsibility without power are equally bad. Lawyers are usurping the clarity of both power and responsibility.

I would also add that when such law (often judge-made) effectively requires all involved (eg. in terminations for under-performance and/or restructuring) to routinely dissemble and prevaricate, while jumping through laborious hoops instead of taking swift decisive sensible and honest action, then the law is clearly wrong.  Franks writes from a New Zealand perspective, but I know from personal experience that his remarks are equally valid in Britain and, I suspect, in most other developed Westminster democracies.

Several business people have recently told me similar stories about bank covenants. If your business has an overdraft facility or bank loan, you’ll know what they are; business financial performance measures which you have to meet or the bank can ask for its money back immediately.  Covenants usually include stuff like quick and current ratios, interest cover, and so on.  However, bankers often put in some other innocuous-looking covenant which doesn’t seem like a problem at the time, just some bee in their bonnet which you agree to because it gets you the loan, such as the ratio of foreign assets to domestic assets, or the the proportion of accounts receivable owed by a percentage of customers. Nothing wrong with those, either.  However, as your business develops, you start to bump into one or two of them.  They’re holding back the development of your business.  You go to the bank asking for the covenant to be waived.  The bank hears the rationale and says  “No problem, go ahead this quarter, but we reserve the right to reimpose the covenant.”   You ask again next quarter, and get a similar reply. After a while, it becomes routine.  If you’re on the ball, you start asking the bank to rewrite the covenants, which they agree is a good idea, but somehow it never gets done. Then whamo! The bank says that the covenant is back in force and that you must achieve compliance or start paying back the debt - fast. Your business to all intents and purposes is now driven by the bank to liquidate assets.

It’s apparently happening a lot these days.  In these troubled economic times, many normally sound businesses are experiencing difficulties, and are probably in breach of one or more covenants.  Bankers are understandably rationing their debt facilities to their safest borrowers. But I worry that, by squeezing normally solid companies to repay debt, the banks are exacerbating the economic problem, shrinking companies’ ability to operate, which leads to layoffs and lower activity, creating a vicious downward spiral.

We all want banks to be prudent, and non-performing companies should be pressured to get their accounts back in order.  But if you have bank covenants you’re not meeting, be wary.  Even in good times, you can never be sure that the bank won’t change its mind. Right now you should do all you can to get yourself into compliance, and pre-empt the bank.  But when times improve, and they will, make sure that all your loan covenants are fit for your purposes as well as the bank’s.  Don’t accept rolling waivers. If the bank refuses or drags the chain rewriting the loan agreement, then shop around.  Unfortunately, right now may not be a good time.

Despite the world economy crashing around our ears, the amazing news today is that the price of cocoa has hit UKP2000 per tonne, a 24 year high. This will inevitably flow though to chocolate prices.  Several ladies of my acquaintance will find this news shocking, despite the fact that they pay ridiculous sums of money on shoes, even if one size too small (yes, I’m talking about you, darling).  So here’s my hot investment tip of the year. Guys, buy in high quality chocolate supplies now before the price goes up on the street. Your reward will come later, but it will be worth it. Let’s face it, chocolate may be all you’ve got going for you these days, now the rest of your net worth has gone down the toilet.

The increasing role of the state is worrisome to me, and I’ll use the UK’s outer provinces to illustrate why. The Times reports that the public sector now accounts for 49% of Britain’s economy and that in some regions it’s reached 60%, 70%, even nearly 80%!

Let me make it clear that I’m not anti-public sector.  All economies and regions have some public sector jobs (healthcare, local government, education, law and order, social welfare, etc).  I admire the work done by many public servants, and some services are best purchased via the public purse (although I would prefer more were  delivered by the private sector with choice available to citizens).  Healthy regions and economies earn their keep with productive sectors which pay for  those publicly funded services through their taxes and their workers’ taxes. As economies evolve, some local industries lose their competitive edge and close.  To help re-stimulate the regional economies (and because the provinces are cheaper than the capital cities), governments open processing and call centres in the provinces (but not the powerful jobs of course).  Unfortunately this is only a short-term measure. Unless new industries spring up which can use that local workforce and capital, skilled workers and money move away. You end up with significant regions and population groups essentially not paying their way, subsidised by wealth transfers from the productive regions. That’s not sustainable in the long run, because those productive regions may also become uncompetitive.

Let’s put to one side for now whether public sector jobs would exist somewhere anyway (especially in government cities like Washington DC, Canberra, Brussel and Wellington).  When you have three-quarters of your regional economy driven by the public sector, you effectively have little available local talent with commercially essential skills in sales, marketing, product development, business finance, business operations.  Owners and their capital  have largely gone elsewhere, so there’s no investment base to start up new larger businesses.  My intuition tells me that there is a tipping point in a regional economy when too many public sector jobs start killing or chasing away private sector talent and capital, destroying the ability for a region to build new industries.

Let’s come back to the question of those public sector jobs existing somewhere anyway. Do we need so much legislation and frankly busy-bodying by the state? I’d argue not, both from a classic liberal stance and because I think much well-intentioned interference becomes counter-productive.  In the current economic turmoil, many governments are planning economic stimulation programmes right now.  I’d be very wary of plans to expand public sector employment or to transfer public sector jobs to deprived areas. Of course the public sector should evolve just like any other part of the economy, but its growth beyond a certain point becomes malignant.  If a country is just an agglomeration of regions, then the size of the public sector on a national scale should be of concern to everyone. An overblown public sector can kill a national economy as well as a regional one.

I’ve written before about Apprenda and SaaSGrid, its Microsoft-centric Software-as-a-Service development and production platform.   CEO Sinclair Schuller has given an informative (and not too technical) 30 minute interview in which he explains the spectrum of SaaS platform offerings and where SaaSGrid fits in. Microsoft application developers and others wanting to enter the SaaS market (such as hosting companies)  should find the chat interesting. His point in a nutshell: it’s really easy and fast to get into SaaS via SaaSGrid, using your existing skills and without too much money.  It may also be easy to port your on-premise .Net application to a true SaaS model.

Let me know how you get on.

Did you know that little old New Zealand makes supercars? Allow me to introduce you to the Hulme Can Am. Priced at NZ$750k, it’s basically a road-going two-seater Formula 1 racing car, which grew out of a design project for engineering students at Massey University. I was once sent an investment proposal for this project, which I politely declined.  However, they found someone to bankroll the development, and good on them for persevering.

I don’t think I’ll be getting the chequebook out.  I’ve already got a nippy little two-seater. However, I can’t wait to see Jeremy Clarkson and The Stig (aka. Ben Collins) test the Hulme on Top Gear. 

Australian accounting software firm MYOB has been taken over by Manhattan (a consortium of private equity firms Archer Capital and HarbourVest Partners) and delisted from the Australian stock exchange. The news seems to have been interpreted by some (competitors and commentators) as a signal that MYOB is increasingly defunct as a supplier of accounting solutions for small business. The basis for this thinking seems to be (a) the stated intentions of Manhattan to reduce development effort on MYOB’s existing products; (b) a prejudice against private equity acquirers as owners of R&D-intensive businesses; and (c) an understandable prejudice against on-premise software providers and their historical difficulties rolling out software-as-a-service, the hot favourite technology for future delivery of SME business applications.

Personally, I agree that MYOB and other on-premise software vendors have struggled to make a credible SaaS offering, but I wouldn’t be so quick to rule them out in future.  Neither would I ascribe a short-term-only view to private equity acquirers.  There are undoubtedly opportunities to trim the fat out of MYOB’s R&D operations, especially if, like many long established development shops, it’s got stuck in its ways and spends too much on old products. However, PE guys don’t usually buy technology businesses just for short term cashflow. They’ll have a bigger game plan. I fully expect them to focus a much tighter R&D spend on a suitable SaaS offering.  Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they have a SaaS-based acquisition waiting in the wings which they can back into MYOB’s marketing and support machine.

The fat lady hasn’t left for the auditorium yet, let alone got up on her feet to sing.

Disclosure: Isambard Investments owns shares in SaaS accounting provider Xero.

Last night I read that Chrysler has agreed terms with Fiat to acquire 35% of the US automaker in return for access to Italian car-maker Fiat’s non-US distribution network, the right to manufacture Fiat-designed vehicles in the USA, and no cash! Astonishing! What amazing times we live in.  For most of my adult life, Fiat has been a basket-case, with a reputation for producing interesting but shoddy cars and staggering from crisis to crisis, although it has enjoyed some success in recent years.

Whether this deal does the trick for beleaguered Chrysler is very doubtful in my view, but the change in market power for Fiat is truly newsworthy. The small print in the term sheet will make interesting reading.  If I understand the deal right, the new shares will mean Daimler-Benz drops to 13% ownership of Chrysler, and Cerberus to  52%, just enough to maintain the fig-leaf of US ownership (and access to federal money). Given Fiat’s low profile in the US market, and the minimal impact Chrysler’s general product line will make on Fiat’s business, this looks like a steal for Fiat; assuming of course that Chrysler survives.

The NZ business community was rocked with today’s news of Lloyd Morrison’s illness, which has resulted in him stepping aside from all roles for 3 months while he undergoes treatment for leukaemia.  The founder of merchant bank HRL Morrison and infrastructure investment company Infratil is one of NZ’s most respected business people.  Fortunately for Infratil and HRL Morrison, Lloyd has an excellent understudy in COO Marko Bogoievski, the former CFO of Telecom, who joined the team last year.

I’ve known Lloyd since 1993, when I ran power company Electra and Lloyd was making his first forays into the electricity sector.  He’s truly one of life’s gentlemen (and one of its snappier dressers).  He’s passionate about encouraging others to succeed and is a tireless champion for NZ business.

Get well soon, Lloyd; we need you in these turbulent times.

Disclosure: My family trust owns Infratil securities.

The business media in Britain are buzzing with the news that the BBC is to remake the classic comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, with Martin Clunes in the title role. Reggie was mandatory viewing for anyone in business in the 70s, with Leonard Rossiter playing a Walter Mitty type food company executive who starts speaking what he’s thinking.  In desperation with his life, he fakes his suicide but then reappears to launch his own chain of stores selling absolute rubbish. He goes weird again and fakes another suicide, only to reappear once more and and start a therapy centre business with the old team. The 3rd series ends with him contemplating yet another fake suicide. Dark but hilarious.

In a bizarre twist of reality following fiction, jewellery chain magnate Gerald Ratner made one of the most famous business gaffes of all time when he said to an Institute of Directors meeting:

We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?” I say, because it’s total crap.

The remark went  global and Ratner lost his job and his business.  But after a period in the wilderness he built and sold a successful health spa business, and now runs an online jewellery business.

The comedy series introduced many catchphrases such as:

• Reggie’s boss C.J.’s “I didn’t get where I am today …”
• junior executives alternating “Great” and “Super”
• bizarre excuses for being late: “a badger ate a junction box at New Malden”
• Reggie’s brother-in-law cadging food: “bit of a cock-up on the catering front”.

Unfortunately the BBC won’t allow embedding a video clip from the original series in this post, but YouTube has several.  Here’s one to get you started.  Rossiter is a hard act to follow, but given the rich source of material available in today’s business environment, the remake is bound to attract a huge audience.

Last week’s news that Dell is shifting its Irish manufacturing production to Poland should have come as no surprise, but seems to have done just that to the Irish people. I assume that the Dell plant was probably due for a major overhaul, often the trigger for such a review, and economic analysis said that the Irish location was no longer the best option. If massive subsidies, tax breaks and cheap labour are the reasons you build a factory in a remote offshore island (two sea trips and three truck journeys away from your market), then it’s hardly surprising that, when the subsidies and tax breaks are over and somewhere else comes along that’s cheaper and more convenient, you shift.

I’m always puzzled why many governments chase Foreign Direct Investment to the extent that they do, compared to local business development.  Undoubtedly it buys some localized medium term economic stimulus, but at a cost to other taxpayers (in Ireland’s case, pan-European ones).  Is the EU better off as a whole than it would have been without the Irish stimulus programme, because surely Dell would have built its European plant somewhere anyway? Or has it merely shifted wealth from one place to another?  I acknowledge that some think that is also a good thing.

I’m pleased when foreign firms decide to invest here, but I’m even more pleased when local firms invest - both at home and in other countries. I’ve long argued that the best way to be a wealthy nation is to own global businesses, with real foreign operations, not just export sales offices. Why? Mainly because global operations are needed for genuine scale.  Factories and other facilities will be built (and closed) to meet market and economic imperatives. Company headquarters bring those global global profit streams home. They also build networks close to their headquarters. Look at Eindhoven or Seattle or Silicon Valley. You won’t find only company headquarters.  You’ll find myriads of high-wage travel, legal, accounting, advertising, IT, R&D and education jobs, many in other firms. And those jobs are very sticky, because the primary factor is economic convenience, ie. closeness to the headquarters, not cost. When there’s a global cutback in R&D, headquarters R&D jobs are usually the last to go. I’m not alone in this thinking; the Dell announcement prompted the UK’s Richard Holway to write in the same vein.  He calls it “Loyalty to a Locality in a Recession”.

If you believe that subsidies and tax-breaks are valid for foreign companies, then surely you’d believe that  they’re even more valid for local firms. (Neither are valid, in my opinion). Even so, being locally owned is no guarantee against hard times.  Ireland’s Waterford-Wedgewood has shown exactly that, going into administration last week.  Its problems may have been exacerbated by the current economic turmoil, but its business strategy, product offering and business operations do not appear to have been much cop recently, anyway. Sounds a bit like the US-owned automakers, don’t you think?

Recent news of a German financier’s suicide quickly went global, but the likely major trigger for that sad incident has received less coverage, lost in the tsunami of finance news we’ve been enduring for many months.  In simple terms. Adolf Merckle’s firm is said to have been caught in the Porsche VW short squeeze. Now most people won’t know what that is, but Ivan Krstić explains it all for us.

The story starts with Porsche buying stock in its ally VW to prevent VW being taken over.  Eventually the share price gets too high to justify buying more.  Short-sellers therefore expect Porsche to sell down again with a resulting price fall, so they take big punts on a VW price drop.  Then Porsche reveals it has accumulated over 75% of VW’s stock and options, and effectively all of the free stock available for short sellers to meet their obligations.  End result - the short sellers lose billions, and Porsche makes an estimated transaction profit in the range of €6-12 billion (normal Porsche revenue is ~€7b). What does this say about Germany’s market disclosure regime?

Putting that question aside, Krstić then suggests that this was all a cunning plan by Porsche:

Porsche’s move took three years of careful maneuvring. It was darkly brilliant, a wealth transfer ingeniously conceived like few we’ve ever seen. Betting the right way, Porsche roiled the financial markets and took the hedge funds for a fortune.

While Porsche is highly respected for its managerial, financial, technical and investment skills, I find the cunning plan somewhat hard to believe.  You don’t make a play like this unless you’re a major hedge fund - the very firms who got burned.  A more likely explanation is that Porsche did exactly what they said they did - bought shares in an ally, and ended up in a controlling position which the hedge fund players hadn’t picked. Once Porsche realised what was happening, they rode it through, but I doubt that they set out with a cunning plan. Sometimes you inadvertently just get incredibly lucky in business. Or not, as in the case of Herr Merckle.

Following the announcement of online retailer Ferrit’s closure tomorrow, Lance Wiggs suggests that it might still have some potential, which almost certainly requires someone to pick it up from Telecom (for virtually nothing, I assume).  Lance also thinks Ferrit should move to Wellington, where most of NZ’s internet talent (technical and entrepreneurial) resides:

Wellington is the design, usability and web development center in New Zealand. Moving Ferrit means access to the great local talent, great feedback from the community and a complete break with the old culture. The rents are cheaper, the talent is better and the community is simply stunning. If you are in the internet in New Zealand then come to the home of Trade Me, Ponoko, Plan HQ, Big Ears, Silverstripe Xero and many many others. It’s all tied together by several communities, including the internationally acclaimed Webstock.

Interesting idea, given the amount of internet-savvy, high-net-worth investors in the city, too.

Disclosures: My family trust owns Telecom shares (sigh), Isambard Investments holds shares in various Wellington internet-related businesses, and I am non-executive chairman of Wellington-based interactive media design studio Click Suite. I live in Wellington, too! However, that doesn’t mean I am or am not a potential investor.  See my standard policy on such speculation.

Telecom NZ has announced that Ferrit, its online retail site, will cease accepting orders from Wednesday.  The only surprise is that Telecom has taken so long to send in the exterminators.  Others will comment (and have already done so) on the technical and design shortcomings of the Ferrit website.  Such criticism is valid, but misses the real issue.  Ferrit failed to capture customers because its brand personality was fundamentally flawed from Day One. It doesn’t matter how great your site is if no-one wants to visit it.

I don’t agree with the school of thought that says that good e-commerce sites don’t need promotion.  It depends on the circumstances.  However, every business needs an appropriate brand personality, especially if you intend to build a customer base through TV advertising.  Brands should have a personality that customers want to be associated with - whether fun, cool. luxurious or amusingly quirky.  Ferrit tried to be that - amusingly quirky - but failed miserably. The actor playing the part of a Ferrit customer was required to portray a complete wally with no redeeming qualities.  No-one would want to be a customer with that implied personality.

Update: Lance Wiggs has compiled a summary of his excellent long-running series on the shortcomings of Ferrit.  Essential reading for anyone thinking about e-business. I should also note that my family trust owns Telecom shares (sigh!)

If your company website includes a blog, user forum, or message board, whether public or just for staff, you risk being sued for defamation. It may be a small risk, but you need to be aware of the possibility and to think about what, if anything, you should do. Via Iain Dale, I’ve been reading an article in the UK’s Law Society Gazette on how the internet is changing the role of lawyers. The article quotes  lawyer Ashley Hurst:

‘If a defamatory statement appears on one of these forums or online customer reviews [JDD: as an original posting, a link, or a comment] , the company responsible for the website could be liable. Journalists and newspaper lawyers are used to dealing with the risks of libel, but an in-house lawyer … may be more familiar with commercial contracts than overseeing libel and privacy complaints arising from the company website.’

Although much of the article is relevant in all jurisdictions, it is framed in terms of English law, so you need to talk to your own legal advisers. For example, should you monitor your website? 

Hurst says: ‘If companies don’t monitor their forums and just respond to complaints they may have a defence of innocent dissemination. Under section 1 of the Defamation Act, a website operator may have a defence if it did not publish the defamatory statement itself and did not know that its website was facilitating the publication of a defamatory statement from one of its users.

‘Retailers, for example, may want to monitor the discussions on their websites to maintain their integrity and ensure users are not causing any damage to the brand. But by monitoring, website operators are unlikely to be able to rely on the section 1 defence, as they would struggle to show they were not aware that it was facilitating publication.’

I can’t think of any company that would not monitor its websites, blogs and so on, not because of any paranoia, but just to keep an eye on brand reputation and the tone of the conversations (eg. staff morale, customer satisfaction).

One key thing you must do is to establish house rules for both articles and comments, and make sure your staff and outside users know and understand them. You should also think about an easy and quick procedure to make and respond to complaints about content, including the removal of offending remarks. Your house rules should also cover commenting on other sites (see my earlier post on responding to blogs). Staff members making defamatory comments on sites may expose their employer to being dragged into an action, especially if they have an managerial or representative role. Staffers may think they’ve posted anonymous comments, but there’s no such thing except for the technically astute. If you make a comment on this site, I can see your IP address (the unique number that represents your PC) and the name of your host network, so I can usually track you down, at work or at home.

Another way to keep an eye on things is to have a moderation stage in website postings (including comments).  For example, all comments on this blog must be approved by an authorised person (ie. me) before release to the live site.  Just be careful that you don’t turn the moderation process into heavy-handed content sanitisation or you’ll destroy the benefit of the forum. I have only rejected one comment since starting this blog nearly two years ago.

In summary, you can put in place some simple measures to protect your company from defamation actions.  Don’t let concern over  defamation put you off running company blogs and forums.  They are powerful ways to connect with staff and customers, and the risks can be easily managed.

“One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words” Fred R. Barnard , Printers’ Ink, 10 March, 1927

Whether you are interested in economics, information design or graphics, you’ll find much to enjoy at Wallstats.com, the website of Jess Bachman, a young US graphics designer. and the creator of Death and Taxes, an annual one sheet poster explanation of the US Government budget, for which he’s become famous. In addition to his D&T poster sales, Bachman makes his living by rendering complex information understandable in graphic form. Some examples:

• A visual guide to the financial crisis
• The scale of the US beer market
• Various ways to visualize $1 billion
• The fall of GM

Last week, Wired magazine published its Top Ten Green Technology Ideas for 2008. Wired’s picks (in reverse order) are:

• 10 Floating solar power islands
• 9 New materials that capture and hold carbon for permanent sequestration
• 8 New anti-CO2 legislation
• 7 A new catalyst that combined with solar panels cheaply separates water into hydrogen and oxygen
• 6 T Boone Picken’s plans for a nationwide wind power grid
• 5 Resurgence of desert locations for large scale solar power
• 4 Obama appointing a green tech specialist to head the US Dept of Energy
• 3 New solar panel technology that enables gigawatt scale plants
• 2 The start of new distribution networks to support green transport technologies (battery sap stations recharging stations etc.)

Ideas 8, 6 and 4 are debateable as new ideas to my mind (and US-centric). While the solar technology and carbon sequestration stuff sound promising, the distribution network sounds premature.  I expect the existing transport support infrastructure (petrol stations and parking building will actually move quickly once one or two technologies start to dominate, and standards are agreed (such as plug/socket, gas fitting, etc).

Biofuel’s absence from the list shows that it’s not PC at the moment, which is a pity.  Biofuel from non-food crops such as coppiced willow, grown on marginal land, will increase forestation, stabilise landscapes, is carbon-neutral, and utilises existing technologies, distribution and infrastructure.

Ah, but what about the No 1 idea?  Believe it or not, it’s cement.

Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here’s the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.

Calera’s technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.

With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world’s cement would be a solution that’s the scale of the world’s climate change problem.

Now I really like that one.  The world is embarking on a huge infrastructure build over the next ten years, and the BRIC economies will continue building like crazy for at least the next 25 years.  As roads are renewed, bitumen can be replaced with concrete.  I agree with Wired - in their list, this is definitely the No 1 idea. Let’s hope it can be quickly proven and rolled out.

Richard Holway is arguably the UK’s  leading independent analyst and commentator on the IT industry, especially the software and services sectors.  He looks at how companies perform, rather than the technology itself, although that provides a key context for his prognostications (a bit like me). Holway, a self-proclaimed pessimist, usually dismisses hyped projections of future company performance. However, while picking the weak performance of the IT sector in 2008 (and 2009), he’s started to take a more positive tone in his medium term outlook, published on Monday.

Where now?
We got out of [the] downturn of [the] early 1990s because every bit of tech had its own ‘Next Big Thing’ – Windows, mobile phones, outsourcing, email, the internet, digital media etc.

…. I really feel that ‘All the ducks are in a row’ for a major period of technology-led change.

Casting off my normally gloomy image, I really do feel that we could be entering a very good time to invest in technology. I am unsure about calling the nadir just yet - but I think we are close to it. A repeat of the performance of tech in the 1990s is not out of the question.

What are those ducks in a row, all those existing technologies ready and available to be deployed and come together, creating supply, implementation, integration and support opportunities for product vendors and service providers?

1. Mobile Internet Devices – eg. iPhone, netbooks, laptops, even your TV - all interconnected via WiFi, 3G or whatever
2. Cloud Computing - all processing, storage, synchronisation, security and backup delivered over the internet
3. Software as a Service - applications delivered via the internet
4. Fast mobile internet access
5. Ultra-fast fibre-based internet access [JDD rider: in major towns and cities near communications backbone routes]
6. Virtual jukebox for music
7. On demand TV
8. Personalised news feeds
9. Targeted personally-relevant advertising
10. Social networking environments for work and play.

A September 08 presentation by Richard Holway is available here (5Mb pdf file).

Disclosure: My family trust and Isambard Investments hold shares and other securities in various IT-related companies.